Page 2 - Physical Look - Hardware
Like all true wireless earphones, 1MORE provides a carrying case that doubles as a charger for the earbuds. The charging case is made out of anodized aluminum and has a matte black finish with 1MORE's logo on top. Both its shape and design are quite conservative looking, but it looks and feels good, since it is cold to touch. It measures in at 3.865 cm in height, 6.660 cm in width, 2.861 cm in depth, and weighs 58.3g with the earphones in. It looks very similar to the 1MORE True Wireless ANC, except much lighter and in a smaller form factor. Its shape and size make it able to be conveniently carried in a bag or jacket pocket. In front, there is one multicolor LED to indicate the current charge status, which is green for full battery, orange for medium battery, and red for low battery. It glows red when it the charging case is plugged in and charging, and turns off when charging is complete. It will also flash red if the charging case's battery is too low.
Each piece of the EVO has a 48mAh built-in battery for up to 5.5 and 8 hours of battery life for ANC on and off, respectively, at 50% volume. We will verify these claims on the next page. They weigh 5.7g each and measures in at 22.03mm by 20.69mm by 25.11mm at its largest dimensions, making them significantly smaller and lighter than the True Wireless ANC. They take approximately 60 minutes to charge using the charging case and a 15-minute charge adds an extra 4 hours of play time. The charging case supports just under three recharge cycles, or an additional 14.5 and 20 hours of music with ANC on and off, respectively, for the earbuds with its 450mAh internal battery. The charging case itself also takes about 120 minutes to charge via its USB Type-C port. I am very happy to see a USB Type-C port, given it is 2022. In addition, the charging case also supports 5W Qi wireless charging, which is awesome.
The 1MORE EVO earbuds are revealed once you flip open the top of the charging case. The pairing occurs as soon as the case lid is opened rather than when the earbuds are removed from the case, making the process faster. The earbuds have a clean and classy appearance, where the exposed portion consists of a ceramic panel. The ceramic panel comes in a mirror black finish -- a white version is also available, by the way -- with a shiny metal perimeter and 1MORE's logo on the outside. I am a fan of its classy look, and it works very well in not calling too much attention to itself in day-to-day use at the same time. It looks way better than the True Wireless ANC in my opinion. The 1MORE EVO are reasonably small and light, so they feel comfortable in use. I found its fit to be very good as well. When I am running, they do not lose its seal easily. Through my extensive testing, they have never fallen out of my ears. I tried shaking them out and they simply will not go anywhere.
Adjacent to the 1MORE logo is also where a small indicator LED is located to indicate its charge or pairing status. This is also where the outside microphone for identifying environmental noise is located. The LED lights up white to indicate its charge or pairing status. A pair button in located between the earbud cavities.
The EVO connects to your audio source device via Bluetooth 5.2. There is an experimental feature for it to connect to two devices simultaneously as well. Codecs supported over Bluetooth 5.2 include SBC, AAC, and Sony LDAC. SBC, or Subband Coding, is the default Bluetooth audio codec with reasonably good audio quality and low processing power requirements. For Apple users, the EVO supports AAC, which communicates at about 250kbps from the source. LDAC is Sony's proprietary audio coding technology and is a part of the Android Open Source Project. It can communicate at up to 990kbps, but can step down to 660kbps or 330kbps depending on wireless channel conditions. LDAC is one of two Bluetooth codecs that are Hi-Res Audio Wireless certified, with the other one being LHDC. LDAC is supported on most Android devices.
Each side of the 1MORE EVO will automatically turn on once you open the case. As you can see in our photo above, since there are no wires, 1MORE uses a duo of pogo pins on each side to keep those electrons flowing when it is inside the charging case. You can use these earbuds in mono or stereo mode, and it will indicate using different sounds in your ears the battery and connection status for each earbud.
The design of these earbuds is symmetrical and the capacitive tap controls on both sides have similar functions in order to facilitate its mono mode support. Each side can be used to control the voice assistant, calls, and music. I found the tap controls to work quite well. I never had a problem with accidental activation, since it requires a double tap or triple tap to do anything. Each side can be used to play/pause, answer/end call, and activate voice control. The configurations can be modified in the app.
Both earbuds also feature three microphones each -- one on the outside for detecting environmental noise, one at the bottom for capturing your voice, and one on the inside for feedback -- for a total of six, which the company claims they use an AI-powered algorithm to maximize pickup clarity and reduce background noise. We will test the performance of the microphone for call quality on the next page.
Taking off the sleeves reveal its 10mm dynamic driver with a balanced armature. Its frequency response and output power are not given. Its 32Ω impedance is the same as the True Wireless ANC and ColorBuds 2 True Wireless. 1MORE claims these drivers provide "crystal clear highs, accurate mids and warm bass in your music", which I will discuss in my auditioning results in just a moment. You can create custom sound profiles in addition to the twelve preset EQ configurations, called SoundID, to your preference in the 1MORE app.
The drivers aim directly into your ear for a direct and transparent sound reproduction characteristic like many modern in-ear monitors. At the same time, it makes the earphones easy to clean in the long run too. The circular-shaped acoustic tubes via the sleeves -- five different sizes are included -- assist the aim into the user's ear canals. The 1MORE EVO are active noise canceling headphones. The company calls it QuietMax and uses an out of phase signal to try to cancel out up to 42dB of ambient noise in the environment. There are four different sound cancellation levels along with two transparency modes that can be selected in-app. Since these earphones are designed for a closed configuration, the EVO are made for both active and passive noise canceling.
Adjacent to the drivers, next to the pogo pin contacts, are infrared sensors on both sides. They detect whether the earphones are in your ears or not and will pause your music automatically when you take them out. This feature works very well from my experience. The 1MORE EVO are also IPX4 certified for water resistance in any direction.
With all this in mind, how will they perform? As always, we have the entire Page 3 dedicated to presenting our auditioning results.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Hardware
3. Subjective Audio Analysis
4. Conclusion
