Page 3 - Subjective Audio Analysis
For all audio products we review at APH Networks, it takes quite a bit of experience and training of the ears before we can assess with fair judgment. Even for many audiophiles, it can be hard to produce an exact or accurate evaluation of a product without a familiar product to use as a reference. There are no true objective measurements for audio sound quality, but as a reviewer, I will put the 1MORE Aero through a series of subjective tests to try to come up with the most objective rating as I can. The audio tests were conducted with the Aero connected to my Samsung Galaxy S20 FE via Bluetooth 5.2.
After taking some time to break in the 1MORE Aero, I put these earbuds to the test. All tracks are uncompressed or high bitrate audio files. Equalizer settings were set to flat for testing purposes. I watched videos to test for latency.
Because the 1MORE Aero has active noise cancelling, let us touch on this first. As someone who uses ANC earbuds on a daily, I was wondering how the Aero would compare. As it turned out, I was quite impressed with the active noise cancelling feature on the Aero, as it was able to cut out a surprising amount of background noise. Constant low frequency noise was noticeably canceled too. The ANC went far beyond that of passive noise cancelling that I have become accustomed to for earbuds of this type. This is very useful for plan, train, or bus rides.
I will base most of the evaluation with ANC on, given the 1MORE Aero are active noise cancelling earbuds. Turning on ANC mode does not affect the character of the sound output to a noticeable degree. Typically, when toggling ANC on, the bass will increase, but I experienced very minimal change, although it will be observable to keen individuals in silent rooms.
Keeping all of this in mind, I kept ANC on and I would say the sound character of the 1MORE Aero’s bass is slightly above neutral, likewise to many other earphones in the market today. Breaking down the “big three”, we have the bass, midrange, and treble. With ANC on, I still found the bass to be reasonably deep and round in the tracks I listened to. I personally am not a fan of overly bass boosted earphones or headphones, but I found the bass to be consistently deep and smooth. The delivery of lower frequencies was generally well-articulated.
The midrange was the highlight of the 1MORE Aero in my personal opinion. I found the midrange to be strong and thick. These characteristics span the entire range from lower-midrange to upper-midrange, I found the audio to be quite clean and defined. In more cinematic tracks, the natural sound becomes more evident. The midrange was natural, clear, and smooth.
Moving on to the treble, there was a very marginal boost above neutral, which allowed it to stay clean, clear, and sharp for the majority of the tracks I used when testing. I find with many headphones, the treble is either rounded off or recessed to avoid an overly sharp sound signature, but the 1MORE Aero balances out this portion well, giving the user a comfortable listening experience without sacrificing other aspects of the treble. The treble was very satisfactory in my listening experience. Everything was clean overall. When it comes to the balance between the three, there is a slight boost in the bass and treble, but the boost is incredibly light, which is appreciated. The sound across the three was generally well balanced.
The soundstaging of the 1MORE Aero was surprisingly decent. I say this because there was an acceptably defined depth, width, and direction given the form factor. While it may not be on par with open-back headphones for instance, it still does a great job for what it is. In terms of imaging, it remained faithful for the most part. Each layer had great detail. The resolution was good across the board, picking up most details in high quality encoded tracks. In more complicated tracks, the Aero managed to hold up decently. Frequency separation was also decent. Details were reproduced will with good clarity. The sound across the board was quite cohesive, being quite smooth across the range.
The 1MORE Aero comes with three pairs of ear sleeves, including the pre-installed ear sleeves. The extra sizes help in finding a proper fit to proper to create a good seal in your ear. This seal allows for good passive sound isolation. The Aero has QuietMax, which is the company’s active noise canceling system that promises to cancel out up to 42dB of ambient noise in the environment. It does exactly what you think it would, blocking out some constant noise, alongside some background voices and noise. Of course, it did not block out everything, but you it still did a very good job.
The 1MORE Aero had some background hissing noise when turned on, which is a side effect of its active noise canceling system. The background hissing noise will go away if you turn off ANC. In terms of lag, I did not notice any significant delay on a regular occurrence. There were some instances when turning on the earbuds that they would need to catch up to the video, but a simple pause seemed to have solved that issue. Audio appeared to be properly synchronized to videos I was watching on my Samsung Galaxy S20 FE.
In the sample recordings above, the microphone of the 1MORE Aero worked fine when walking inside and outside. I thought it was acceptable for day-to-day conversation. My voice came through quite clearly, being easy to understand, but there was some observable muffling when inside of a closed space. Outside was a different picture, as the microphone did pick up some background noise and you could hear the birds chirping in the second recording. My voice came through quite clearly, being easy to understand. While the microphone did pickup background noise, it was an acceptable amount. Generally speaking, it is fully usable for voice calls and not much change is needed.
The company estimates the battery to last around 4 hours with ANC on and 7 hours with ANC off on a single charge at 50% volume. I got 5 hours and 15 minutes at 50% volume with ANC on from my test, which is surprisingly accurate to what 1MORE claimed. With ANC off, I got 7 hours with one earbud and an extra 12 minutes on the remaining battery of the other earbud. When the earbud runs out of battery, it will play a little jingle before turning off. The rated wireless range is 10 meters, and from my testing, you can go much further. I did not test the exact range, but I was able to walk across my entire house without having any connectivity issues. This includes the fact that there were layers of walls between the earbuds and my phone.
Overall, the audio performance of the 1MORE Aero was pretty good for the average user. The active noise canceling is excellent in terms of isolating you from the rest of the world, unless you are in the library and people in the room next to you are screaming at the top of their lungs. We love campus libraries.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Hardware
3. Subjective Audio Analysis
4. Conclusion
