Anker Soundcore P20i Review: I Spent a Month With $30 Earbuds and Forgot My AirPods at Home

Alex Morgan May 31, 2026 Tech & Electronics, Wireless Earbuds

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I bought the Anker Soundcore P20i on a whim back in late April. My partner had texted me about a $26 deal she’d spotted on Amazon, and after a frustrating week of my AirPods Pro 2 randomly cutting out on BART, I figured the worst-case scenario was that I’d hate them and gift them to my nephew.

Four weeks later, the AirPods are still in their case on my nightstand. The P20i have followed me to two gyms, a four-hour Caltrain trip, three Zoom-heavy workdays at Sightglass, and a Memorial Day pool party where someone inevitably knocked them off the chair. They still work. That’s the headline.

The five-minute first impression

Out of the box, the case feels lighter than it has any right to. There’s a tiny status LED on the front and a USB-C port on the back — no wireless charging, which is the first obvious cost-cut. The earbuds themselves are unremarkable matte black stems, the kind you’d expect from a $129 Sony pair, not a $30 one.

Pairing took maybe nine seconds with my Pixel 8. With my MacBook Air it took a little fiddling — I had to forget the AirPods first because macOS kept trying to be helpful. Once paired, the Soundcore app pulled up a five-band EQ, a transparency toggle (no full ANC at this price), and a low-latency “game mode” that genuinely does help with mobile gaming, though I’m mostly an Apple TV viewer.

Sound: better than “acceptable,” worse than “impressive”

Anker tunes these toward the bass. The default EQ is fun for hip-hop and house but muddies things on vocals — Phoebe Bridgers ends up sounding like she’s singing into a pillow. Flip on the “Voice Booster” preset and it cleans up significantly. For podcasts and audiobooks, that’s the setting I leave it on.

Spatial detail is where you can hear the price. Compared with my AirPods, the soundstage feels narrower, like everything’s slightly closer to your face. That said, on a noisy 22 Fillmore bus, you wouldn’t notice — the lack of ANC is a much bigger issue than the lack of soundstage.

The little things Anker got right

Touch controls are configurable, which I appreciate more than I expected to. I remapped triple-tap on the left bud to summon Google Assistant and that’s now my default for grocery list dumps. Battery life is a legitimate 10 hours per bud in my testing, plus another two-and-change charges in the charging case — I went from Monday morning to Friday evening without ever plugging in, and I use them maybe four hours a day.

IPX5 water resistance held up to a Saturday spin class at Equinox and a hike in Marin where I got rained on for the last twenty minutes. They’re not your dive watch, but they are sweat-and-rain proof in a way that matters for actual humans.

Where the budget shows

No multipoint. If you’re jumping between a work laptop and a phone all day, that’s annoying enough to be a dealbreaker. The transparency mode is more “slightly less muffled” than “true passthrough,” so don’t expect AirPods-style clarity for a crosstown walk. And the case is plasticky in a way that betrays the price the second you hand it to a friend.

If those things matter to you and you can stretch to $99, the Soundcore Liberty 4 NC is the genuine upgrade — real ANC, multipoint, and a meaningfully better case. I tested a friend’s pair on the same Caltrain trip and the noise reduction on the engine drone was significant.

Who should actually buy these

If you keep losing earbuds, if your existing pair is one washing-machine cycle from a memorial service, if you’re buying for a teenager who will inevitably step on them — the P20i is the rational answer. The math is simple: at this price, you can lose them once a year for the next four years and still come out ahead of one pair of AirPods Pro 2.

For my use case — commuter, gym, occasional flight — they’re also just genuinely good enough that I haven’t reached for the more expensive pair in 30 days. I didn’t expect that to be true when I clicked “Add to Cart” in April.

Current Amazon price hovers between $24 and $32 depending on the day — I check the listing on Amazon before recommending them to friends, since Anker runs frequent lightning deals. At $24 these are an obvious yes; at $40 they’re still good, but the upgrade story to the Liberty 4 NC gets stronger.

Featured photo by Jonas Von Werne on Pexels. SmartBuy may earn a commission on Amazon purchases made through links in this article — our editorial picks are independent.