Affordable Audio Excellence: In-Depth Analysis of OneOdio A10 Headphones

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• High-End Look, Mid-range Feel
• Connectivity: Simple But Practical
• A Simple Control Scheme
• Better-Than-Budget Sound Quality
• Okay Noise Cancelation, But a Great Transparent Mode
• Battery Life for Days
• Should You Buy the OneOdio Focus A10?

Key Takeaways

• The OneOdio A10 headphones offer good sound quality for the price, impressive battery life, and an excellent transparency mode.
• The active noise cancellation on the A10s is not as effective as more expensive headphones, but it is good for reducing wind noise.
• Call quality on the A10s is not great, so if you primarily use headphones for calls, you may want to consider other options.

Budget wireless headphones have come a long way in the last few years, but even now, you don’t see noise cancelation in headphones as much as you do earbuds. The OneOdio A10 headphones are wireless over-ears that don’t just offer up noise cancelation on a budget, but some nice other features too.

In addition to the active noise cancelation, the A10s also feature a transparency mode to let you hear your surroundings, plus surprisingly long battery life. Unlike many other affordable headphones, they don’t look like budget headphones, with a nicer-than-average finish.

There are plenty of budget headphones out there that promise the moon and give you a large rock at best. It’s great to see this isn’t always the case, as for the most part, the OneOdio A10s do what the company says they do.

OneOdio A10

7/ 10

OneOdio A10 wireless headphones feature advanced Hybrid active noise cancelation (ANC) technology and long battery life.

Brand

OneOdio

Battery Life

Up to 50 hours

Bluetooth

5.0

Audio codecs

SBC, AAC

Frequency range

20Hz - 40kHz

Pros

• Good sound quality for the price
• Excellent transparency mode
• Impressive battery life
• ANC is good for wind noise

Cons

• ANC isn’t as effective as more expensive headphones
• Call quality isn’t great

$90 at Amazon $80 at oneodio

High-End Look, Mid-range Feel

Jason Montoya / How-To Geek Jason Montoya / Review Geek Jason Montoya / LifeSavvy

These headphones feature a mostly plastic build but with a metal headband, which gives them much more hope for longevity. They may be built out of plastic, but they don’t look it, with a metallic look on much of the outside casing that fits nicely with the actual metal of the headband.

The OneOdio A10s use a slimmed-down over-ear type of fit. The ear cups just fit around the outside of my ears, so if you have larger ears, these may turn into on-ear headphones. For me, the comfort was still nice after two hours, especially since the headphones are fairly lightweight. If you have larger ears, you may not be as comfortable.

While the headphones are fairly light, I did notice that they would shift on my head when I leaned down. This wasn’t a problem for me, but I imagine they could slip off if you’re not careful.

There’s an included case, which is somewhat of a surprise, given the price. It’s a simple hard shell case without padding, but it seems like plenty enough to keep the headphones safe.

Connectivity: Simple But Practical

Jason Montoya / How-To Geek

Wireless connectivity is fairly bare bones here, with Bluetooth 5.0 and the standard SBC and AAC codecs. Considering the price, it’s not a surprise that there aren’t any higher resolution codecs available, but even some higher-end headphones stick to the same two codecs the A10s are using.

The headphones also feature a 3.5mm jack and an included cable for plugging into your phone, laptop, or MP3 player . Even better, using this doesn’t require the headphones to be powered on, so it works great as a backup in case you’re afraid you’re going to run down the battery.

A Simple Control Scheme

Jason Montoya / How-To Geek

In contrast to the increasing complexity of many Bluetooth headphones, the OneOdio A10s keep things simple, with all the controls available via buttons on either ear cup. The right side has three buttons: two volume buttons and a multifunction button. This pauses and resumes music, answers and ends calls, and can call up your phone’s voice assistant.

The left button contains a single button to toggle through noise-canceling modes. Pressing this button allows you to switch between noise cancelation, transparent listening, and no noise cancelation. An LED near the button shows whether these modes are on or off.

Somewhat surprisingly, there is no companion smartphone app to download. It would have been nice to see a customizable EQ, but otherwise, it’s nice to have everything built right into the headphones.

Better-Than-Budget Sound Quality

Jason Montoya / How-To Geek Jason Montoya / Review Geek Jason Montoya / LifeSavvy

The A10s feature a 40mm driver, which is fairly standard for this type of wireless over-ear headphones. The overall sound signature is relatively flat, without much of the hyped bass that you’ll find in many headphones in this price range. This has both positives and negatives.

Listening to “Too Hot “ by The Specials, the treble on the hi-hats sounds a little over the top, which is something you’ll find more often with lower-priced headphones. In many cases, you’ll notice this less as the drivers break in. The bass, on the other hand, is slightly lacking here compared to listening to the song on my other usual headphones.

In The Zombies’ “Care of Cell 44 ,” the vocal is panned hard right, and in combination with the slight treble emphasis, it sounds like singer Colin Blunstone is standing in the same room off to the right. This isn’t something I regularly notice in budget headphones.

If you’re more of a fan of the spoken word, you’ll be glad to know that these sound great for audiobooks and podcasts. You won’t find artificially inflated booming bass or overly sibilant highs. This is especially nice considering there is no app with an EQ mode meant for podcasts.

Okay Noise Cancelation, But a Great Transparent Mode

Jason Montoya / How-To Geek Jason Montoya / Review Geek Jason Montoya / LifeSavvy

You’ll find plenty of headphones in this price range that claim to cancel noise, but look a little deeper, and you’ll often find they’re talking about passive noise isolation. This is just the noise damping you get from the pads around your ears, not actual noise cancelation. The OneOdio A10 headphones, on the other hand, actually feature active noise cancellation (ANC) .

The ANC works, but it doesn’t work anywhere as effectively as you’d find in a $400 set of wireless headphones like the Sony WH-1000XM5 . You can tell it’s working when you turn it on, but the results are mixed. The headphones don’t do a great job of canceling out nearby voices, for example, but they do a decent job of making wind noise less annoying.

Related: Sony WH-1000XM5 Review: The Best ANC Headphones Just Got Better

On the other hand, the transparent mode , which lets outside noise through, is surprisingly good. I’ve heard less effective transparent modes on headphones that are easily twice the price of the A10s. When I was outside, I noticed this mode seemed to amplify some sounds —chirping birds, for example—more than others, but even that isn’t much of a fault.

The same can’t be said for the built-in microphone, which is serviceable at best. It works fine enough indoors in a quiet room, but it picks up a lot of wind noise if you use it outside.

Microphone Audio Sample: Indoors

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Battery Life for Days

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Jason Montoya / How-To Geek Jason Montoya / Review Geek Jason Montoya / LifeSavvy

OneOdio claims up to 50 hours of playback time using the A10 headphones in Bluetooth mode without ANC enabled. If you want to enable ANC, you’ll still get more than a day’s worth of listening at up to 40 hours. What’s slightly odd is that OneOdio claims up to 62 hours using only ANC.

I assumed this was in wired mode, but I couldn’t find any way to use ANC when listening to the headphones plugged in. This is because plugging in the cable automatically shuts the headphones off. If you’re out of battery life and want to keep listening, this is handy, but if you’re looking for maximum battery life with ANC, don’t count on using it when plugged in.

Once you finally do run out of battery, you won’t be without music for long. A full charge only takes around two hours, and just a 10-minute charge gets you up to another five and a half hours of playback time.

Should You Buy the OneOdio Focus A10?

With many lower-cost Bluetooth headphones, it becomes a game of spotting the area that the company clearly skimped on. The OneOdio A10 headphones certainly have strengths and weaknesses, but they don’t feel like the company threw in the towel on any given aspect. This is a solid budget pair of wireless headphones.

There are limitations, namely noise cancelation. Still, it’s better to have less effective noise cancelation than none at all, especially given how good the transparent listening mode is. Call quality isn’t great, so keep that in mind if you’re buying headphones mainly for calls.

If you’re not sure which budget headphones to buy, the OneOdio A10 are a great option, with good sound, usable noise cancelation, and impressive battery life. You might do better for the price, but you may have to make sacrifices to do so.

OneOdio A10

7/ 10

OneOdio A10 wireless headphones feature advanced Hybrid active noise cancelation (ANC) technology and long battery life.

$90 at Amazon $80 at oneodio