The Soundcore Life Q30 is a headphone that looks like a headphone. Granted, the designers don’t have much to work with; they have two ear cups and an over-the-head band, and I’ve yet to see one that makes me stop in admiring their awesome design. But when I unzipped the plain black case and saw a plain black headphone with some shiny gold accents, I thought, “Okay.”

They are not ugly. They look perfectly fine. And maybe people don't want their sound equipment to attract a lot of attention when they just want to travel quietly on the bus. But I have to admit that my expectations were a bit low after the first impression.

However, behind the vanilla exterior are some salted caramel characteristics. Don't think too hard about this metaphor.

The first thing you should do with any set of Bluetooth headphones is charge them fully. That’s never interesting. But the second thing you should do with any set of Bluetooth headphones is sync them to your phone. And that’s where the Q30 comes in.