Anker's Soundcore R60i NC outperforms its price tag by a considerable margin. There are concessions to it being under R1,000, like so-so noise-cancelling performance, but the audio and build quality, app-based features, and ten-hour battery per charge make it an easy recommendation for anyone on a budget.
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Design
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Sound
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Battery
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Features
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Value
We actually didn’t realise the price of the Soundcore R60i NC earbuds until right at the very end of our time with them. After the price point — between R600 and R800, depending where you buy them — became apparent, these in-ears immediately became an excellent choice for… just about everyone.
Generally when you buy headphones of any sort under a grand, you’re looking at serious issues somewhere or another. Soundcore’s R60i NC buds certainly have an issue or two, but none so glaring that you’ll be miffed that you paid for them. The major drawback isn’t even terribly major.
Blue study
Soundcore’s buds come in a fetching pale blue case, with the buds themselves sporting a matching hue. The R60i NC uses a stem design with sometimes-finicky touch controls built into each side. That’s… an impressive addition to sub-R1,000 headphones of any sort, so their fiddly nature is easy to overlook.
The box includes several silicone tip sizes, so they should suit almost every skull. The buds themselves are lightweight enough to almost disappear when in use. Also included in the case is a short charging cable. Given how many USB-C cables are hanging around the average home, you’ll likely never remove it from its place.
The case isn’t as portable as we’d have liked. It’s about an inch of thickness that’ll occupy most of a palm at rest. It’s fairly lightweight, sure, but that bulk will make your pockets sad. It’s a small price to pay for what else is coming, though.
Sound, no fury
Mechanically, the R60i NC buds’ audio is the star feature. There’s more presence in these hyper-affordable buds than we were expecting. 11mm dynamic drivers stuffed into each bud, plus titanium-coated diaphragms, handle audio duties. Soundcore’s default tuning shines in most usages, from music to podcasts to audiobooks, well enough. It’s not perfect across the board, with some tracks offering better stereo presentation than others.
Listeners can expect clean separation between the high end, bass, and treble more often than not. Some tracks will turn to mush at the lower end at high volume, but fewer than we were expecting from R800 buds. The audio quality alone is worth paying for a pair of these, without considering Soundcore’s build quality or any of the other features. And yes, there are other features.
One of these is semi-advanced noise cancelling. The R60i NC’s hear-through mode is clear, but with no amplification. While noise cancelling is present, including an adaptive option, it’s not quite up to the standards of a pair of buds five times the price. Shocking, we know. That said, it works well enough to mask most of the noise in your typical office. There are some oddities, particularly with higher tones creeping through, but at least there’s no high-pressure sensation as the buds’ microphones overcompensate.
You need the app
One of the headline features is live translation between more than a hundred languages. To use this, you’ll need the Soundcore app, which handles the processing and translation. Technically, you don’t even need the earbuds to access this function, since there’s also face-to-face translation that’ll let you take turns with your phone’s mic and speaker to get by in a foreign land. But the real-time version is… an interesting experience.
There’s some catch-up lag as the R60i NC’s microphones assess your speaker and the offsite translation is played back through the buds. It’ll work fine for a one-on-one conversation (or an episode of unsubbed Japanese anime, assuming you can handle the mental overhead), but put it in a crowded area and it’ll translate everything it hears. Soundcore reckons you should keep your phone within 30cm of a speaker, but it’s good for a couple of metres in the right conditions.
There are even a couple of South African languages supported, besides English. Afrikaans and Zulu are options for translation, but with varying degrees of success. Accuracy isn’t perfect, but it’s enough to get by with something like communication taking place. You will need a functional internet connection for this to work, however.
Soundcore R60i NC verdict
For less than a thousand bucks, you’re getting a substantial portion of what you get from much more expensive headphones. That’s not going to make other brands happy, but listeners on a budget will feel very well taken care of. There are niggles and problems, sure, but they’re less glaring than you might expect at this price. That makes the Soundcore R60i NC easy to recommend, even if the ‘NC’ portion of this package isn’t explicitly high-end. That’s… to be expected. Everything else is handled well enough that Soundcore could have charged a fair amount more for these and still have been safe. But we won’t tell them that if you don’t.
