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 metal 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 3.85 cm in height, 8.13 cm in width, 3.0 cm in depth, and weighs 79g with the earphones in, which is considerably larger than the Stylish True Wireless and ColorBuds True Wireless. It can still be conveniently carried in a bag or jacket pocket though. 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 earbud weighs 7.9g each and measures in at 38mm by 18mm by 28.5mm at its largest dimensions, making them about twice as big and heavy as the ColorBuds True Wireless. They take approximately 60 minutes to charge using the charging case and a 15-minute charge adds an extra 2 hours of play time. The charging case supports just over full two recharge cycles, or an additional 13 hours of music with ANC off, for the earbuds with its 410mAh 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 2020. In addition, the charging case also supports 5W Qi wireless charging, which is awesome.
Each piece of the True Wireless ANC has a 55mAh built-in battery for up to 5 hours of battery life at 50% volume over Bluetooth with no active noise canceling. Enabling ANC will reduce the battery life to 4 hours. If your phone supports Qualcomm's TrueWireless Stereo Plus, 1MORE claims you can add an hour to both figures. TrueWireless Stereo Plus is Qualcomm's proprietary technology that allows phones to connect directly to both earbuds rather than daisy chaining them. Unfortunately, this is compatible only with specific phone chipsets from the company and certainly not supported by Apple devices. From my experience, these estimates seem to be way overrated since I could only get exactly 3 hours at 50% volume with ANC on from my tests. There was no battery life difference between ANC level 1 and level 2. With ANC turned off, I was able to get an extra 18 minutes, which was also quite a bit off from the rated 5 hours.
The 1MORE True Wireless ANC earbuds are revealed once you flip open the top of the charging case. Like the ColorBuds True Wireless, one unique feature is 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 appearance in a good way, where the exposed portion comes in a glossy carbon fiber finish with 1MORE's logo on the outside. The design itself will not too much attention to itself in day-to-day use, but they are mega-sized compared to the ColorBuds due to the additional hardware required for active noise canceling. Adjacent to the 1MORE logo is a small indicator LED to indicate its charge or pairing status. The LED lights up red when it is charging and turns off when it is done. It will flash red and blue or glow blue depending on the pairing status as well. On the other side of the 1MORE logo is an outside microphone for identifying environmental noise.
The 1MORE True Wireless ANC earphones connect to your audio source device via Bluetooth 5.0 using a Qualcomm chip. Protocols supported over Bluetooth 5.0 include aptX, AAC, and SBC. SBC, or Subband Coding, is the default Bluetooth audio codec with reasonably good audio quality and low processing power requirements. aptX is a time domain ADPCM compression algorithm that promises CD like quality according to the people promoting it. In case you are asking, Apple devices does not support aptX, but many Android devices do. Fortunately, for Apple users, the True Wireless ANC supports AAC as well, which communicates at about 250kbps from the source.
Both sides of the 1MORE True Wireless ANC 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 triplet 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 physical button 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. In stereo mode, the different sides can be used skip or repeat tracks or adjust the output volume. The True Wireless ANC also has capacitive touch control to toggle ANC modes. There are two levels of ANC plus passthrough and off. I found the tap controls to work quite well; I never had a problem with accidental activation since it always requires a double tap.
Both earbuds feature two microphones each -- one on the outside for detecting environmental noise and one in front for capturing your voice -- for a total of four. Between the O-hooks and ear sleeves 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. Three soft rubberized O-hook sizes and three additional sleeve sizes in two different shapes for a total of six pairs of extras are included to maximize comfort and fit. From my experience, I found the fit to be very good. When I am running or walking, they do not lose its seal easily. After about a month of use, they have never fallen out of my ears. I tried shaking them out and they simply will not go anywhere. However, they protrude quite a bit more than the ColorBuds True Wireless due to their sheer physical size.
Taking off the sleeves reveal its hybrid dual driver design with balanced armature and separate dynamic driver. Its frequency response and output power were not given. Its 32 ohm impedance is a bit higher than the Stylish True Wireless' 16 ohm and ColorBuds True Wireless' 22 ohm impedance though. 1MORE claims these earphones are the world's first THX certified true wireless headphones and provide consistent frequency response and low distortion with exceptional noise isolation, which I will discuss in my auditioning results in just a moment. The drivers aim directly into your ear for a more 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 oval-shaped acoustic tube via the default sleeves assist the aim into the user's ear canals, and since these earphones are designed for a closed configuration, the 1MORE True Wireless ANC are made for both active and passive noise canceling.
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
