Soundcore AeroFit Pro (2024)

Verdict

The Soundcore AeroFit Pro offers okay sound for workouts with a design that’s both comfortable and versatile and delivers great battery life too. Ultimately though, you can grab better-sounding, open-ear sports earbuds for less.

Introduction

The Soundcore AeroFit Pro are open-ear, true wireless earbuds built for sport, delivering sound to your ears, all while letting you hear what’s around you.

Unlike bone conduction headphones, the AeroFit Pro uses air conduction, which puts speakers close to your ears and promises to give you bigger bass, better detail, and the scope to customise audio from a companion app.

I’ve tested a lot of fitness-focused bone conduction and air conduction headphones and there is no shortage of options to grab for the gym or for outdoor workouts. The AeroFit Pro aren’t cheap, so do they deliver a strong enough experience to warrant the expense?

Availability

The Soundcore AeroFit Pro are available from the Soundcore website for £149.99 / $169.99, putting them firmly in the pricey category.

That’s more expensive than other open-ear, air conduction sports earbuds like the JBL Soundgear Sense and the Sivga S01. They are cheaper at least than the Shokz OpenFit (£180 / $180), which are some of the best-sounding air conduction earbuds I’ve tested, though the design didn’t feel perfect for all workout scenarios.

Design

• Offers two wearing options
• Includes physical controls
• IPX5 water resistant design

The AeroFit Pro adopts an ear hook-style, true wireless design that looks like a bulkier version of Shokz’s OpenFit. You can pick it up in four colour options, including frost white and electric purple, if you don’t want the more traditional black look version that I had to test.

They’re nice and easy to put on, sitting over and around the ear. While not as svelte and light as the OpenFit, they do sit comfortably and securely. To boost the secureness of that fit the Pro includes a neckband add-on like the JBL Soundgear Sense.

Unlike JBL’s neckband it’s made from a fabric material as opposed to plastic, which makes it feel less cheap. I generally didn’t have any major issues with the buds staying put without that neckband, but I did find a bit of movement on sweatier workouts, so having that neckband to clip on can be useful.

On the sweat front, you do get an IPX5-rated design, which isn’t the strongest protection for a set of sports earbuds, but it gives you something suitable to withstand splashes of water. I’ve used these in toasty conditions running in the Caribbean as well as back home in the rain in the UK and have had no operating or connectivity issues when the extra sweat and rain comes calling.

There are physical controls situated on each earbud and is a small solitary one you can single or double tap to adjust volume, skip back or forwards, play, and pause as well as summon your phone’s smart assistant. Physical controls are always more favourable on sports earbuds and the controls here work fine, but they’d benefit from either being larger or positioned slightly differently to make them easier to use during more frenetic and high intensity workouts.

When not in use the Pro sits inside a medium-sized plastic charging case, which does securely lock the buds in place and includes a large notification LED that indicates battery status with a USB-C charging port just below it to power that charging case back up. If you’re after wireless charging, you’re sadly out of luck.

Features

• LDAC Bluetooth support
• 14-hour battery
• Spatial Audio

As for the features, they feel like odd ones to include from a fitness-focused point of view. The Spatial audio support enables head tracking and can be used in a music or movie mode.

It works fine for watching videos and films, but the execution of the feature doesn’t feel as slick as Spatial Audio on Apple’s AirPods or Beats earbuds. I’m also not sure how useful having LDAC support is here either, but the dual connection support, tucked away in the app, seems like a more useful feature to have, and worked generally fine for me.

I was impressed with what the Pro can deliver in terms of battery life. Each earbud has a 105mAh capacity battery, while the case has a 750mAh one. Off a single charge the earbuds can last up to 14 hours with music or 10.5 hours making calls. That 14 hours is achievable at 50% volume, however. At 100% volume it drops to 10 hours.

I tend to listen at louder volumes because typically that’s where I’d got the most pleasing audio performance and I’d say these numbers ring true based on my listening time. If you’re using them with an iPhone and relying on the battery status indicator in the app, then annoyingly you can’t see a percentage of the battery drop-off.

There wasn’t a huge dent in the battery after an hour’s use, even at louder listening volumes, which was less than 10%. The fast-charging support available on the earbuds (not the case) also does a useful job of topping you up, giving you up to 5.5 hours battery life from a swift 10-minute charge.

Sound Quality

• 16.2mm drivers
• Spatial Audio mode
• Custom EQ in companion app

The Pro relies on 16.2mm, titanium coated drivers, which promise robust bass, a wide soundstage and clear audio. There are some interesting extras here, like support for the audiophile-grade LDAC Bluetooth codec and what Soundcore refers to as ‘true Spatial Audio’.

Out of the box they’re set up in the Soundcore Signature EQ preset with additional Podcast and Treble Booster EQ modes available in the Soundcore companion app. You can also dabble with the custom, eight band equaliser for more control over that sound profile.

I’ve used a few Soundcore headphones before, both sporty and non-sporty, so I was optimistic about what these air conduction buds might dish out in terms of sound quality. What I found is that they sounded rather middle of the ground. I’d best describe the sound as good, but compared to other earbuds that adopt a similar air conduction approach, they don’t come out on top.

I spent most of my testing time in the gym and outdoors on runs, near busy roads and slightly quieter ones. Like other air conduction headphones, the balance between hearing your own audio and ambient sounds feels more weighted towards the former, especially at louder volumes. I’m not convinced they are the best performers in terms of delivering that open ear sound and are more effective at doing that at lower volumes.

However loud you go, I felt like the sound profile was largely the same. I don’t think they produce exceptionally clear sound; the soundstage didn’t feel particularly wide and while they offer some good power, the bass performance wasn’t memorable. It was the same story using the four onboard microphones to handle calls. It’s just okay.

I tend to listen to more up-tempo drum and bass and house music for workouts or podcasts and also turn to the Songs To Test Headphones With playlist on Spotify to get a better sense of how the AeroFit Pro handles musical genres. As mentioned, there are some EQ modes available, including a custom one, but it feels it could benefit from a few more presets.

The default Signature EQ doesn’t sound well balanced, bass is a bit muddy and mids feel a touch recessed. I used the dedicated EQ for podcasts and while there’s a bigger emphasis on voices, the overall clarity isn’t anything to write home about.

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