Anker Soundcore P40i Review – The Best Budget In Ears?

A few months ago I was invited to Portugal to check out AOC’s new monitors, and genuinely the day before I was due to leave I was packing and realised the Edifier TWS NB Pro headphones I usually use were buggered, so I rushed to Amazon and got next day before 1pm delivery on these, Anker’s Soundcore P40i TWS earbuds. These had a trial by fire in the way of two three hour plane journeys, a whole long weekend of not charging them, followed by another couple of months of regular use, including while exercising while I was busy forgetting to make this video. To say I’ve tested these thoroughly would be an understatement, so let me attempt to impart my months of experience with these in a reasonable length review… Here goes!

Anker’s soundcore P40i’s are at the top of their P in-ear range, with the P30i and P20i sitting below these. While they do offer similar features – the P30i’s still offer ANC for example, and all three offer IPX5 water resistance – these P40i’s seemed like the best of the bunch, and for the price – under £40 – I figured I’d ‘splash out’, compared to the £16 or £33 for the 20 and 30’s respectively. And I’m glad I did. These have continued to impress me as I keep using them – although to be clear, these aren’t like pro audiophile grade in-ears. These are budget TWS buds, so maybe lower your expectations a little. But for the class, damn I’m impressed. These happily go toe to toe with £100 headphones I’ve used over the years, so yeah, colour me impressed.

Let’s start with a look around them. As usual you have a charging case in a little rounded pill form. This one isn’t the smallest I’ve seen, but isn’t too horrendously bulky either. You have a USB C charging port on the back, along with the most sleek pairing button I’ve ever seen – you’d hardly know it’s there if you aren’t looking for it – and a sort of status LED bar on the front. As you open the shell you’re greeted with both earbuds, and the USP here is this little tab you can flap up to use the case as a phone stand. I must say this works remarkably well, especially thanks to the massive rubber pad on the bottom that keeps it from sliding around. Oh, and the case geometry means when you close the lid, the phone stand gets flicked down automatically. That’s pretty cool.

The headphones themselves look pretty standard, with silicone ear tips, a short bar style arm, and a capacitive outer section which is almost too easy to hit. Every time you try to adjust them in your ears, you will tap the ‘button’. Anker does set a single tap to do nothing by default, but you can change that – for me it’s volume up and down – but I’d understand if you don’t fancy that. While I’m here, I should mention the other tap options. You can do single, double, or triple taps, and press and hold, on each bud. Plus two actions for calls. There’s a lot of controls here! I should also mention that these are the first headphones that connect to an Android phone like AirPods do on iPhones. Meaning, you just open the case and they’ll ask if you want to pair automatically – even without Bluetooth on. Once paired, they will show up not just as a battery indicator on the top bar, but full percentages for both buds and the case as a notification. That’s pretty cool.

Speaking of battery, man these things are great. Just inside the lid it lists two battery figures, 800mAh, and 530mAh, with the 530 supposedly being “rated capacity”, versus “capacity”, so I’m not entirely sure if the 530 refers to the two headphones, or just a different measurement style for the main case battery, but what I can say is that you will never have an issue with these things running out of charge. The box lists them as 12/60 hour, with the buds having 12 hours of playback, and the case offering a further 60 hours. Honestly, even after months of usage, I think I’ve only ever charged the case once or twice, and that was mostly out of habit for charging stuff before going on a trip. I don’t think the case has been below 60% ever. 

The mic test is included in the video, but suffice to say… It’s fine. It’s not great, not terrible. It’s fine.

As for audio quality, well that’s difficult to talk about without first showing you the insane number of options the app has for changing the audio quality. I think the app might have also been updated throughout my ownership too, to add one rather interesting feature. I should quickly note that I don’t have much to say about the ANC – these P40i’s get this “Adaptive ANC” feature that I guess turns it up and down respectively, but I guess as a true compliment to these things, I didn’t notice. It worked well, and felt pretty seamless. Anyway, the next setting down, “Sound Effects” is where the new feature is hiding. Previously, at least as far as I remember anyway, you just had the regular EQ modes – there’s a whole lot of them – or you could make a custom EQ, but the new “HearID Sound” feature basically plays a whole range of sounds to determine just how deaf you are, then plays one song with two different settings to choose from. You pick from six choices, then it creates a custom EQ profile based on both what you can actually hear, and your preferences. I decided to add the flat profile on top of that, but it does now sound better, so that’s actually a pretty useful feature.

The audio quality even right out the box is decent, but not mindblowing. It isn’t exactly audiophile grade – you’re not going to be hearing subtle details you’ve never heard before with these – but it is still pretty good. It’s decently full sounding, a bit bass heavy as you might expect, but at least for my tuned profile, I balance the bass with more mids, generally leaving the highs as they are as too sharp highs hurt me. Especially with the tuned profile, you can definitely get an enjoyable sound out of the 11mm drivers in here. I have absolutely no problem with the audio quality here – I’m no audiophile though so if you have more discerning tastes, maybe don’t be looking at £37 Bluetooth in ears… I am really impressed with the amount of customisation these offer though, you can really tune the sound profile to your tastes, and that’s pretty cool especially for this sort of price tag.

The long and short of it is that I’m very glad I bought these. Not only did they save the trip for me, they sound great, last hours, are decently comfortable, and are even decent for exercise – not perfect though, they do slip out over time – but they didn’t cost anywhere near what I’d expect for what you get here. These feel like £80-100 headphones, so the fact you can get them for £37 right now, that feels like a steal. I’m glad I went for these over the P30i and P20i too, I’d rather pay a couple quid more to get the best. In short, I like ‘em. Link in the description if you want one yourself.