Soundcore Space 2 review

If you’re after a pair of wireless headphones for around £150 / $150 / AU$200, your choices are roughly as follows.

You’ve got the excellent Austrian Audio Hi-X25BT if you don’t need noise cancelling, or you could go for the four-star Philips TAH8000E if you want ANC powers and don’t mind taking a bit of a hit on the sound side. Apart from that, it’s pretty slim pickings in what appears to be a strange market hinterland between budget-friendly cans and their premium, plus-£300/$300 counterparts. Or, you could spend a good deal less and buy a pair of our budget favourites, the Sony WH-CH720N for around £75 / $100 / $AU259.

At £130 / $130 / AU$220, the Soundcore Space 2 seem to fill this gap nicely, at least on paper. With the Hi-X25BT failing to provide ANC and the TAH8000E’s sound not quite reaching five-star heights, the path is open for the Space 2 to stick their flag in this potentially vacant soil. Let’s find out how they perform.

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Build & comfort

Both to look at and wear, the Soundcore Space 2 are a well-made, sensibly designed pair of wireless headphones.

They play things reasonably safe on the design front, opting for simple circular earcups, an amply padded leather headband and some functional plastic on-cup buttons, but it would be hard to accuse the Space 2 of feeling cheap. They don’t have the boundary-pushing aesthetics of the more costly Nothing Headphone (1), for example, but this is still a neat, simple yet fairly classy pair of over-ears at a nice price.

They’re rather comfy, too. At a very reasonable 264g, the Space 2 don’t weigh a huge amount, meaning they’re rarely burdensome to wear over extended listening periods. The padding on the earcups and headband is a little on the soft side – some may prefer more firmness – but we don’t feel starved of comfort during our tests.

That headband is easily adjustable via a fairly smooth mechanism which grants roughly an extra inch of wiggle room, while the earcups will rotate from side to side and, even better, fold away fully to make carrying them in a bag easier.

In terms of general usability, it’s a standard, simple showing from the Space 2, and we don’t necessarily mean that as a criticism. The budget cans opt for the same general configuration as many wireless headphones of this type – including the Sony WH-CH720N – with noise cancelling and power buttons found at the bottom of the left earcup, and volume and Bluetooth controls on the right.

They’re not exactly luxurious, and actually finding the buttons when they’re hidden at the bottom edge of your headphones’ exterior requires some acclimatisation – but again, there’s little to really complain about here.

Features

The Soundcore Space 2 go big on battery life, offering around 50 hours with active noise cancelling switched on, and up to 70 hours if you turn ANC off and don’t listen at ear-splitting volumes. We used ours throughout a busy two-day press trip and barely made a dent in their battery. Better yet, a hurried five-minute charge will grant around four hours of standard playtime in a pinch.

For context, the Austrian Audio Hi-X25BT offer around 30 hours from a single charge, while even the Sony WH-CH720N’s 50 hours (ANC off) and 35 hours (ANC on) can’t keep up with the Soundcore.

Bluetooth codec support includes the standard SBC and AAC codecs, while those with compatible sources get the bonus of the higher-quality LDAC codec too. There’s also a 3.5mm to 3.5mm audio cable for wired listening, but no direct support for USB-C audio.

Spatial audio is provided, in a sense at least. Soundcore’s spin on the tech is dubbed ‘3D Sound’, and, as the name suggests, it’s designed to make stereo audio sound more three-dimensional by expanding the soundstage. There are hints of the tech working well here, and while it’s not going to challenge Dolby Atmos, we do get a sense of instruments being set further away from our ears a little more noticeably when using the mode.

If you do want to have a go with ‘3D Sound’, the best way to find it is via the Soundcore app. It’s a neat app bursting with features – even its own AI chatbot called “Anka” – and there is plenty to discover. You get an eight-band equaliser, ANC mode toggling and even some on-cup button customisation living alongside quite a few ambient sound options.

While you’re on the app, it’s worth taking advantage of Soundcore’s ‘HearID’ hearing test, which assesses your listening abilities and preferences and then purports to construct your own personalised sound curve. How much of this actually pays off is debatable, but it’s nice to have the option at this level, and we do find ourselves conducting much of our testing with our personalised hearing profile switched on.

ANC & call quality

It’s time to find out how the Soundcore Space 2 handle noise cancelling, and what better way to test out their ANC capabilities than with a quick flight over to Germany? No, we didn’t book the flight just to test out a pair of wireless headphones – we’re committed to our jobs, but we’re not that committed.

Both the flight and the busy airport give us the perfect opportunity to discover what the Space 2 can do, with noise cancelling available in its standard active form as well as a Transparent Mode for letting the world in.

Considering the price you’re paying, both settings are competently realised. The general hubbub of a busy airport terminal is softened nicely, even if peakier higher frequencies can tend to pierce through, while the rumbling and swooshing of an airplane in flight are diminished ably as we take to the skies with the Space 2 clamped over our ears. At this price, we’ve very little to take issue with.

It’s tricky to take voice calls on a plane, so that’s a test for when we’re back on terra firma. The Space 2 harness a 3-mic array and AI-powered algorithms in a bid to give calls sufficient intelligibility, and while speech comes through clearly enough, voices can sound a touch robotic and mechanical when compared with the more natural-sounding Sony WH-CH720N.

Still, the Space 2 are capable of blocking out exterior noises really rather well – perhaps even more so than the WH-CH720N – so that the swirls and whooshes of wind on a particularly tempestuous day barely register. All in all, a box ably ticked on the voice calls front.

Sound

Given the Space 2’s solid performance across other areas of our testing, we’re disappointed that the same levels of talent haven’t translated over to how the headphones actually handle music. In short, there’s very little about the Soundcore cans which we find engaging or exciting, and even less which has us wishing to return for repeat listening sessions.

They are, all told, rather bland performers. True, there’s something to be said for a pair of undemanding, composed headphones if you want to avoid that weary sense of fatigue that can often occur with more over-eager alternatives, but the Space 2 go too far the other way. Where is the excitement when we play Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal? Where is the drama of Kate Bush’s Cloudbusting?

We pick out Bill Withers’ Ain’t No Sunshine, and while we discern a decent amount of clarity and cohesion, as we listen we find there’s a real lack of emotional involvement, which mars our enjoyment. Withers’ voice is fairly robust yet lacking in any emotional heft, and the strings introduced at around the 30-second mark don’t have the free, swooning effect we might have hoped for.

Part of those strings’ uninvolving presentation owes to the headphones’ flattened dynamics. Muse’s Panic Station is next, and though the Space 2 are able to bring some cohesion and restraint to proceedings, we don’t discern much contrast between each deep bass pluck or the alternating percussive thumps of that key bass-snare drum pattern. Again, a compressed, flat sound prevents things from taking full flight.

Digging out the cheaper, Award-winning Sony WH-CH720N confirms our reservations. Okay, the Sonys sound a little flavoured at times, and their bass can be a little over-eager, but they’re far more entertaining and insightful across the various songs we play. Panic Station immediately pulses with more verve than the Soundcore cans manage, whereas those varying instrumental textures on Goose’s funky So Ready are more fleshed out and have the authenticity and personality we’ve been craving. The Sonys made music sound musical – the Soundcore, conversely, made it sound dispiritingly mechanical.

The similarly-priced Austrian Audio Hi-X25BT also provide an impressive benchmark which the Space 2 cannot match. They’re not as punchy or vicarious as the WH-CH720N, nor do they offer as much bass weight, but these are evidently far clearer, more delicate and more detailed headphones. Switching back to the Soundcore Space 2 simply makes the latter sound lacking in proper detail and bite.

It’s moving over to these five-star rivals that further makes us realise what has been missing from the Space 2s’ presentation. Balanced and reasonably clear they may be, but Soundcore’s over-ears don’t have that je ne sais quoi – be it the expressiveness of the WH-CH720N or the delicacy of the Hi-X25BT – to set our hearts aflutter.

There’s something to admire about how organised and unfussy the Soundcore cans sound, even as the music becomes more demanding and complex, but rarely do they make us feel in any way involved with or excited by the various songs we feed them.

Verdict

While we had hoped that the Soundcore Space 2 might have filled a gap in the mid-priced wireless market, we’re instead struggling to see how they fit into the current landscape.

Yes, a healthy arsenal of features does give them a potential competitive edge, especially with regard to their impressive battery span and comfortable fit. But when they’re sonically outmatched by finer – and cheaper – alternatives, they don’t quite seem like a viable option in comparison with the class leaders.

Review published: 22nd May 2026

SCORES

• Sound 2
• Build 4
• Features 5

MORE:

Read our review of the Sony WH-CH720N

Also consider the Austrian Audio Hi-X25BT

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