Thank you 1MORE for sending us the SonoFlow SE HQ31 to review!

Every once in a while what's not supposed to happen, happens. Late last year, I reviewed the pretty good 1MORE SonoFlow Pro HQ51, which was their flagship over-ear Bluetooth headset at the time. I do like it a lot, and it's a decent value. The way it's supposed to work is that price no object, we're supposed to like the more expensive models better. And in some ways, that's still true here; I do prefer the look, included case, and analog audio input that the HQ51 offers. But what I didn't expect was to like the sound on this HQ31 a whole lot more. It also helps that this one does have one really good feature that its bigger brother doesn't; more on that later.

The SonoFlow SE HQ31 is the latest over-ear entry in 1MORE's SonoFlow lineup, complete with Active Noise Canceling (ANC). I was pleased to find out that it's also among the least expensive. And feature-wise, it hangs quite well with the bigger brother, also. At this price, offering a full feature set is pretty impressive. ANC is course the biggest one. Active Noise Canceling is where the headphones have a built-in microphone that listens to outside sounds, and then plays the mathematical wave inverse of that sound into the ears of the listener, mostly canceling out what is going on outside. The HQ31 does a good job at this. It's rated at a -42dB outside sound reduction; I have no means of testing this, but it seems to work well enough.

From a build quality point of view, it looks and feels pretty good to the touch. They are also really light and comfortable, and I had no trouble wearing them for many hours. They weigh 258 grams according to my measurement, though 1MORE's specs claim 273g. Whatever the case, they are certainly on the lighter end for headphones. The ear cushions are very soft to the touch, and quite plush. They do get warm after a while, but not unusually so for leather. The headband has a similar cushion on the top, and the weight distribution on your head is very good. They also don’t clamp your head too hard. While I wouldn’t say they are the most comfortable headphones I own, they are certainly quite good.

The shape of the ear cups is a notable departure from the previous SonoFlow models, that had a larger and flatter look. The ear pads are very close in size to the old one; these appear to be slightly smaller, but really not much. The headband arm attaches closer to the center rather than around the sides, and I believe the ear cups probably have less space on the inside, but I have not opened them up to find out. As for the functions available on each ear cup, left ear cup is pretty barren, while the right side has the power button, the noise-canceling mode button, a volume rocker, and the USB-C port. The volume buttons allow you to skip to next/previous track, if you hold them down. I would have expected volume up to go to next track and volume down to be previous, but it’s the other way around. Not intuitive to me, but once I understood it, not terrible. You can also play/pause with the power button, as well as answer and disconnect from phone calls. I appreciate that these are button controls rather than touch, since I certainly prefer buttons almost all the time. Of course, the USB-C port is used primarily for charging.

Or at least, that's what I thought for the first few weeks of using the HQ31. One of the big surprises, and a hidden bonus feature of the HQ31, is that the USB-C port isn't just for charging, but also for data/audio. You can connect them to your computer, and your PC will see it as a USB audio device! And not just for output, but input as well. While the microphone sounds okay except for an unfortunate high-pitched whine, I would say it's good enough to pass for an inexpensive gaming headset. This was a big surprise to me, and a great value-add for those who don't mind a wired USB-C connection in this way. It also helps that any audio latency you might expect while using Bluetooth is eliminated when connected via a wire.

I have used and reviewed products where the Bluetooth latency was horribly unusable, and others where it's actually pretty good. The 1MORE spec claims 80ms, and based on my testing via YouTube videos, I believe that to be pretty accurate. Depending on the game, I could tell more easily than others, but it was never bad enough to feel like lips were getting out of sync or anything like that.

Considering how light these are, they did a good job stuffing a fairly large battery inside. They are rated for 90 hours of life when noise-canceling isn't in use, and 60 hours when it's active. I'm sure there is some variance on that with volume level and such, but no matter the case, it's still plenty of time for most people, and they charge quite quickly if you let them get low. In a pinch, you can get 5 hours of battery life, from just 5 minutes of charging.

In order to get the most out of the 1MORE SonoFlow SE HQ31, it's important to install the 1MORE mobile app. I use Android, so that's what I'm testing with, and some key features only work on Android phones, since Apple limits what audio codecs headphones can use. Once you have it installed from the Play Store, pair your phone if you haven't already. Once you launch the app, you will need to grant the app location permissions for nearby devices; after that, as long as the SonoFlow is connected to your phone via Bluetooth, the app should see your headphones. (Some headphones and apps support Bluetooth LE for app control, but these don't seem to do that, so being connected to the headphones directly is important.)

The app seems simple at first, but there are some important features buried under nested menus. On top shows a picture of the headphone and current estimated charge level, between 0% and 100%, in steps of 10%. Under that is 'Listening Modes', which is where you can enable Active Noise Canceling (ANC), or Transparent, which lets you hear the room around you while wearing the headphones. This can also be accessed via the 'ANC' button on the center-rear of the right ear cup.

Below 'Listening Modes' in the app is 'Sound Options', which is where the equalizer (EQ) modes are located. First there are 12 'Preset Eqs'; Studio is flat and the best choice if you don't know what else to use. Other EQ options include 'Bass reducer', 'Bass booster', 'Acoustic', 'Classical', 'Podcast', 'Deep', 'Electronic', 'Hip-Hop', 'Lounge', 'Pop', and 'Voice Enhancement'. I almost always use 'Studio' with this headphone, because these sound seriously balanced right out of the box. You can also create three 'Custom EQs' that allow you to raise or lower each of the 10 bands by up to three dB.

Outside of the main audio settings (EQs), there are some features for the most technical among us. Under 'Shortcuts' are three seemingly unrelated settings, but they are all really important. First is 'Spatial Audio', an optional setting that turns on a bit of custom digital signal processing (DSP). This setting expands the sound field noticeably, and makes it sound just a bit livelier, too. While I felt like the HQ51 really benefited from this setting, the HQ31 sounds so good out of the box that I never felt like I needed it.

The rest of the 'Shortcuts' are other key features. Second, under 'Spatial Audio', is 'Gaming Mode'. This claims to lower the audio latency by quite a bit, making listening over Bluetooth much for useful for anyone playing a game or even watching a movie while connected wirelessly. The thing is, at least on my phone, Bluetooth when connected via LDAC had pretty low latency as it was, so I never felt the need to enable Gaming Mode. The latency of this headset is noticeably better than what the HQ51 had, which is pretty strange considering both are so similar in other ways. Whatever the case, connecting via the USB-C cable eliminates all audio latency, and I recommend that where possible for gamers.

The last and key feature hiding under 'Shortcuts' is 'High-definition Codec(LDAC)'. This is a headlining feature on the box, and is very important to Android audiophiles everywhere. What this means is that this headphone supports Sony's LDAC audio codec, which allows a supported device to send high-resolution audio, via a 24-bit at 96kHz sample rate, which is a favorite among audiophiles (like me!). I own some music in that bitrate/sample rate combination, so I'm thrilled that the SonoFlow SE supports that, as the Pro did. It's worth pointing out that LDAC mode cannot be used at the same time as either 'Spatial Audio' or 'Gaming Mode', so you have to pick either of those two, or the high-resolution LDAC codec.

One of my favorite features of modern Bluetooth is something I use daily in my work from home setup. This setting is called 'Dual-device connection'. This is accessible from the 'Settings' menu, under 'Experimental Features'. What it allows you to do is connect via Bluetooth to two different devices simultaneously, and if nothing is playing, the next time an audio event happens you hear it - from either connected device. It's a game-changer for work from home, since I can be connected to both my personal phone and my work laptop. When a meeting starts, I can join and everyone can hear me. If I get a call, I can talk and that works, too. You can't hear from both sources at the same time, but it alternates between them in a very intuitive way.

Unfortunately, at least for me, the dual-device mode is finicky on this headset. It's strange, because I have reviewed other 1MORE headphones and there it works perfectly. Sadly this is largely similar to how the HQ51 behaved, so whatever chipset or software they used for one is not fixed on the other. My issue is that sometimes my work Macbook would work with audio but not calls, or it would require me to disconnect it from my phone before it started working. Hopefully it's fixed soon in a firmware update, though considering the HQ51 never got one, I would not rely on this feature. I hope they fix it all up soon in a firmware update, though I'm not optimistic.

Unlike some headphones, these sound largely similar with ANC on and off, which is great since you can choose whether you want ANC on, off, or use them in transparency mode based off of circumstance rather than need. On some ANC headphones, I found that they sounded noticeably better with it enabled. Which is neat, but not ideal in every circumstance. For example, if you are outside and there is wind, you want ANC off, unless you want wind noise in your ears as that is notoriously difficult to cancel out for ANC algorithms.

And last but not least: the sound quality. This is really where this HQ31 shines, even over its bigger HQ51 brother. With that model, I had to tweak them, and even published a mod to make them sound better. With these HQ31s, they just sound great, right out of the box. The frequency response, the balance between lows, mids and highs, is just about right. They could resolve a bit better, sure, and I wish the soundstage was wider, though this is an extremely common issue for closed back headphones, and even moreso for those offering Noise Canceling. Whatever the case, these sound balanced enough that I would not feel bad at all if I had to use them on a long trip, even when gaming on a laptop. I listened to podcasts, music, used them in voice and video calls, and more and these never failed me, outside of the multi-device mode that I ended up turning off.

I guess one little quirk is that you can't easily change what they are paired to if they are connected to something. I had my work Macbook downstairs but within the rather generous Bluetooth range, and they connected to that rather than to my phone right next to me. I had to get up and manually disconnect it from the Macbook. Yeah, I know, I need the exercise anyway.

The 1MORE SonoFlow SE HQ31 is a headset with good Active Noise Canceling, very good audio performance, and a solid feature set. I really love how they sound when connected via USB-C, and they even support multiple sample rates, of 44.1kHz, 48kHz, and 96kHz at 16 and 24 bit. This is better than many dedicated USB gaming headsets. I will say that when connected to Windows, leave them at 24-bit@48kHz, as setting it to 96kHz would act up sometimes. I am still able to enjoy 96kHz playback with a correctly configured music player, and these really sound great that way. It has an excellent feature set that should satisfy most people, and a sound quality that hits well above its price; hopefully some of the bugs work themselves out soon through software and firmware updates. The light weight, decent comfort, and good audio performance makes this pretty easy to recommend, as long as you wouldn't miss a travel case or an analog audio input jack.