The 1MORE Evo earbuds are certainly aiming high, but did they actually make the shot? They certainly hit more marks than they miss.
Design and Fit
While the overall look of an earbud isn’t something we generally pay much attention to, it’s worth mentioning here. The 1MORE Evo are available in either black or white, and each finish is equally impressive. We’re reviewing the black model, with gold highlights and a mirrored finish that is truly impressive in person.
Fit is everything when it comes to wireless earbuds, whether you’re concerned about quality audio, active noise cancellation (ANC), or you just don’t want to lose them on a run. Fortunately, the 1MORE Evo ship with five sets of tips—one preinstalled and four extras—which let you fine tune a perfect fit.
In my case, the tips that were preinstalled on the Evo earbuds fit perfectly. During testing, I used the 1MORE Evo as if they were my only earbuds, and this meant wearing them for multiple hours a day. Even though I did take multiple breaks from wearing them every day, I never found them growing uncomfortable or irritating my ears.
The 1MORE Evo aren’t impervious to weather, but they are IPX4 rated. This means that if you want to wear them for a run in the rain, you should be fine. Just don’t dunk them in your morning coffee or throw them into your washing machine.
Battery Life and Charging Case
As with the earbuds themselves, the charging case that comes with the 1MORE Evo also looks and feels like a premium product. The gold-inlaid 1MORE logo on top and the nonslip rubber on the bottom makes me feel like I’m dealing with earbuds on par with the Apple’s AirPods Pro or the Sony WF-1000XM4, rather than a less costly product.
Despite the 450 mAh battery packed inside, the case isn’t overly heavy, and it feels like it should fit into most pockets fine. It also keeps a strong hold on the earbuds once they’re tucked inside. I didn’t have any trouble removing the earbuds, but you shouldn’t have to worry about them falling out.
1MORE estimates the Evo can run up to eight hours on a single charge. This is assuming low volume, no noise cancellation, and using one of the more efficient codecs (more on this later).
Realistically, if you’re using these earbuds as they’re meant to be used, with the higher quality LDAC codec and adaptive noise cancellation turned on, that number shrinks. In my testing, I found roughly five and a half hours was what I could reasonably expect before I needed a charge.
That said, in normal use, I never ended up running down the battery. The good news is that if you do, you can charge the buds quickly. Just 15 minutes in the case gets you a few more hours of listening time.
Getting Started With the 1MORE MUSIC App
Even if you don’t plan to use the 1MORE Evo with your phone all that often, it’s worth pairing the earbuds and installing the 1MORE MUSIC app (available for iPhone and Android). Not only does this let you manage various settings, but it also lets you update the earbuds’ firmware, which can be very handy.
As a matter of fact, updating the firmware was one of the first things I did after taking the 1MORE Evo out of the box. At launch, the earbuds used SoundID profiling to let you customize the listening experience but didn’t offer a simple EQ setting. After updating the firmware to the latest version (version 1.0.2 at the time of this writing), you can finally use either custom EQ settings or choose from a few presets.
In addition to EQ, you can also use the 1MORE MUSIC app to switch between the various modes of noise cancellation or turn on transparency mode. In the app menus, you can also enable Dual-Device Connection to connect to multiple devices simultaneously. There’s even a Smart Burn-In option, for those who believe in burning in their in-ears for maximum audio quality.
Unfortunately, the app is buggy. There are some neat features like Soothing Sounds—a feature that plays relaxing nature sounds—that just plain doesn’t work. I also couldn’t test the SoundID feature at all, though now that the app has EQ settings, this is less of a problem.
Sound Quality
Part of the reason Bluetooth headphones—especially older models—failed to catch on with audiophiles is that the early codecs couldn’t carry enough data across Bluetooth’s limited bandwidth for high-fidelity sound. Recently, more advanced codecs like Sony’s LDAC have made hi-res audio a more attainable goal in Bluetooth headphones.
The 1MORE Evo rely on LDAC for its hi-res audio, but this isn’t supported everywhere. If you use an iPhone, iPad, or any other Apple device for playback, you’re going to be stuck with Apple’s AAC codec, while unsupported Android phones fall back to SBC.
In testing the 1MORE Evo, I used my iPhone and Mac to test the headphones in less-than-ideal conditions. For LDAC, I turned not to an Android phone, but to my Sony Walkman NW-A35 digital audio player, filled with hi-res audio files. For my impressions, I used the Studio EQ setting, which is flat and gives a good overall impression of the earbuds’ sound.
1MORE has long been a proponent of combining multiple drivers inside earbuds. In this case, the 1MORE Evo use a hybrid driver system that pairs 10 mm dynamic drivers for the low end with balanced armature drivers for high-end detail.
The bass is slightly boosted by default, but compared to many other earbuds, this is rather tame. Still, Beauty Pill’s “Exit Without Saving” reveals the depth found in the low end of the 1MORE Evo without becoming muddy or overtaking the lower midrange.
Bad Snacks’ “Thursday Night (Alien Fight)” uses electric bass guitar along with otherwise electronic-sounding instrumentation, and here that bass lives in the lower midrange, carrying a fantastic growl. While “Superbloom” by The Bronx doesn’t sound as smooth as it could, here the upper midrange suits the ragged sound of the guitars.
I never found the high end to be overly strident, and any sibilance that I encountered was just as often due to a poor recording or mix as it was any fault of the 1MORE.
Certain EQ settings could make the highs sound overly crisp, but this could be fixed by manually adjusting EQ or choosing another preset. As a nice touch, one of the included EQ settings is “Podcast,” which is a welcome setting for anyone who has had to deal with overly boomy-sounding podcasts on earbuds.
The built-in microphones used for calls aren’t much to write home about. They don’t sound fantastic, but it certainly isn’t bad. For calls, it seems to pick up equally well indoors or outdoors, which is handy.
Indoor Microphone Audio Sample
Outdoor Microphone Audio Sample
Noise Cancellation
The 1MORE Evo use a six-mic array for noise cancellation, with three mics placed in each earbud. These are estimated by 1MORE to block around 42 dB of noise, though this is highly dependent on a few factors like how well they fit and the type of noise you’re trying to block.
With a good fit and the ANC set to Strong in the 1MORE app, the Evo easily blocked out a loud TV in the same room. If I wasn’t playing anything back, I could slightly hear the higher frequencies. Once I started playing music at a moderate volume, I couldn’t hear the TV at all.
When I tried with a podcast, using the Podcast EQ setting, the noise cancellation worked almost as well, but I could still make out some details. When I switched to Adaptive, I didn’t notice any change, so in that case, it was choosing the same settings as the Strong option.
The Adaptive noise cancellation isn’t easy to test, but the WNR (wind noise reduction) mode was. Walking outside on a day with gusts of around 15 mph, I activated this mode and could immediately hear the podcast I was listening to much better.
The Transparency mode, which lets outside sound in through the built-in mics, also works very well. It isn’t quite as magical as the same mode in Apple’s AirPods Pro, but it gets pretty close.
Should You Buy the 1MORE EVO?
The world of mid-range in-ears is incredibly crowded with worthy models, and that can make finding which models to recommend difficult. In this case, it’s quite a bit easier.
The 1MORE Evo offer features and performance that we typically expect to see in higher-end earbuds like the Sennheiser MOMENTUM True Wireless 3. The major difference, sonic signatures aside, is that the 1MORE Evo are significantly cheaper than the Sennheiser offering and have better noise cancellation.
It’s not that the 1MORE Evo earbuds are without faults: the app is buggy and the lack of aptX codecs may be a concern for some Android users, but they do far more right than they do wrong. If you’re looking for a higher fidelity wireless experience for streaming lossless audio, and your playback device supports LDAC, these are a fantastic option for the price.
