Soundcore Anker Life A2 NC Review

The Anker Life A2 NC comes during a hot hit for its makers. Anker has hurled numerous pairs of true wireless earbuds lately, including the flagship Liberty Air 2 Pro, and with the Life, A2 NC captures active noise cancellation (ANC) at a fraction of the cost.

The cause why you haven’t overheard much about it is because Anker has pickled the Life A2 NC as some sort of tacit release. Yes, it goes to show that we’ve informed our radar and that we get a chance to check out these bud budgets to see if they deserve to be included in our list of the biggest cheap wireless earbuds and the best noise-canceling headphones. And after finishing our Anker Life A2 review, we have the answer: No.

• Best wireless earbuds overall
• More of the most effective wireless headphones

Anker Life A2 Review – Design and Luxury

In terms of design, the Anker Life A2 NC may be a reduced version of the Liberty 2 Pro, from the shape to the touch panel scale. Dark black/silver coloring and matte finish are the theme with previous Anker releases and give these budget buds a surprisingly luxurious appearance. IPX5 safeguard provides sweat and water resistance.

Touch controls and digital assistant

The Life A2 NC comes with touch controls, although it only works half the time and is limited to double-tap and hold gestures. You may use it slowly to determine what command you want to assign to each bud. On-ear detection is also lost, meaning you won’t be able to pause music automatically when you start your buds. At least you get a complete set of controls to choose from, including playback, call management, voice assistant, listening mode, and volume.

Anker Life A2 NC Review with Active Noise Cancellation

There are three different ANC modes to use: Transport, Indoor, and Outdoor. Each is designed to meet ambient noise at a different level, but none leaves a lasting imprint. In fact, I’m assuming the modes aren’t set correctly, because the descriptions in one are best applied to the other. Transport is the most useable, and while it doesn’t do the simplest job of turning off low frequencies, it does better than outdoors for calming city noise. The outdoors does the indoor work, but it is ineffective as I can still hear my family talking softly around my baby. It’s useless indoors.

Ambient sound is also unimpressive, for both modes (full transparent and vocal) that have the same performance, and neither of them is good. It’s hard to hear someone call you for something while listening to music at mid-volume, nor can you communicate without having to pause the playback. I’m not sure why the microphone can recognize my vocals well but have to fight with external sound.

Anker Life A2 NC Review – Sound Quality

The Anker Soundcore Life A2 NC is not the best balanced-sound model in Anker’s wireless earbuds. By the way, it provides outperforms other competitors in this price tag under $100 wireless earbuds. You should not have too high expectations, the mids and highs are not outstanding as they should be. However; you can manually adjust audio as your favorite vie EQs in the companion app (more on that in the next section).

Compare Anker Life A2 to Other Affordable Wireless Earbuds

Special apps and features – Great under $80

The Life A1 is one of the few cheap Anker models, which supports the Soundcore app. However; you do not have access to all the features as found in some of the brand’s premium offerings. However, there are still some improvements to the user experience.

Thanks to customizable EQ, you can set your own audio profile. The Anker Life A2 NC provides up to 22 preset EQs, which are designed for specific music genres and content. All of these presets are worth testing to find a preset that fits each genre of music. But in my favorite, Bass Booster and Hip-Hop are handy for the hip-hop genre. And I think Spoken Word or Podcast is ideal for commentary clips or movies.

With the app, you can toggle for Ambient Sound and control customization, including acknowledging the battery level on each earbud. On the top right is the ellipsis that presses to reveal a few extra features, including firmware updates, and also a toggle for Touch Tone. Setting it to automatically power off allows the buds to go to sleep modes when not active and is also available in the app too. If you are one who likes ascertaining independent artists and music, the LÜM music service is available on the main screen as well.

Some features are missing on these wireless earbuds under $100, which are the HearID and Tip Fit Test. Normally, HearID is the feature for their more expensive earbuds and is acceptable. But I don’t understand why the Tip Fip Test is not available in Life A2.

Another feature that completely missing from the app, is Find My Buds. So I hope that Anker will consider adding the Find My Buds to the Life A2 NC in the future.

Battery life and charging case

7 hours is a satisfying playtime for me. Moreover, the charging case offers up to 35 hours on fully charged, or six times additional charges. Once compared to other Anker models like Liberty Air 2 or Liberty 2 Pro, the Life A2 NC does better in this regard due to they can just 28 hours and 32 hours respectively.

But something that the Air 2 and 2 Pro is superior to the Life A2 NC is supporting the wireless charge. Both are supportive, but Life A2 NC is not. When it comes to fast charging, it can get an additional 1.5 hours when charging for 10 minutes, while the two other wireless earbuds (Air 2 and 2 Pro) get up to 2 hours for a charge of 10 minutes.

Call quality and connectivity

The call quality and video conferencing are good, loud, and crisp. But for use, the buds outdoors are not so good, my uncle complained about the muffled sound and background noise interrupting my voice. Besides, the mics have poor wind resistance.

The connectivity is so great and doubtfully the strongest feature of the Life A2 NC. The initial pairing process is straightforward and re-pairing to known devices can be done instantly. Once Bluetooth is activated, there’s always a button at the bottom of the charging case to manually activate the pairing mode.

The working range is 10 meters, which makes walking and listening to music at home that is more convenient. Besides, you can single buds without worrying about connection issues although multipoint technology is not available.

Anker Soundcore Life A2 NC Review – Pros & Con

Anker Life A2 Review – Final Verdict

Strong bass and several presets of EQ for sound customization and stable connection to other devices across all platforms with Bluetooth, that is all the great things of Life A2 NC, cheap wireless earbuds.

If you do not really want to use the ANC, the Anker SoundCore Life A1 is one alternative wireless earbuds that are cheaper. It offer similar performance, but is better than in term of IPX7 water resistance and support wireless charging.

Where to buy Anker Life A2 NC

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