Soundcore AeroFit Pro Fitness Earbuds Review (2024)

Soundcore AeroFit Pro Summary

The AeroFit Pro is an open-ear style earbud that allows you to retain environmental awareness while enjoying your favorite music. They feature long-lasting battery life, quality sound, and an impressive mobile app design that affords even more control over the way you use them.

Check Price

Pros

• Good bass for open-ear design
• Vibrant sound with good clarity
• Comprehensive app control
• Great for runners and athletes

Cons

• Needs EQing for best results
• Open-ear design won’t appeal to everyone
• Prone to fingerprints

Soundcore’s AeroFit series of open-ear earbuds features the standard AeroFit and the premium AeroFit Pro. The benefits of the AeroFit Pro include better battery life and improved bass; in this article, we will closely examine how the AeroFit Pro performs in thorough testing. Are they worth the additional cost, and is it better to go with the standard or the Pro version? Let’s find out.

What’s in the box

• AeroFit Pro Open-Ear Headphones
• Charging Cable
• USB-C Cable
• User Manual

Design & Build Quality

The AeroFit Pro comes in a relatively small charging dock, about 30% larger than the regular AeroFit’s. It features a button at the top, which, when pressed, opens up the dock and exposes the earbuds. The hinge mechanic is excellent and opens smoothly and gently. Two LED indicators next to the earbuds indicate they are firmly and correctly positioned. It takes a few uses before it becomes natural to place the earbuds back in their position as they slide under the plastic and into the corners of the dock. This feels a little unusual at first but quickly becomes second nature.

The earbuds display a beautiful aesthetic with subtle accents of the Soundcore logo running up the earpiece and a primary silver logo near the center. The shades of gray, silver, and black create a sleek-looking earbud that is subtle and stylish.

Like the regular AeroFit, these earbuds are designed to sit comfortably just outside the ear canal and allow environmental sound to remain audible. This provides awareness of one’s surroundings and is particularly useful for those running in areas of traffic, for example. They also afford the ability to communicate with friends while exercising.

An area where the AeroFit outperforms the Pro version is in its waterproofing. The AeroFit offers IPX7 resistance, while the Pro model provides IPX5. In most situations, this difference won’t be noticeable, but it means you do need to be more careful around bodies of open water.

Comfort

The benefit of an open-ear design is its comfort, and the AeroFit Pro excels in this regard. They are suitable for use both with or without glasses (depending on the frame design), and because they sit outside of the ear canal, they cause no discomfort in the ear. While the exact fit will vary between ear sizes, the AeroFit Pro is adaptable and suited to most ear shapes.

Included is an adjustable strap that holds each earbud, allowing you to remove both and have them sit around your neck easily. It can also help increase the overall stability of the earbuds while seated on the ear.

Controls & Connectivity

An excellent feature of these earbuds is that they have the same versatile control capabilities as the traditional AeroFit, allowing you, as the user, to decide how you want each earbud’s controls to work. When using the Soundcore app, one can set the single press and double press options for each earbud, affording you two primary controls on each earbud.

The options for control mapping include Volume (up or down), Next Track, Previous Track, and Play/Pause.

Despite having the same app control options, the way the AeroFit and AeroFit Pro are controlled on the earbuds are vastly different. The AeroFit Pro doesn’t use the same touch control method as the regular model but provides buttons on top of the earbuds.

Touch controls can be challenging to use, especially while running or exercising, so having a dedicated control button helps ensure you perform the correct action every time.

Sound Quality

The AeroFit Pro has a bass-heavy sound with more prominence towards the low-end and lower midrange. This contrasts with the rather bright sound that the regular AeroFit has. They also have more volume than the regular Aerofit, getting impressively loud for an out-of-ear earbud. Testing was done using the custom EQ mode with a flat EQ (+0) on all frequency bands.

Bass

It’s essential to remember that open-ear designs are inherently prone to weakness in the bass range. Because they sit outside the ear canal, they can’t produce the same type of lows that we find with in-ear designs.

Despite this inherent handicap, the Soundcore AeroFit Pro does a good job of providing some depth. The bass could be deeper and more powerful. Still, the AeroFit pro has a better low-end presence than the traditional AeroFit, with some punch present in the upper and mid-bass that comes through, giving electronic music the liveliness that it needs.

Midrange

The midrange frequencies are where the AeroFit Pro does its best work. The midrange is clear and detailed, with good dynamics, making subtle changes in volume easily noticeable. The midrange frequencies are mostly balanced and suitable for most genres of music.

Treble

In the higher frequency ranges, the performance is fairly good. Most of the treble range sounds refined and clear, but there is a narrow band that sounds a little harsh and excessively bright when reproduced. This is something I noticed in one or two tracks. Still, this is a minor blip in an otherwise good-quality performance and can be lessened using the custom EQ.

EQ Modes

Using Soundcore’s mobile app allows you to toggle between preset EQ settings or create your own EQ preset. There are four default presets (Firmware 1.42): Soundcore Signature, Podcast, Treble Booster, and Volume Booster.

Soundcore Signature

This preset sounds great with certain songs but can become chaotic with others. It creates a treble-forward sound that is spacious and wide but can create harsh treble tones that take away from the song. It struggles with aggressive genres where there isn’t a defined separation between guitars and vocals, causing the two to compete.

Podcast

Podcast mode elevated the midrange and treble to push vocals to the front of the mix. It works well for watching streams, watching YouTube videos, and listening to podcasts.

Treble Booster

The Treble Booster setting has a dip in the lower treble and a sharp elevation in the mid and upper treble. The recessed lower treble reduces some of the harshness and increases the finer details of a track. This setting is best suited to genres like jazz and classical but sounds harsh when used on genres like metal or punk.

Volume Booster

The volume booster setting sounds similar to the Soundcore signature option but adds extra elevation to the frequency ranges to increase the overall volume.

Mobile App

The Soundcore mobile app is essential to getting the most out of your earbuds. They provide versatile control over the sound, using either the preset EQ options or the custom graphic EQ setting. The app also allows for control mapping, eliminating the need to remember twelve different types of actions.

In addition to controls and sound quality, the app also provides the ability to toggle on a lesser-known feature that is really cool and useful – the spatial audio settings. You can switch between fixed or head-tracking modes and music or movie modes.

When head tracking is enabled, it will reduce the volume in the earbud in the direction you’re turning towards. This feature is exceptionally useful, improving situational awareness and allowing easier communication with running partners.

To use the fourth EQ preset (Volume Booster), you must ensure you have updated to firmware version 1.42.

Battery Performance

Rated for up to 14 hours of playtime from a single charge and 46 hours using the charging dock, these earbuds have a long-lasting battery life that can provide close to a week’s worth of listening. During testing, we found the estimates accurate and got 12.5 hours of playtime from a single charge at moderate volume levels. It also takes just 2 hours to recharge the earbuds once fully drained.

Conclusion

Overall, the AeroFit Pro performs better than the regular AeroFit and is worth the increase in price if it’s within your budget. The sound quality is noticeably fuller and retains more detail. The larger driver size ensures additional bass, while the long-lasting battery provides lengthy use at a single charge. They’re both aesthetic and functional, providing a reliable solution for open-ear listening.