Now, for any wireless device, I start off with battery life, since it impacts just about every part of the use of that device. The battery life on this was fairly good, though it did, like a lot of devices, get less impressive over time, that was unfortunately quite a bit quicker than I’d have liked, and while that could’ve been based on my usage habits, from my experience I went from roughly a week and half between charges with moderate usage, to roughly maybe 3 days with limited. For this I have to give it moderately high of a 3 which is in the middle and fits my feeling on it. It wasn’t great, but I’ve definitely had much worse over the years.
As for all headphones and other audio devices, gotta talk about the sound quality, and while I’m no audiophile with a scientific-ish setup, I can comment on my experience. The active noise cancellation is excellent, pass-through worked well enough, but it was a little muddled when I used it, I could tell someone was talking or making noise but had a difficult time determining exactly what they were saying. And normal was, well as you might expect, a little in between those two, I could marginally tell there was activity around me, but it wasn’t definitive. Volume was great, could deal with a screaming child on normal and ANC and probably not notice or be bothered. This gets a 2.5, roughly speaking it’s great, but as I found on the later model it could be much better. (which I’ll review later.)
Build quality is up next, this gets a 3.5, unfortunately I expect for the roughly $80 I paid for it, that it would’ve lasted longer than maybe a year and a half and sure my treatment of it was not ideal I know that over all something that expensive should simply be more durable.
Connectivity is the next thing we’ve gotta discuss, while it was relatively easy, their reliance on an app to allow you to use it on android or other mobile OSes is not a great plan, I get that the idea is that they can pack features in, but the features shouldn’t come at the cost of usability when you don’t want to use the app, plain and simple. Their score is a 2.75
Next up on the block is going to be comfort, and it’ll grant 2 scores. Comfort to wear, is about 3, over time, the “pleather” material making up the ear cuffs were simply not breathable and frankly wearing them over 30 minutes or so feels like sauna for your ears. (The next model up is no different, unfortunately.) The second score is the listening comfort, granted the earlier statement of no breathability there’s also especially when you turn on active noise cancellation or pass-through modes pressure that builds up under those ear cuffs, I frequently had to lift them up a bit to release that, so I could comfortably continue listening. This gets a 4, I know that it’s marginally difficult to both seal your ears off for a better listening experience and allow some air pressure to escape, but there should be some solution and I think Anker could definitely do a better job if and when they make a Q40 model to replace the 35s which I also own and adore for their quality of sound but find the same issues.
Accessories get a side note, they’re fantastic, as far as the case and aux cable you get, they do their respective jobs well.
All in all these have a max possible score of 30, and they got a respectable 18.75 which is a bit over halfway to the max they could cause me to have complaints but still a great buy.
