Soundcore X10 Sport Review
Get in shape with the help of the X10 Sport
Verdict
The Soundcore X10 are truly wireless sports earbuds fit for most exercise, offering a reliably secure fit, powerful bass-first sound with an EQ to adjust things and solid battery life for the price. If you don’t want to spend more than £100/$100 on a set of truly wireless earbuds that are fit for workouts, these are a very solid choice.
Pros
- Powerful, bass-heavy sound
- Physical controls
- EQ settings included
Cons
- Awkward to put away inside charging case
- ANC not best in class
- Buttons are a bit stiff
Key Features
- IPX7Waterproof rating protects against water/liquids
- Battery32 hours of endurance
Introduction
The Soundcore X10 Sport are truly wireless earbuds built for exercise that along with a design that’s fit to fend off sweat and rain, promises powerful bassy sound, easy to use controls and plenty of battery life to get you through plenty of workout time.
You’re also getting some neat extras here too like active noise cancellation, 22 EQ presets and the ability to tinker with the control setup.
Priced at under £100 / $100, the X10 Sport represents a potentially very good value buy for runners, cyclists and gym lovers, but do they deliver?
Availability
- UKRRP: £89.99
- USARRP: $79.99
- EuropeRRP: €99.99
- CanadaRRP: CA$119.99
- AustraliaRRP: AU$129.99
The Soundcore X10 Sport is available to buy now from the Soundcore website for £89.99 / $79.99 putting in the pricing realms of truly wireless sport earbuds like the Adidas Z.N.E. 01 and JBL Reflect Flow Pro.
Design
- Comes in black and oat white colours
- Built-in physical controls
- IPX7 water resistance rating
The X10 Sport uses an ear hook design that isn’t your typical earhook bud look. When you open the lid on the case they’re held inside of, the rubbery earhook sits coiled around the buds. When you take them out, you lift the hooks over the buds before sticking the bud part in the ear and the hook around your ear.
It’s a design that makes them a touch fiddly to quickly put back in the case, but when they’re out and on, they’re primed to stay put. I’ve run with and without swimming caps, been in the gym for indoor rowing and HIIT sessions and these buds do stay put. They’re comfortable to wear and simply don’t feel heavy on the ears.
I will say that having chucked on some glasses to work out with, those ear hooks compete for space around the ears, which could cause some issues with fit for some.
While you can’t change the hooks, there’s plenty of different sized eartips to pick from, going from extra small to extra large, so most should find the ideal pair to seal that audio in and make sure those buds don’t budge.
The buds carry an IPX7-rated certification, which means it can technically survive being dipped in water up to one metre depth for 30 minutes. In reality, you’ve got something fit to hold up against sweat and rain, giving you strong protection against some moisture.
The charging case they live in is reasonably pocket-friendly sized, though has a bit of a slippery finish to it. The button used to open it up doubles up as a display to indicate battery and pairing status with the pairing button tucked around the back. There’s a USB-C charging port around back.
On the top of both buds is a single physical button, which you can press once, twice or hold for two seconds to play/pause audio, adjust volume, turn on ANC and handle calls respectively when the headphones are in stereo mode. When you go into mono mode you can play/pause audio, end a call and activate Siri or other smartphone assistants.
Physical controls are always more favourable if you’re planning to use them for more energetic workouts and on the whole, the X10’s controls work well in that scenario. They could do with being slightly bigger and felt a bit on the stiff side. It definitely pays to play around with how the controls are assigned, which you can do inside of the Soundcore companion app.
Features
- Bluetooth 5.2 with 10m/33ft range
- Up to 8 hours battery life/6 hours with ANC
I used the active noise cancellation in the gym and it was pretty effective in blocking out sounds around me; however, heading outdoors was more challenging. I could still hear that hum of traffic and the wind wasn’t entirely blocked out. There’s a wind noise reduction feature you can turn on inside of the app, but it clearly doesn’t apply when you’re listening to music.
When taking calls, there are six microphones on board that promise clear call quality and block background noise. This is where that wind noise reduction feature comes into play, and it does offer some improvement in blocking out the wind and delivering reasonably clear call quality.
When it comes to battery life, the X10 Sport promises eight hours without ANC in use. When ANC is enabled that drops down a couple of hours. Listening volume also impacts on the kind of battery volume you can enjoy. A 30-minute row with the battery at 100% in ANC mode at reasonably loud volume and the battery dropped to 70%, a drop off of 30%.
With a fully charged case, you’re getting a total of 32 hours and despite the lack of a desirable quick charge feature, the battery performance overall holds up well for a good week of use if you’re training with them for 1-2 hours on a regular basis.
Sound Quality
- 10mm dynamic drivers
- Soundcore app with EQ
Like a lot of Soundcore buds, the X10 prioritises bass and power, but spend some time playing around with the EQ settings in the companion app and you can achieve a more rewarding sound for those who don’t need that thudding bass.
The Sport packs 10mm dynamic drivers and also uses Soundcore’s own proprietary BassUp technology, which is designed to analyse sound in real-time to intensify bass performance. It certainly didn’t disappoint on that front. Even at moderate volumes, that warmth is pleasing as opposed to overpowering. You’re not getting buttery smooth mids or sparkling treble performance, but it’s very good overall and these sound surprisingly well-rounded for sports earbuds.
If you want to fine tune things more, there’s a selection of EQ presets inside of the companion app along with a manual EQ option. There’s a good array of presets that includes Soundcore’s own Signature EQ that ramps up the bass or ones better suited to podcasts and spoken word. If the presets don’t do it for you, there’s an option to create your own.
There’s more in the pretty slick-looking app, with some guided breathing features to use pre-workout or if you need a relaxing moment in your day. It’s a nice extra to add into the mix.
You also have some additional listening modes with both noise cancellation and transparency modes available as features. They’re both tagged as Beta features and while they might not be in fully fledged status, I found the ANC and transparency modes performed okay, with the transparency mode the more impressive of the two.
Latest deals
Should you buy it?
You want truly wireless sports earbuds with big, bassy sound. These are buds that deliver a sizable thud of bass, but thankfully, it doesn’t overpower the mids and treble performance here.
You want sports earbuds with great ANC support. Drowning out the outside world isn’t a strength for these buds, so if that’s a priority for you, you’ll need to pay more for top ANC skills.
Final Thoughts
The Soundcore Sport X10 ticks all the key boxes to be a very good pair of truly wireless sports earbuds. They offer a secure and comfortable fit, strong sound with room to customise and offer solid battery life too. ANC and transparency modes aren’t best in class, but they offer some useful added extras. It’s available at a good price and has the level of performance that makes them a good buy.
How we test
We test every headphones we review thoroughly over an extended period of time. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly. We’ll always tell you what we find. We never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
Tested with real world use
Tested for more than a week
You might like…
FAQs
There’s no support for wireless charging with these wireless earphones.
The X10 Sport don’t feature any touch controls, with physical buttons located on their side.
You can listen to music via SBC and AAC Bluetooth codecs on this wireless earphone.
Full specs
Sustainability
Trusted Reviews’ holds the fact that global warming is not a myth as a core value and will continuously endeavour to help protect our planet from harm in its business practices.
As part of this mission, whenever we review a product we send the company a series of questions to help us gauge and make transparent the impact the device has on the environment.
We currently haven’t received answers to the questions on this product, but will update this page the moment we do. You can see a detailed breakdown of the questions we ask and why in our sustainability info page.
Jargon buster
ANC
ANC (Active Noise Cancellation) uses an array of microphones in a headphone to detect the frequency of the sound coming at the listener, with the ANC chip creating an inverse wave (i.e. opposing sound) to suppress any unwanted external noises.Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a method of wireless transmission that allows for the exchange of data between devices over short distances.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
