Open headphones at a reasonable price
Key things
- At a list price of $70, the 1MORE Fit SE S31 offers an affordable open-back headphone with good sound quality.
- Comfortable with ear hooks and IPX5 rated, the S31 offers a secure fit for exercise and activities.
- A maximum battery life of 30 hours and customizable options with the 1MORE app make the S31 a solid buy.
If you don’t like the feel of traditional earbuds that require a tight fit, open-back headphones can be a great alternative as they also allow you to easily hear your surroundings. They aren’t always cheap, but the 1MORE Fit SE Open Earbuds S31 are a solid and affordable choice.
1MORE Fit SE Open Earbuds S31
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The 1MORE Fit SE Open Earbuds S31 pack many of the features and benefits you’d find in more expensive open designs into an affordable package with solid sound and call quality and great battery life.
- Good sound quality for the shape and price
- The larger size ensures solid battery life
- Comfortable once you find the right fit
- The built-in controls are not very responsive
- No multipoint Bluetooth
Price and availability
The 1MORE Fit SE S31s are available directly through 1MORE as well as retailers such as Amazon. They retail for $69.99 and come in two color options: black (aka Sports) and white (aka Modern).
Readers familiar with 1MORE products may have already noticed, but the Fit SE 31 is a direct successor to the Fit SE S30. If you want to save money, you can find these older models on sale now for around $45.
Comfortable, but they take some getting used to
If you’ve ever seen open-back headphones, they’ll look familiar. Like most headphones of this style, these use ear hooks to keep the headphones hanging just outside your ears. In the case of the S31, the hooks use a silicone coating for comfort and non-slip, ensuring a better fit.
It took me a while to find the right spot using the “turn the hook around the ear” technique. Once I did that, the S31 stayed in place just fine. They were also comfortable, even for multi-hour stints, although not as comfortable as the Beyerdynamic VERIO 200 I reviewed, a more expensive set of similar open-back headphones.
Don’t worry if you’re thinking about taking them for a run. Between the anti-slip layer and the IPX5 water resistance, you shouldn’t worry. Even if you don’t want to soak them in the kitchen sink, a little sweat or a sudden downpour won’t ruin your headphones.
One thing worth noting is that the case is more difficult to open than most others I’ve come across. The headphones are also somewhat difficult to remove from the case and seem to be odd about the order in which you put them back into the case. At least with my review unit, I always found it easier to place the left earpiece and then the right.
Touch controls and a simple, easy-to-use app
Overall, my time testing the 1MORE Fit SE S31 went pretty smoothly, but not at first. Initial pairing was rough: the headphones initially appeared as two separate devices. A reset using the button inside the charging case fixed it, but it was odd considering my review unit came out of a shrink-wrapped retail box.
Control is handled using capacitive touch panels on both headphones, and that didn’t fill me with high hopes. As I’d feared, the controls were touchy at times and not as responsive as I’d like with others, but that’s true for a headset that costs several times the price of the S31.
The good news is that if you don’t like the default control mappings, you can customize them using the 1MORE app, available for iPhone and Android devices. While you can’t customize everything, here’s how you can add controls for triple-tap actions that are disabled by default.
The app also includes limited equalizer functionality, with only a few presets and no custom options. As far as unusual features go, you’ll also find a smart burn-in option, although whether headphone burn-in is necessary is debatable, especially with smaller drivers like these.
Good sound quality including your surroundings
The Fit SE S31 is equipped with 14.2mm drivers, which would be massive if we were talking about standard headphones. Since these drivers don’t sit inside your ear canals, but instead float just above them, larger drivers are necessary to have any semblance of bass.
Listening to the Football Team All Walkers Home I noticed that the S31 lacked a bit of low end, especially compared to the Beyerdynamic VERIO 200. The lower midrange was also somewhat thin and square, but for the shape and price, the sound was still relatively full.
I’m turning to Marvin Gaye Flyin’ High (in a friendly sky), things have picked up significantly. The apparent bass volume was louder and fuller on this track than the previous track. Gaye’s vocals are front and center as usual, but the headphones handle the strings, bells and percussion just as nicely, making for a pleasant listen.
Podcasts and audiobooks sound great even with the default Studio EQ settings, so the lack of a voice-friendly EQ preset wasn’t much of a problem. This means that one of the EQ presets is aimed at reducing the bass, which can be useful if you’re listening to someone with a particularly deep or booming voice.
The S31 uses the now standard four-microphone noise cancellation system to improve voice clarity. While intelligibility never seemed to suffer, I did notice a slight lack of treble that made things sound slightly dull.
Battery life is behind the major players
As we’ve seen with other open-back headphones, the larger overall case required for larger drivers also means more room for batteries. This means that in the case of the 1MORE Fit SE S31, you’ll get around eight hours of playback per charge.
Put the headphones in the included charging case and the total playback time will be extended to 30 hours. That doesn’t include downtime when the headphones are in the case, but it’s still plenty of time without having to plug in a charging case, especially for budget headphones.
The case does a good job of showing battery life when you take the headphones off, with a built-in LED light flashing green, yellow, or red, depending on the overall charge status of the headphones. It doesn’t support wireless charging, but for the price, I won’t complain about that, especially considering the hassles that the larger case size can bring.
Should you buy 1MORE Fit SE Open Earbuds S31?
I’ve been pleasantly surprised and quite disappointed with open-back headphones in the past, so I wasn’t sure how I’d get on with them. The good news is that the 1MORE Fit SE Open Earbuds S31 sound great for the price, and if I didn’t know better I’d expect them to cost quite a bit more than the actual list price.
Not everything is perfect, of course. The controls are fiddly to the point where I was occasionally sure I was touching the wrong area of the earphones, and the bass isn’t nearly as deep as you’d get in many traditional headphone designs. Of course, these issues also occur with significantly more expensive headphones, so it’s hard to fault the 1MOREs too much here.
If you’re curious about open-back headphones but don’t like the idea of spending over $100 to see if you like them long-term, this is a great way to try them out. Even if you only keep them as backup for the occasional run or gym, you’ll probably find them worth the asking price.
