The surprising thing about cheap noise cancelling is how much of it you can now buy for forty dollars. The Soundcore Q20i lists at $69.99 and spends most of its life discounted to somewhere between $40 and $50, and for that you get hybrid ANC running four microphones, 40mm drivers with Anker’s BassUp processing, and a battery rated at 60 hours with cancelling off or 40 with it on. Five minutes on the charger buys about four hours. There’s a detachable aux cable in the box, Bluetooth 5.0 with multipoint, and an 18-month warranty. About 243 grams on your head.
The cancelling is the reason to buy and it genuinely punches above the price, knocking out around 25 decibels and doing it across the whole range rather than just the low rumble, though low rumble is where you notice it most. The sound is the compromise. Sound is the letdown. It’s bass-heavy and unbalanced, clarity is muddy, and the midrange comes across grainy and hazy. Nothing here is offensive, but nothing is precise either. You are buying silence and accepting the music that comes with it.
Comfort holds up better than you’d expect, with memory foam and protein-leather pads carrying an eight-hour test session, and battery measured at about 49 real hours with ANC on. Mine has been thrown in a bag more times than I’d admit and looks fine, which is improbable for the money. Two frustrations recur. Past a couple of hours you get moderate pressure and hot, sticky ears, which is the usual pleather tax. And the controls are cramped physical buttons on the earcup that are genuinely hard to tell apart by feel, so you’ll mash the wrong one for the first week.
Bluetooth 5.0 with dual-device connection is the spec, though multipoint drops out at random often enough that I stopped relying on it, so treat it as a bonus rather than a feature. The detachable aux cable is a real plus, covering plane seats and any device that would rather have a wire. Call quality falls apart in noisy places, so these are not meeting headphones. Intermittent pairing failures come up often enough in owner reviews to be worth knowing before you commit.
Get these if what you want is quiet on a budget, for a flight, a commute, a shared office, or studying somewhere loud. At forty dollars the cancelling is a genuine bargain and the battery means you’ll rarely think about charging. Skip them if you care about how music actually sounds, or if you need reliable multipoint and clean calls. The 1More SonoFlow Pro is the usual pick for a better all-rounder at slightly more money. But pound for pound, very little cancels this well this cheaply.
Pros
• ANC measuring around 25dB, which is remarkable at this price
• Roughly 49 real hours with cancelling on
• Detachable aux cable included for planes and wired use
• Comfortable enough for an eight hour session
Cons
• Sound is bassy, muddy, and grainy under scrutiny
• Multipoint drops out at random
• Cramped earcup buttons are hard to tell apart
• Ears get hot and sticky on long wears
Our score: 7.3/10