As we hurtle steadily towards the festive season, manufacturers of all and sundry are set on filling the space underneath your spruce with as many of their own products as humanly possible. OneOdio, a Chinese audio specialist, are also set on getting you there on a budget, with their latest, the Focus A6, coming in at a thoroughly reasonable £55. Does this make it a budget king in 2025? It certainly comes pretty close.
The OneOdio Focus A6 sure is a pair of wireless headphones. That’s not a knock, but this is a thoroughly understated and relatively unassuming pair of cans. Decked out all in Midnight Black – it’s also available in the light Ivory Blush – you could almost be forgiven for thinking they’re an older pair of Sony’s iconic XM3/MX4 headphones, were it not for the small OneOdio logo on each earpiece and gold ring circling it.
After the larger, XM5-aping A5, this is a welcome step back. I like their looks, opting for subtle rather than overpowering, but that does make them feel slightly unremarkable. I guess that’s a plus or negative depending on how much of an extrovert you are, and whether you view headphones as a fashion accessory.
The Focus A6 feel quite plasticky. There are areas here where that plastic feels thin and cheap, particularly at each end of the metal headband, where it joins to the earpiece joints. If you’re sensitive to a spot of plastic ick, then this is the worst part of the A6, but other areas such as the metal headband and its suitably plush memory foam padding help to balance things out. I’ve worn them for hours at a time and I don’t feel like I need to take them off; the leatherette earpads in particular are really soft, and that light plastic does help to keep the weight down to a head-pleasing 240g.
It doesn’t necessarily make the A6 feel weak either. I was able to twist and pull at the headband without wrecking it, and the A6 has been robust enough to be folded up and chucked into my backpack with a lunchbox bouncing along beside it. The fact they fold up is also a huge bonus when everyone else seems to have forgotten that this is a really handy thing for headphones to do.
Some people will rejoice at the news that the Focus A6 has physical controls – seated in easy reach on the right earpiece – and they do exactly what you need them to do. The cheap plastics carry through here, but with a toggle for ANC, Power and a volume rocker that doubles up for playback control, you can definitely live with it.
Despite the slightly underwhelming aesthetics, the Focus A6 is packing a host of features that are worth talking about. Hybrid Active Noise Cancellation nestles up to wired and wireless Hi-Res certification, with support for the LDAC codec ensuring that your experience sounds as true to the original recording as possible, though not on Apple products.
You’ve got to do a bit of work to get there though. The standard sound profile of the Focus A6 is thoroughly lifeless, and it’s lucky that the OneOdio app is on hand to bring everything up to scratch. There’s only three preset EQs, and of these, only the Pop setting comes close to being useful. Fortunately, there’s space for three custom EQ presets, and I found that dialling things in with a deep scoop in the mid-range brought out the best of the A6, at least for the rock and metal genres I tend to listen to.
-
- OneOdio Focus A6 App
-
- OneOdio Focus A6 Custom EQ
Embarking on a Nine Inch Nails marathon thanks to the brand-new Tron Ares soundtrack, my first port of call was the album’s first single, As Alive As You Need Me To Be. The A6 did a great job here, delivering the dark synth tones and thumping beats with a surprising level of clarity. It’s warmer rather than detailed, and it feels like the A6 has been designed as a real crowd-pleaser with its approachable audio abilities and welcoming price point. If you’re looking for absolute detail, you might want to look elsewhere, but when it’s handed a lossless piece of audio, the Focus A6’s 40mm drivers sound good. You might find they sound even better when you think about how little they cost, and they’re a huge step up after their bass-heavy predecessor.
Despite the budget pricing, there’s the welcome inclusion of Hybrid ANC. This now-essential inclusion helps to reduce external noises, and lets you focus on whatever you’re listening to, rather than the big bad real world. It’s clearly nowhere near the level of Sony or Bose over-ear masterpieces, but the A6 costs a quarter of the price, and their performance far exceeds that. There is an audible low-level hiss when activated and without any audio playing, but that disappears in normal use. The corresponding Transparency mode isn’t as clear as the best efforts out there, but once again, it’ll serve you well when you’re ordering a coffee or paying at the checkout.
There’s also a very healthy 40 hours of battery life here with the ANC enabled, and a whopping 75 hours with it turned off, which trounces both Sony’s XM5 and newer XM6, and leaves the Bose QuietComfort Ultra in the dust. They might both have more effective ANC, but it clearly comes at a cost to battery life. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want to think about charging their gear too often, this is the headset for you.
There are a couple of bonus features to enhance your audio consumption with the Focus A6, but they come with a pair of caveats. The first is the low-latency Game Mode, which is perfect for competitive mobile gaming, but can only operate alongside the less detailed AAC codec, and this forces you to reconnect the headphones when you switch. Alongside that, there’s a Cinema Mode, which slightly ups the immersion when watching big blockbusters, but which is fiddly to activate. If there was a way to activate either modes on the headset, I could see them being useful, but it’s unlikely I’ll hop into the app to toggle them on, especially when the headset does a decent enough job on its own.
The OneOdio app also takes care of the things you’d hope for, including updating your headset to the newest firmware. I was impressed by how quickly and easily this was done, especially when other, far bigger firms somehow struggle to reliably update their own headsets without losing connection. From here you can dig into all the settings, and there are two additional ANC modes, with wind reduction options for both ANC and transparency. It’s nice to have them, and they do help to drop interference from the wind to a small extent, but once again, it’s an additional setting in the app to have to reach for, and largely, you’ll be happy with the standard ANC settings.
The sub-£100 category has become so competitive in the last couple of years, and the OneOdio A6 has brought the fight to its competitors. It’s on a par with the excellent Final UX2000, though the Final pair may just edge it on the comfort front. There’s also the Monoprice BT600-ANC to consider, which has the benefit of coming with its own hard case as well.
There’s currently a nice little discount available on the official site with the following discount code ONESPPRMR (15% OFF), making the A6 even better value. Valid from July 7 to September 30.
