QT – OneOdio A70 Fusion
If you’ve been around budget headphones any length of time, you’ve probably seen OneOdio products advertised. The Company was founded a bit over 10 years ago now and has produced quite a few headphones over the years both under their own banner and as an OEM for other names. Perhaps unsurprisingly with the recent market patterns, OneOdio has also recently released two in ear models and 4 over-ear ANC models to their line-up. In total, OneOdio offers about 35 different models to choose from with models aimed at DJs, gamers, travelers, and general use. For this review, I have their A70 Fusion Wireless model. Keep in mind that these have a $59 retail and can be found on sale for between $40 and $50 USD most of the time.
Build:
Build is almost entirely plastic with metal headbands, adjustments, and hinge pins so while you won’t find exotic woods, they do have reinforcements in the high stress areas and if treated with reasonable care should hold up well. The A70 is offered in 4 color variations, solid black, black with white accents, black with red accents or silver with tan pads and headband. As expected for a portable model, they are folding designs and come with a travel bag for storage and transport. Pads are memory foam and protein leather with roughly ½ inch depth from pad surface to driver. The A70 cups are limited to about 25° of travel on the horizontal axis and about 75° to the rear and 15° to the front on the vertical access. The pads, and clamping force combine to make a very comfortable headphone and with a 50 hour reported battery life on the A70, that’s an important fact to consider. There is some heat build-up due to the materials in the pads but it isn’t excessive or uncomfortable.
While the A70 is primarily aimed at the wireless market, (DJs in particular) it does allow for wired use and has a 3.5mm jack on the right cup and a 6.35mm jack on the left cup. Both can be used as inputs so a single 3.5mm to 6.35 mm cable can be used to attach the A70 to either a 3.5 or 6.35mm source device. This arrangement also provides the ability to use the 2nd port on the headphone as a pass through and daisy chain multiple headphones from the same source. I found this worked well but would caution that it does change the impedance and sensitivity seen at the source and low-end sources may not have circuits designed to power multiple headphones simultaneously so don’t go nuts and chain 12 of these from your iPhone. Perhaps more importantly for a DJ environment, it has a locking jack so the cable won’t get pulled loose of the headphones during a performance. The Lock is a twist lock mechanism that requires a 90° turn of the jack to lock or unlock the cable. The cable is still usable with the Sharing, but does require that the source not have a protected or recessed jack as the lock will prevent the jack from seating to full depth in those circumstances.
Controls:
The A70’s wireless mode supports SBC only in my experience as forcing my Samsung S21 to use AptX or LDAC in the developer options resulted in the A70 failing to connect. Even with only the baseline protocol for Bluetooth, the A70 fared fairly well in my tests with nearly 10 meters between source and headphone before experiencing drop-outs, however a single interior wall did routinely defeat the connection. Battery life is advertised as 50 hours and while that may be a touch optimistic, I was able to routinely get slightly over 40 hours in my usages (3 cycles). Controls are easy with 3 buttons on the right cup for forward, play / pause / Power On/off, and back and a micro-USB port on the left for charging. Those of you who are tired of having to load an app to control basic functions will be happy to know none is required here.
Internals:
Internally, the A70 uses a 40mm dynamic driver with a nominal impedance at 32Ω and sensitivity of 110dB/mW. Those numbers suggest it should be easy to drive and I found it was had no trouble getting adequate volume from a dongle dac or low powered source when used as a wired headphone.
Sound Quality:
The A70 has good sub-bass rumble with some roll-off evident below about 35Hz and a big elevation to the lower mid-bass range that makes this a headphone for bass lovers. The bass is big and bold, but also a bit loose as it can obscure the lower mids and isn’t as articulate as options at higher price points. Still, it does get the blood pumping and with the stated purpose of the A70 being DJ and pop music the bass boost will be appreciated by the target audience.
Mids take a bit of a backseat and do sound recessed between the two mountains of mid-bass and treble that exist on either side. Guitar has good growl and male vocals have good weight to them while the upper-mid/lower treble emphasis puts female vocals considerably out in front of their lower counterparts.
The treble is emphasized nearly all the way through the range but is a bit uneven as lower treble is more elevated than true treble range and then again another emphasis is added in the 9-10kHz range that can come across as a bit strident. Top end air and open-ness is good for a closed back, but the trade-off is these can be harsh and sibilant with tracks that lean that way. Again for pop music where the bulk of the sound is well below 8kHz it will be less noticeable than strings or full orchestral pieces.
At $44 on sale, the A70 may be a great holiday gift idea for the teen or tween on your list who is bass obsessed and not overly careful with their gear. If offers good functionality, can share the music with a friend, and doesn’t break the bank in the process. Who knows, with what you save maybe grab a Monitor 60 so you can listen in too.