1MORE ComfoBuds Pro review: Powerful sound at a budget price

The 1MORE ComfoBuds Pro find their place among an ever-growing range of affordable true wireless earbuds as one of San Diego-based 1MORE’s most fully-featured offerings.

Retailing for just £70, they’re a value-for-money package sporting wear detection and active noise cancellation, and while the latter falls short of class-leading, it stands up well to other options in the ComfoBuds Pro’s price bracket.

The long-stemmed design won’t be for everyone and there’s no way to tweak the EQ, but the 1MORE ComfoBuds offer some of the best sound quality you can get for under £100, making them a strong choice for those on a budget.

1MORE ComfoBuds Pro review: What do you get for the money?

The ComfoBuds Pro operate over Bluetooth 5.0 and support the SBC and AAC codecs. They’re rated IPX4 for waterproofing, so can’t be fully submerged but will hold up perfectly well against rain and sweat.

The buds take the form of elongated teardrops, with tapered stems that extend down and out over your earlobes. Touch-control panels are located along the stems, allowing you to play/pause audio, hail your voice assistant and cycle through listening modes. If you aren’t a fan of the standard setup, you can customise your own control scheme with the 1MORE Music App.

The ComfoBuds Pro are available in three colours – Aurora Blue, Mica White and Titanium Black. Each colour is accented with subtle hints of red, creating a sleek, slightly futuristic aesthetic. This is further reinforced by the status LEDs at the tips of the stems that flash between blue and red when the buds are pairing.

Four pairs of silicone eartips are included to help you find a secure and comfortable fit but in my experience at least, they only succeed in one of these areas. The ComfoBuds Pro are supremely comfortable – and provide a decent level of passive noise cancellation – but the fit isn’t as stable as it could be. A vigorous shake of the head managed to send one of the buds flying out of my ear, which is not ideal if you plan on wearing them in the gym or while out running.

Despite needing to house fairly large earbuds, the pill-shaped case is relatively petite. The buds can be a little tricky to get out, however. 1MORE recommends pressing on the tip of the stem to leverage the rest free but this is a little fiddly and can’t really be done one-handed. If you’re concerned about the case getting scratched, a protective rubber cover and silky carrying pouch are also included in the box.

Thankfully, the size of the case doesn’t come at the expense of battery life. The earbuds offer roughly eight hours of playtime, with a further 20 in the case (these figures drop to six in-ear and 14 in the case with ANC enabled). Wireless charging isn’t supported but fast charging is, with up to two hours of playback produced from just 15 minutes on charge.

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1MORE ComfoBuds Pro review: What do they sound like?

Audio comes courtesy of 13.4mm dynamic drivers and while bigger doesn’t automatically mean better, you can immediately feel the power kicked out by these things. It’s not often that I feel the need to lower the volume from the standard safe listening level, but I found myself reaching for that volume button a few times during testing.

While they pack a real punch at higher volumes, the ComfoBuds Pro also handle subtle dynamic shifts gamely. Sonic peaks and troughs in tracks are successfully conveyed and lend impact to crescendos. Van Halen’s “Panama”, for instance, nearly blew my eardrums out with the opening guitar riff, before simmering down to the midway interlude and, finally, after a steady build-up of revving engines, crashing out with a bombastic finale.

A reasonably wide soundstage keeps more raucous notes from flattening those around them and effective instrument separation means that complex pieces don’t dissolve into a garbled mess. While the bass isn’t all that noteworthy – it’s not weak, just unremarkable – the well-detailed mids and crisp, clean trebles ensured my hair metal playlist was a highly enjoyable listen. It’s a shame that high-resolution codecs such as LDAC aren’t supported, but it’s hard to complain given the quality of audio you’re getting for the money.

If, like me, you don’t want external sound spoiling your enjoyment of the dulcet tones of Alice Cooper or David Lee Roth, a long press on either earbud will switch to the active noise cancellation mode. The ANC will be on its strongest setting by default – if you want to change to the milder version or wind resistance mode, you’ll need to jump into the app. All of these work how you’d expect, with the strong mode naturally being the most effective. With it activated, a roaring road quickly dulled to a quiet growl and I only knew my kettle had boiled when I saw the steam.

Less effective is the transparency “Pass-through” mode. This filters in ambient sound to give you a greater sense of your surroundings, which is especially useful if you’re in the office or walking by a busy road. You’ll be able to hear boss talking to you from across the desk or an angry motorist testing their horn but sadly the ComfoBuds Pro don’t achieve the same level of clarity offered by the likes of Creative’s Outlier Air V3 or the LG Tone Free FP8.

Given that the ComfoBuds Pro features wear detection – which automatically pauses your audio when you remove an earbud and plays when you put it back in – the lacklustre ambient mode feels largely irrelevant. Wear detection works very well, pausing very quickly when a bud is removed and resuming playback even quicker when it’s back in your ear.

1MORE ComfoBuds Pro review: What could be improved?

First up, the design won’t be for everyone. The tapered stems are attractive enough, but they’re quite a bit larger than most other earbuds in this style. You’re not going to look ridiculous wearing them, but anybody who prefers a more discreet look will likely want to avoid the ComfoBuds Pro.

Equally, the stems don’t feel like the wisest placement for the touch controls – finding the right spot can be fiddly, and even the lightest of taps threaten to leverage the buds out of their already precarious perch in your ear. The main shell that the stems extend from feels like a more natural place to tap and would help to reinforce the in-ear stability, rather than threaten it.

The most bizarre issue the ComfoBuds Pro suffer from is that EQ settings are limited to the Aurora Blue model. As we received the Titanium Black for review, I can’t comment on how the various presets sound, only the curious choice to omit EQ options from the other two colours.

As mentioned, the standard tuning is impressive enough that this isn’t a dealbreaker, but when similarly priced earbuds like the Creative Outlier Air V3 and the Anker SoundCore Life P3 offer customisable EQ settings, its omission here is a little jarring.

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1MORE ComfoBuds Pro review: Should you buy them?

Despite a slightly unwieldy design, the ComfoBuds Pro are extremely competent true wireless earbuds that deliver a range of useful and effective features. They’re better value than ever thanks to a recent price drop and are some of the best-sounding earbuds in their price range.

The lack of high-resolution codec support and a customisable EQ may put some people off, and as mentioned, the stability of the fit isn’t ideal for runners or gym-goers. For everyone else, however, there are few options under £100 that offer audio quality this good coupled with a broad range of features.