OneOdio keeps on expanding their range of products and they’ve been focusing on Bluetooth headphones lately, with the OneOdio A10 being their flagship model. Priced at a very reasonable $69, the A10 couple a very stylish design with OneOdio’s house tuning, sporting ANC as the main differentiator – and also quite a nice bonus, given the price they’re sold at.
Disclaimer: I received a unit directly from OneOdio. The A10 sell for $79.99. Additional info on the manufacturer’s website.
TL;DR: recap
| Pros |
Cons |
| + Sleek design
+ Well-built + ANC |
– Not always comfortable
– ANC rendered less effective by the lack of passive isolation – Bass and treble are overly strong |
Rating: 5.5/10
Packaging & Accessories
The packaging of the OneOdio is very simple: there’s just a cardboard box that contains the hard transport case, which in turn contains the headphones, a USB-C to USB-A cable and a 3.5 mm to 3.5 mm aux cable.
Design & Comfort
The design is one of the best I’ve seen in affordable headphones and rivals that of much more expensive models. It is quite attractive as the lines flow between the various parts organically and creating an illusion of continuity. That illusion is only broken by the fact that headband actually separates to accommodate different head sizes. I would say that the OneOdio A10 are the best-looking sub-$100 headphones I’ve seen in quite a while. They’re sleek, modern and elegant, with none of the gaudiness found in the OneOdio models I’ve previously reviewed. That’s the kind of evolution and change I like to see!
There are a USB-C port with a status LED for charging as well as the ANC button on the earcup on the left hand side, while the other one hosts the power button, a status LED, volume buttons as well as the 3.5 mm jack input.
Build quality is that which you can expect from low-priced headphones, so it’s not exceptional, but it’s still quite good for the price. There’s no creaking whatsoever while wearing the headphones, but there is some if you bend the headband sideways with some force.
I am notoriously bad at judging comfort due to my overly sensitive scalp, but I find the A10 to be quite uncomfortable due to the headband having very little padding. While the earpads are fine, if a bit warm, the headband definitely would enjoy a bit more padding.
The OneOdio A10 are not great at providing passive isolation, possibly due to the shape and materials of the earcups.
Extra Features & Battery Life
The OneOdio A10 feature the Bluetooth 5.0 standard together with the SBC and AAC codecs. The connection is stable, but it doesn’t offer a wide range.
ANC works decently well, removing a lot of the lower frequencies effectively and making travel on public transport more bearable. The issue is that the lack of passive isolation makes it much less effective than it could be, as moat noise isn’t filtered by the headphones themselves: as a consequence, noise in the midrange and treble region is not affected at all by the presence of the headphones and stays unaltered.
OneOdio boasts up to 50 hours of battery life and my real-world usage got very close to that, sitting at around 45 hours. That’s quite a good achievement, especially considering the price!
Sound & Specs
I tested the OneOdio A10 using my laptop.
OneOdio A10 |
| Frequency response | N/A |
| Impedance | N/A |
| Sensitivity | N/A |
| Bluetooth version | 5.2 |
| Codecs | SBC, AAC, aptX |
Much like other OneOdio headphones, the A10 have a strong V-shaped signature with a lot of bass and emphasised treble. In terms of technicalities, they don’t fare too well: soundstage is very limited in width and especially in depth; imaging is poor, as there is no central position (it just sounds like left and right playing together, with no proper centre); instrument separation is quite limited by the signature.
Bass is overly present, with a large bump in the mid-bass section which has quite steep slopes on both sides. It often sits on top of mids, masking their lower section. It’s rather limited in speed, with transients being slow and then having a long decay; this makes bass not quite detailed nor layered.
Midrange is often recessed and distant. It does have a peak in the upper section, though, which often makes it overly bright, almost to the point of being strident. This is especially noticeable with high-pitched instruments such as trumpets or violins. Just like with bass, transients are not really fast, and detail is limited as well.
Treble is quite emphasised, with multiple peaks that make it aggressive. The peaks are concentrated in the lower and middle regions, so they are often very audible. Detail is very limited, with cymbals often sounding like a mash of sounds rather than like individual hits.
Final Thoughts
The OneOdio A10 are not quite great, despite the low price they are sold at. They do have a nice design and a very long battery life, but they also don’t fare too well in terms of sound quality. The ANC feature would also work quite a bit better if it were supported by stronger passive isolation. All in all, then, I feel like there are better options out there: the 1More SonoFlow cost just $30 more (and you can probably already find them at a similar price), but are an overall better product.
I purchased a set of these A 10 head phones only a few months ago and find that the battery only lasts about 5 hours , from 100 percent … maybe I got a set with a bad battery… very dissatisfied with them…. sound only ok.. nothing to write home about… also the Bluetooth connection range is also poor, above 10 metre’s and they loose connection..I have a set of Mpow 7 with over 3 yes and there every bit as good as one third of the price…
To be honest, i do not understand how you come to this conclusion. Compared to the several headphones twice or triple the price (e.g. Sony WH- Series, Sennheiser, JBL) they are not a bit weaker in sound and quality. In addition, the mechanical joints are made out of metal and will prevent owners from traumatic obsolescence crackings! Overall a real bargain! Some may miss an addition adjustment app, but the base adjustments hint 90% of the daily needs!
Hello Peter,
Please excuse me for my irreverence, but I wrote 879 words to explain how I came to that conclusion. In general, I weigh sound much more than anything else when rating headphones; in this case, although the A10 are built decently well, their sound is simply not good. I am happy you think that Sennheiser headphones are “not a bit [stronger] in sound and quality”, but unfortunately that’s not true – most Sennheiser headphones are verifiably, objectively more accurate and with less acoustic issues. Sony and JBL tend to target the same market as OneOdio, i.e. casual listeners, so they have similar tunings, with the exception that they do not feature fatiguing spikes.