Anker Soundcore Space One Pro: Budget ANC That Punches Up

Anker’s promise with the Soundcore Space One Pro is specific and testable: adaptive ANC, LDAC hi-res support, and a 40-hour battery, all for roughly a third of what Sony charges for the WH-1000XM5. That is not a vague “premium feel at a budget price” pitch — it is a direct, spec-for-spec dare aimed at a headphone costing more than double, and the only honest way to review it is to check the dare against the numbers rather than the marketing copy.

The promise on the box

The headline figures are genuinely competitive on paper. A 40mm driver, adaptive ANC that Anker claims adjusts in real time to ambient noise levels, LDAC codec support for higher-resolution Bluetooth streaming on compatible Android devices, and a battery rating of up to 40 hours with ANC engaged — a figure that, if it held up, would beat the XM5’s 30-hour claim outright. Anker also lists a reduced-wind-noise mode for outdoor use and multipoint pairing as standard, both features that used to be premium-tier exclusives.

Where the ANC actually lands

Independent measured reviews (SoundGuys and RTings both tested the Space One Pro against premium rivals on matched isolation charts) put its noise cancellation solidly ahead of other headphones in its own price bracket and closer to genuine flagship performance than the price gap would predict — not matching the XM5 or Bose QuietComfort Ultra on the lowest-frequency rumble, where more sophisticated multi-microphone arrays and more mature adaptive algorithms still hold an edge, but landing close enough on mid-range noise (office chatter, moderate street noise) that the difference is hard to pick out without instrumented testing. That is a genuinely strong result for the price: Anker isn’t matching the flagship tier, but the gap has narrowed to something a casual listener would struggle to identify blind, which wasn’t true of budget ANC even two years ago.

Call quality, per the same round of measured testing, is a more honest weak point. The Space One Pro uses fewer microphones than Sony’s eight-mic array, and outdoor call clarity in wind and moderate street noise falls noticeably behind — a real trade-off for the price rather than an invented one. Anyone whose primary use case is frequent outdoor calls should weigh that gap seriously against the ANC and price wins elsewhere on the spec sheet.

Materials and build

Anker’s build here uses a plastic headband frame with a metal reinforcement core rather than Sony’s pressed-aluminium arc, which keeps weight down (the Space One Pro is genuinely light on the head over long sessions, per user reports) but trades some of the structural rigidity a flagship frame provides. The ear cups use protein-leather-style pleather over foam, materially similar to what Sony and Bose ship at triple the price — pleather-over-foam construction has become the industry default across nearly every price tier, so this isn’t a corner cut specific to the budget end. The hinge mechanism is a simpler folding pivot than the XM5’s rotating design, closer in mechanical complexity to the XM4’s proven folding joint, which is arguably an advantage: fewer moving parts means fewer things to develop play over years of daily folding.

Where the build genuinely shows its price is in the touch-control surface, which several reviewers flag as less consistently responsive than Sony’s or Bose’s capacitive arrays — a lower-spec sensor doing a similar job with a higher false-trigger and missed-tap rate. It’s a minor daily friction rather than a functional failure, but it’s the kind of detail that separates a £130 headphone from a £380 one even when the headline ANC numbers land close together.

Sound signature and the LDAC question

The 40mm driver produces a warm, bass-forward signature out of the box that Anker’s app can flatten with its graphic EQ if a more neutral tuning is preferred — genuinely useful software, with enough bands to make a real difference rather than three broad presets. LDAC support is real and functions as advertised on compatible Android phones with a hi-res source; iPhone owners get AAC only, which caps the achievable resolution regardless of the source file, the same limitation that applies to every earbud or headphone in this guide’s price range and above. Judged against the best budget bookshelf speakers for a first proper hi-fi, where driver size and cabinet volume set a harder physical ceiling on bass extension, a 40mm dynamic driver in a sealed ear cup has an easier job producing satisfying low end — which is part of why the Space One Pro’s bass response punches above its price so convincingly.

Comfort over long sessions

Weight is where the Space One Pro’s plastic-frame construction pays off directly. At around 265g it’s close to the XM5’s 250g on paper, but the clamping force — measured by several reviewers using the same pressure-sensor methodology applied to premium rivals — runs slightly lighter, which reduces the crown-of-head pressure that builds up on a four-hour session. That’s a genuine, measurable comfort advantage rather than a marketing claim, and it’s consistent with a design that prioritises all-day wearability over the last word in structural rigidity. The trade-off is durability under stress: a lighter-clamping plastic frame flexes more under an accidental sit-on-it moment than Sony’s aluminium arc, and while Anker’s frame hasn’t been reported as a common failure point, it hasn’t had the multi-year track record Sony’s steel-and-plastic XM4 frame built up either.

Multipoint and the app in daily use

Multipoint pairing works as advertised for switching between a laptop and a phone, with a handoff that several user reports describe as reliably fast rather than the laggy reconnection some budget headphones exhibit. Anker’s Soundcore app is a genuine differentiator against cheaper rivals: firmware updates have shipped on a visible, ongoing cadence since launch, addressing early ANC-tuning complaints in a way that shows the product is still being actively supported rather than shipped and abandoned. The app’s EQ, HearID personal sound profile feature, and ANC-mode customisation together make a stronger case for the Space One Pro’s £130 asking price than the driver or ANC hardware alone would — software support is doing real work here that a spec sheet comparison against Sony wouldn’t capture.

How it stacks up against the going rate for flagship ANC

Positioned next to the Sony WH-1000XM5’s own case for an upgrade over the XM4, the Space One Pro’s pitch becomes clearer: it isn’t trying to out-engineer Sony’s eight-microphone call-quality array or multi-generation adaptive ANC tuning, and it doesn’t need to in order to win the value argument. Most listeners’ actual daily use — noise cancellation on a commute, decent-enough calls, all-day comfort, a battery that outlasts a working week between charges — is exactly where the Space One Pro closes the gap to a headphone costing two to three times as much. The remaining distance is concentrated in scenarios (frequent outdoor calling, the last percentage points of low-frequency isolation, long-term mechanical proof) that matter enormously to some buyers and not at all to most.

Battery life: does the 40-hour claim survive contact

Anker’s 40-hour ANC-on claim is aggressive relative to its own driver and processing load, and measured battery-rundown tests from independent reviewers generally land somewhat below the headline figure once ANC and moderate volume are both factored in — a pattern consistent with nearly every headphone’s marketing battery figure, measured under near-ideal conditions rather than typical daily use. Even discounting for that gap, the real-world figure still comfortably beats the XM5’s real-world equivalent, so the headline claim, while optimistic, reflects a genuine advantage rather than an invented one.

Price history and where to actually buy it

Anker’s headline RRP for the Space One Pro sits around £130, but Soundcore’s own store and major UK retailers run frequent discount events that regularly push the street price down to £100–£110, meaning the “roughly a third of a flagship” pitch understates the real gap once both product lines are shopped on sale rather than RRP. Anker also runs a longer, more generous return and warranty window through its own storefront than most third-party marketplace listings offer for the same headphone, which is worth checking before buying from a reseller rather than the brand directly — the hardware is identical either way, but the after-sales support isn’t guaranteed to be.

The case against

The Space One Pro earns its price rather than borrowing a flagship’s, and treating it as a direct replacement for a Sony or Bose in every use case oversells it. The call-quality gap is real for frequent outdoor callers. The touch controls are a daily minor annoyance next to the best in class. And the adaptive ANC algorithm, while genuinely competitive on raw isolation numbers, hasn’t had the multiple hardware generations of refinement that Sony’s has — a difference that shows up less in the noise-cancellation number itself and more in edge cases: sudden transient sounds, a slamming door, an accelerating engine, where Sony’s more mature system reportedly adapts a beat faster.

The wind-noise mode, tested against its own claim

Anker’s reduced-wind-noise mode is a specific, checkable claim rather than a vague comfort feature, and it’s the kind of thing that either works or doesn’t in outdoor use. It functions by altering how the ANC microphones filter low-frequency turbulence — wind hitting a microphone diaphragm directly produces a rumble that standard ANC processing can mistake for a noise to cancel, actually amplifying the perceived wind noise rather than reducing it, a known failure mode across the entire ANC headphone category regardless of price. Anker’s dedicated mode detects that turbulence signature and backs off active cancellation on the affected frequency band instead of fighting it. Independent testing on a genuinely windy day found it a real, audible improvement over standard ANC mode in the same conditions — not eliminating wind noise entirely, because no ANC headphone can, but measurably calmer than leaving standard ANC engaged into a headwind. It’s a small feature relative to the driver or the battery claim, but it’s the kind of engineering-for-a-real-problem detail that separates a headphone actually designed around its ANC rather than one that simply bolted a noise-cancelling chip onto an existing shell.

The verdict

Buy. The Space One Pro delivers ANC performance close enough to genuine flagship headphones that the price gap is difficult to justify unless outdoor call quality or the last few percent of low-frequency isolation genuinely matter to your use case. The price verdict: worth every penny at its typical £110–£130 street price, and one of the strongest value arguments in the entire ANC headphone category right now — this is the headphone to point to when someone asks whether budget ANC has actually caught up. It’s for anyone who wants 80–90% of a flagship’s noise cancellation and battery life at a third of the outlay; it’s a poor fit for the frequent outdoor caller who needs the microphone array a Sony XM5 provides, a trade-off worth weighing against the XM5’s own gains over its predecessor before deciding how much that specific feature is worth paying for.