Are your earbuds a bit of a pain in the ear? Even with size-appropriate ear tips, there’s no getting around that you’ve got something jammed into your ear, which will, eventually, get uncomfortable. The $99/£99/ €99.99 Soundcore C40i earbuds are designed to solve that problem.
Rather than going in your ear, they clip onto your earlobes, with each bud containing a battery on one side and the speaker driver on the other. These are connected by a flexible joint made of durable titanium wire and are designed to slide over and grip your earlobe, even when exercising. In case you find they aren’t tight enough plastic ear covers are supplied in two sizes to make them a bit thicker and therefore grip better.
Looks wise, they are unusual, and I was worried that I was too old to carry off the slightly out-there design, but thankfully that proved not to be the case – or at least everyone I’ve asked has been humoring me.
Not having anything in your earhole has two upsides. First, it means there’s no pressure on them, so you can wear them for a long time without discomfort. The second is that you can hear everything that’s going on around you. This makes them ideal for activities where it’s useful to be more aware of your surroundings to avoid getting squished, such as walking, running, or hiking. Equally, you may simply appreciate being able to hear when someone is talking to you.
The downside is that these do not have any kind of active noise canceling and will not isolate outdoor noises, which is indeed, the point. However, if you’re say, traveling on the London Underground, you won’t be hearing out of them between stations and when played loud in quiet environments, others will be able to hear the output, albeit faintly.
Featuring IPX4 water-resistant certification the Soundcore C40i earbuds can cope with sweat but are not fully waterproof.
How To Wear
It did take a little practice to get used to putting them on correctly. I found the easiest way to get them on was to slide them over the top of my ear lobe and bring them down into position: you can move them up and down as you see fit to get the speaker driver pointing in the right direction. However, a couple of times I wondered why I couldn’t hear anything out of one side only to realize that I had put that earbud on the wrong way round—so don’t do that.
Also, if you use the plastic grips take care not to cover the charging connectors as yours truly did the first time I put them on. This means when I placed the earbuds back in the charging case they didn’t disconnect from my phone. Consequently, audio continued to play, even with the case closed, and as they couldn’t charge, the battery ran down too. So don’t do that either.
However, once I’d got to grips, so to speak, with the design, I found that the C40i earbuds were a revelation. The fact that they are so light, in combination with the lack of ear pressure, meant that once I put them on I didn’t feel the need to take them off. You don’t need to take one off or faff about with a pass-through button to have a conversation, either. I took several calls while wearing them and call quality for both parties was fine.
The earbuds have a large button on either side which you press by default to pause or accept a call, double press to skip, and press and hold to raise or lower volume. It’s a proper button too, making it much easier and satisfying to use than haptic feedback. When you do take the buds off, they can only be placed back in the solid-feeling charging case on the correct side and snap back into place thanks to a magnet, which is a nice touch.
Latest Tech and Battery life
In terms of specs, the C40i earbuds use the latest Bluetooth 5.4 standard, which means optimizations for battery life and reduced latency but the codec supported are only the default SBC and AAC–no fancy lossless codecs here. They support useful features such as dual connections, which means you can connect two devices to the earbuds, such as your phone and your laptop, and you can switch between them without having to re-pair. You’ll hear whichever one starts playing audio. However, you have to disconnect from one of them to connect to a third.
Each bud offers seven hours of charge and the USB-C charging case can add another 21 hours in total (tested at 50% volume which is lower than you’ll probably use). By comparison, the base AirPod 4s claim five hours and 30 with the case, so depends on your use case—though of course, the AirPods are a more traditional design and go directly in the ear.
Surprising Sound Quality
While bone conduction headphones also do away with having to have drivers putting pressure inside your ear, this clip-on approach has one key benefit—sound quality. Essentially a “racetrack” speaker driver (essentially oblong-shaped) pointing at your ears, I was surprised at how clear and easy to listen to the Soundcore C40i earbuds were.
The Weekend’s How Can I Make You Love Me is bounding and rhythmic and Aha’s Take on Me displayed foot-tapping timing. Voices on podcasts were rounded and clear and had an open, airy quality—I even had to check at one point if I was listening over the headphones or the speaker, which is a good sign.
The 12x17mm drivers do show their limitations, however. When a lot is going on in the mix things do get a little muddied and with Billie Jean, the bass boost option in the app needed to be turned on to sound even close to how it should do. Inspired by Ridley Scott’s return to Rome with Gladiator II, I dived into the soundtrack and though I found it an involving listen I did want to for more power.
Worth buying?
Considering they cost just £99/$99 the Soundcore C40i earbuds sound better than they have any right to for the price. So while not the answer for serious, dedicated listening sessions, what you get are earbuds that sound great and effortless to wear for hours on end, making them ideal for casual use and exercise. For me, that’s more than enough to make them a winner.
