The Soundpeats C30 are the first ever buds I’m reviewing from Soundpeats so naturally I wanted to be impressed.
It’s got all the bell and whistles for a budget TWS bud marketed in 2026 – hiRes LDAC audio support, Bluetooth 6.0, ANC, the whole works. Lets see if specs maketh buds.
Design
First off, the design. Something about how these buds look just takes me back a few years when I was reviewing buds like the Mpow Mpods, I’ve got to say these don’t look or feel very ‘2026y.’ Certainly don’t look or feel as premium as buds from the competition like the 1More Q21 or the QCY Melobuds Pro.
I’m not even going to try comparing them with the Soundcore Liberty 5. They look heavy, uninspiring and antiquated.
We’ve moved past this look a long time ago. Most of what I’m saying has to do with the form factor so let’s pair this with the 1More Q21 so you can see what I mean – the whole bud segment of the C30 is too large for comfort.
And it’s kinda obvious that this is just not good and Soundpeats know it because if you take a look at the product page for these buds you’ll not see even one image from them showcasing this angle of the buds. Yeah, I went through all the pictures.
And what’s that design element on the side profile? Some sort of prehistoric Swahili caveman drawing?
The disappointment with how these look and feel is enough for me to halt this review here, but let’s go on.
Now the carry case does feel a tad bit better, I like the textured finish and we get more of the prehistoric styling here, this time it’s etched into the case and yeah I can work with that.
The plastic feels very thin and it sounds creaky tho, and before it sounds like I’m on a witch hunt I actually took cases from some other buds I’ve reviewed recently (the Melobuds N60 and N70) and did a squeaky comparison. You can watch on the YouTube video.
Bottomline, this is again not the most solid looking or feeling carry case on the market.
Fit and comfort
I put these on a weigh scale and giving how chunky they look I was expecting to see figures in the high 5s. Surprisingly they weigh only 4.6grams. That’s really good because the Melobuds N60 and N70 I just brought into this conversation weigh upwards of 5 grams.
However, because of that darn form factor these don’t sit nicely in ear at all. First time I put them on and my ear literally felt crowded and I don’t think I’ve described the feeling from any earbud that way before and I have large ears.
Also I don’t know about you guys but I don’t like how they look on ear too. It’s almost as if they’re floating, like you’ve not worn them properly, you’ve not pushed them in totally.
With all I’ve said you’d expect ear fatigue to be crazy bad on these buds but surprise surprise it’s not that bad. I had them on for almost 4 hours on a stretch and yeah there was discomfort but it was never up to the level of buds like the Melobuds N70.
Feature list
On the C30 you get:
- Support for LDAC Audio
- IP54 rating for dust and water resistance
- Bluetooth 6.0
- Active noise cancellation
- Touch controls
So the typical feature list for a bud that’s trying to compete in this segment. The notable omission here is fast-pair tech and wireless charging. I’d give a pass for the lack of wireless charging, Budget buds less than $30, so kinda makes sense.
You’d want fast-pair tech though, it’s on Buds like the Melobuds N60, N70 or even the CMF Buds 2a and it is such nice addition for me. I think it’s something that I’d require from my any buds I’m planning on buying for use in 2026, but that’s just me.
LDAC Audio
On paper LDAC audio allows you to stream music to the buds at very high fidelity rates up to 990kbps I think. To use however you must have a compatible device. So your phone must support that audio format.
If you’re using an iPhone pretend this doesn’t exist because they don’t support it, some Androids do but my Pixel Fold Pro 2 doesn’t and at this point I don’t even know phones that do.
IP54 rating
This confers both water and dust resistance at least to some extent to the C30. It’s better than what you’d get on the Melobuds N60 or N70 those are IPX5 rated so only some form of water resistance but it’s also just slightly short of what you’d find on the CMF lineup – both the Buds 2 Plus and Buds Pro 2 ship with an IP55 rating.
Hosed down the buds down with my makeshift water resistance tester and they held up well. Cleaned them up after and they worked just great.
Bluetooth 6.0
This is the best in class bluetooth tech available now, the same stuff on the Melobuds N60 or N70 and it works flawlessly good on the C30, great connection performance with practically no drops as I move room to room in my house. Also decent range at about 10M. Soundpeats says it also improves the gaming performance but we will talk about that soon.
Touch controls
Touch controls on the C30 are decent, very good actually. They’re responsive and the touch sensitive area is large enough to not miss when you need to perform an action. As usual you can reconfigure the touch inputs for these to your preference on the app.
Active noise cancellation
ANC on this bud is rated to handle anything in the sub 52db range and while that’s comparable to what you’d get on most buds in this price range in my tests these buds performed significantly worse off compared to its peers as far as noise cancellation goes.
In my living room these were barely able to suppress audio from my TV at a 50% volume mark. Once it gets to 70% I can hear the TV very loud and clear. And something else I noticed, switching through the many ANC active modes did little if anything to change the performance. So going from outdoors to indoors to adaptive and its still the same noise suppression performance.
Outdoors same case this was barely able to suppress random background chatter or actual noise in my tests. Not that I expected it to do much, most buds in this segment barely impress when it comes to outdoor ANC performance but still this was essentially bottom of the barrel stuff.
Wind noise with ANC on was not that bad so at least its got that going on for it.
Sound quality
In many ways I was already prepared or let me say I had an idea about how these would sound just by looking at them and before you rush to think that I’m already tending towards the negative just hear me out.
I’lll start by saying on a scale of 1-10 I’d give these buds a 6 in the sound quality department and that’s not bad. The sound profile is balanced (air quotes) you can sense a bit of the bass being predominant but lets leave it at the sound profile is balanced. So good ratio of bass, mids and trebles.
Now as for details I feel there’s a noticeable deficiency in how the bass is delivered on these buds. It lacks that punch and pizzazz you’d find on buds like the Melobuds Pro and with the volume turned up you can sense some sort of distortion however slight. Mids are fine, but trebles are lacking that spark too and the overall sound output comes off as very warm almost to the point of being muddy but you still get a lot of life from them.
There’s this Amanpiano song I always vibe to Deliver by Smur Lee and DJ maphorisa and midway there’s a tremendous bass drop mixed in with a lot of mids from whatever those Amanpiano dudes use to create their instrumentals.
On the Soundpeats C30 you’re going miss the punch and reverberating feel of the bass. You’ll also not get the preciseness of the mids at least not in a way that complements the bass and the whole music experience in that segment of the song, which points to another issue, the clarity.
One reason why details appear suppressed on these buds in my opinion is just how low the clarity is going to the point of the soundstage sounding crowded in some songs. The muddiness of the mids/trebles I talked about earlier has a lot to do with this deficiency in clarity. Simply put components of the soundstage are not as separated as they can be on the C30.
You’ll experience this more in the higher volume range and for the song I just talked about earlier, Deliver, it presents as a muffling of the mids almost to the point that you can sort of hear a ‘hum’ in and around the mids when listening to that particular song.
Truth is like I said earlier I kinda expected this given the build of the Soundpeats C30. If these didn’t come with Bluetooth 6.0 I’d outright make a claim that these are buds from a few years repackaged as something new. They look like them and certainly sound that way too.
Call quality
The call quality of the soundpeats C30 is fair enough all things considered. Never really encountered any issues when using them to make or receive calls. Soundpeats says these come with 6-Mics and AI Call Noise Reduction with Wind Resistance. You can listen to how the mics on these sound in the Mic Test segment of the YouTube video up top.
Soundpeats App
The app is very typical for a bud at this price point, same layout, practical the same features as what you’d get from the QCY app or the Soundcore app. So settings for the noise cancellation, an EQ, a tab for customizing the touch inputs, a toggle for dual device connection. LDAC audio etc.
Now I really like two extra features I’ve not seen on the apps from QYC and the rest. The disable touch function and the drainage function. Disable touch as you’d guess deactivates the touch sensitive panel and it can come handy in several situations. For me, it’s when I’m lying on the couch on a bed and want to prevent accidental touches.
The drainage function works to clear out water from the speakers if you ever get them soaked, not that I’d advice taking these for a swim though. But very nice inclusion.
There’s also the find my buds function on the app and when triggered it makes the buds emit a very high pitched beep, louder than you’d imagine and it for those times when one or two of the buds gets lodged underneath your couch and you have no idea where they are.
Another nice touch, there’s a direct customer support tab in the app with a link that takes you to their WhatsApp support page. That’s really thoughtful and I don’t think I’ve seen this with any other brand before.
As always my one and only gripe is I have to give my email to these guys before they allow me use the companion app for my cheap Chinese earbuds, that’s not cool.
Battery life
Soundpeats claims these can go 10 hours on a single charge and do a whole week with the battery from the case without needing to connect them to apower source. Bold.
In my tests I was able to pull 7 hours of on time with them that’s with ANC on. Not up to their claims but very good of a bud at this price point. If you’re a moderate user you can definitely go a week without plugging these in to a power source like they claim.
On standby expect up to 42 hours which is again not bad. No wireless charging here but that’s to be expected.
What’s good, what’s bad
What’s good
- Decent battery life
- Okay comfortability
What’s bad
- Sub par sound quality
- Poor design and build quality
- Mediocre ANC
Should you buy the Soundpeats C30?
Nope. These are relics in a shiny new armor. Find something else.
