Anker Soundcore Space A40 Truly Wireless Headphones Review

The Anker Soundcore Space A40 look somewhat similar in design to the Anker Soundcore Life Dot 2 Truly Wireless. They have a stemless bud design with a glossy frame and a semi-matte touch-sensitive surface. The touch surface also has the manufacturer's logo, and these headphones come in three color variants: 'Black', 'White', and 'Blue'.

These headphones have a comfortable in-ear fit. They don't have as deep of a fit as other headphones from this manufacturer, like the Anker Soundcore Life Dot 2 Truly Wireless. They also feel lightweight, and using the controls doesn't push the buds deeper into your ear. However, they can cause a plunging feeling when you're putting them in for the first time.

These buds have good controls. There's a touch-sensitive surface on each bud, but they aren't the most intuitive to use since the layout splits controls on each bud. Luckily, you can use the companion app to remap the controls to your liking, and you can even add volume controls without losing other commands. There are also audible chimes while cycling between ANC on, normal mode, and transparency mode. There are tones available for tap feedback too, but you'll have to activate this via the companion app.

On the left bud:

• Double tap: Skips to the next track.

On the right bud:

• Single tap: Plays and pauses audio.

On either bud:

• Double tap: Answers and ends calls.
• Tap and hold for two seconds: Switch between ANC on, transparency mode, which allows you to hear your surroundings without taking out your earbuds, and normal mode.

Like most in-ears, these headphones are very portable. They're small enough to fit into most pockets or bags without an issue.

The carrying case feels good and sturdy. It's mostly made of matte plastic on the outside and glossy plastic inside the case. There are three LED lights at the front of the case to indicate the battery charge and a reset/pairing button on the back of the base.

The build quality is good. They're mostly made of plastic, but the touch-sensitive surface feels a little cheap in comparison to the rest of the body. The buds are certified IPX4 for resistance against water splashes, and they come with several different tip sizes to help you get the best fit.

These in-ears are decently stable, although they lack stability fins to ensure a truly stable fit. They'll stay in place if you're listening to audio at your desk or on the couch, but talking and chewing can break the ear tips' seal, causing the buds to wiggle around. If you wear them during moderate to intense physical activity, they may fall out.

• Anker Soundcore Space A40 headphones
• Charging case
• 5x ear tips
• USB-A to USB-C charging cable
• Quick start guide

The Anker Soundcore Space A40 have a warm sound profile. Although they lack thump and rumble, they have a bit of extra high-bass to add warmth to vocals and instruments. A dip in the treble range means that vocals and instruments lack detail and clarity. Luckily, if you prefer a different sound, their companion app offers a graphic EQ and presets to help you customize their sound to your liking.

The frequency response consistency is outstanding. Once you achieve a good fit using the included ear tips, you'll experience consistent audio delivery each time you use them.

These headphones have great bass accuracy. The response is tilted, resulting in an underemphasis of low to mid-bass. Mixes lack thump and rumble, as well as punch and kick. However, the response gets close to neutral in the high-bass range, which helps add warmth and boom back into your mix.

The Anker Soundcore Space A40 have great mid accuracy. Like the bass, the mid response is tilted. While the low-mids are flat and neutral, which results in present vocals and instruments, the mid to high-mid is rolled off. It nudges vocals and instruments to the back of the mix as well as weakens them.

The treble accuracy is mediocre. The response is mostly underemphasized, resulting in very veiled vocals and instruments as well as dull sibilants like cymbals. In songs like Rock Me Amadeus by Falco, hi-hats in the first verse sound a bit lispy, while the lead singer's voice lacks detail.

The peaks and dips performance is good. There's a peak in the low-mid, which is more prominent in the left driver and muddies vocals and instruments. A dip in the low-treble veils the upper harmonics of vocals and lead instruments. A significant peak in the mid-treble turns sibilants like cymbals piercing.

The imaging performance is outstanding. Generally, most Anker headphones have well-matched drivers, which can indicate quality control and ergonomics. Earbuds and in-ears also tend to be better matched than their over-ear counterparts. Our unit's L/R drivers are also well-matched when it comes to group delay, phase, amplitude, and frequency response, which is important for the accurate placement of objects like voices in the stereo image. While there are a couple of minor peaks in the phase response's low to mid-mid, it's unlikely that you'll notice it with real-life content.

The passive soundstage performance is bad. However, that's to be expected from in-ears as their design bypasses your outer ear. To create an immersive soundstage, the outer ear has to be activated by sound resonances. As a result, their soundstage sounds closed-off, unnatural, small, and as if sound is coming from inside your head rather than from speakers placed in the room around you.

The Anker Soundcore Space A40's weighted harmonic distortion performance is good. There's a peak in the low-treble range, which is more noticeable in the right driver at moderate and high volumes. However, this peak is hard to hear with real-life content. The rest of the response falls within good levels, resulting in mostly clear and pure audio reproduction.

These are the settings used to test these in-ears. Our results are only valid when using them with these settings.

The noise isolation performance is outstanding. Unlike other budget-friendly picks like the Nothing Ear (stick) Truly Wireless, these buds have an adaptive ANC system, which means they automatically adjust to the noise in your environment. If you prefer, you can manually set the amount of ANC between 'Low', 'Medium', and 'High'. That said, the adaptive ANC can block out slightly more bass-range noise when it recognizes a 'High' noise environment than when the ANC is manually set to 'Strong'. You can see a comparison between these modes here. The adaptive ANC can block out the low rumble of bus engines. It also cuts down ambient chatter as well as the high-pitched hum of AC units well.

The leakage performance is excellent. Leakage is mostly concentrated in the treble range and sounds thin. That said, if you're listening to audio at high volumes, it's unlikely that others around you will hear it.

The integrated mic's recording quality is poor. Your voice sounds far away and sibilant. Our unit's right earbud also enters a feedback loop when using the mic, resulting in your own voice playing quietly by the right bud. The mic also doesn't do a very good job when connected to a phone. You can hear the recorded speech file here.

The integrated mic has a satisfactory noise handling performance. You shouldn't encounter issues being understood clearly in a moderately noisy environment. However, if you're taking calls from somewhere like a busy street with a lot of loud noises, your voice can get lost in the sound, making it more difficult for others to hear you clearly.

The battery performance is good. The manufacturer advertises them to have 10 hours continuously, and with the ANC on, we measured eight hours using LDAC codec. When using SBC codec, which is the default Bluetooth codec, and with ANC on, we measured over nine hours. Turning the ANC off, but still using SBC codec also results in over ten and a half hours of battery life. Keep in mind that battery life can also vary depending on usage. If you need a top-up, their carrying case supplies an additional four charges, which is handy in a pinch. They also have an auto-off timer, which helps conserve battery life when not in use, and you can use one bud while the other charges.

The Anker Soundcore app is great. You can see a video of how it works here. This app allows you to change your ANC settings as well as switch between manual and adaptive ANC, and customize the transparency mode. You can add a volume limiter, remap controls, and update the firmware. You can even customize their sound profile using their companion app's graphic EQ and presets, as well as switch to LDAC codec.

The Anker Soundcore Space A40 have great Bluetooth connectivity. They support multi-device pairing, meaning you can connect your headphones to two devices at a time. While they have high latency on PCs, their latency is lower on iOS and Android devices, ensuring your audio and visuals stay in sync. These headphones also support LDAC, which is Sony's proprietary hi-res codec. However, you need to use compatible audio to benefit from this codec, and you can only connect to one device at a time. These buds have a 'Game Mode' too, which can help lower latency within good values for streaming video. Their latency on Android is lower using this mode, which is good if you're mobile gaming, but their PC latency stays fairly similar to their default latency. Their iOS latency is higher when using this mode too, but it still falls within good values. That said, since we use Youtube to measure latency on this device, this result may be due to the app's own latency compensation as we were able to measure lower latency on iOS when the 'Game Mode' is off.

These headphones come with a USB-A to USB-C cable for recharging the case.

These headphones can connect to Bluetooth-enabled PCs with full audio and mic compatibility. That said, you can't connect these headphones to your PC in any other way.

The Anker Soundcore Space A40 come with a carrying case that has a USB-C input for the charging cable. It supports Qi Wireless charging too. However, the case has no other inputs.