Who Needs Transparency Modes When You’ve Got These Open-Style Earbuds?

Key Takeaways

• At a list price of $70, the 1MORE Fit SE S31 offer budget-friendly open-style earbuds with good sound quality.
• Comfortable with around-ear hooks, the S31 have an IPX5 rating and offer a secure fit for exercise and activities.
• Max battery life of 30 hours and customizable options with the 1MORE app make the S31 a solid purchase.

If you don’t like the feeling of traditional earbuds, which require a tight fit, open-style earbuds can be a great alternative since they also let you easily hear your surroundings. These aren’t always cheap, but the 1MORE Fit SE Open Earbuds S31 are a solid, affordable option.

Price and Availability

The 1MORE Fit SE S31 are available direct via 1MORE, as well as retailers like Amazon. They retail for $69.99 and come in two color varieties: black (also known as Sporty) and white (also known as Modern).

Readers familiar with 1MORE products may have noticed already but the Fit SE 31 are a direct follow-up to the Fit SE S30. If you want to save money, you can now find those older models for sale for around $45.

Comfortable, But They Take Some Getting Used To

If you’ve seen open-style earbuds before, these will look familiar. Like most earbuds of this style, these use around-ear hooks to keep the earpieces hovering just outside of your ears. In the case of the S31, the hooks use a silicone coating for comfort and to keep from slipping, ensuring a better fit.

It took me a while to find the right fit, using the “rotate the hook around your ear” technique until I found the right spot. Once I did, the S31 stayed in place well. They were comfortable, too, even for multiple-hour stints, though they weren’t quite as comfortable as the Beyerdynamic VERIO 200 I reviewed, a pricier set of similar open-style earbuds.

Don’t worry if you’re considering taking these on a run. Between the anti-slip coating and the IPX5 water resistance, you shouldn’t need to worry. While you don’t want to dunk these in the kitchen sink, a little sweat or a sudden rainstorm catching you out won’t ruin your earbuds.

One thing worth mentioning is that the case is more difficult to open than most others I’ve encountered. The earbuds are also somewhat tricky to remove from the case, and they seem particular about the order you place them back in the case. At least with my review unit, I always seemed to have an easier time placing the left earbud, followed by the right.

Touchy Controls and a Simple, Usable App

Overall, my time testing the 1MORE Fit SE S31 went fairly smoothly, but not at first. The initial pairing was rough: at first, the earbuds showed up as two separate devices. A reset using the button inside the charging case fixed this, but this was odd, considering my review unit came out of a shrink-wrapped retail box.

The controls are handled via capacitive touch panels on either earbud, and this didn’t fill me with much hope. As I feared, the controls were touchy at times and not as responsive as I would have liked at others, but this is true of earbuds costing multiple times the price of the S31.

The good news is that if you don’t like the mapping of the default controls, you can customize them using the 1MORE app, available for iPhone and Android devices. While you can’t customize everything, this is how to add controls for triple-tap actions, which are disabled by default.

The app also features a limited EQ feature, with just a few presets and no custom options. In terms of unusual features, you’ll also find a smart burn-in option, although whether headphone burn-in is necessary is debatable, especially for smaller drivers like these.

Good Sound Quality, Your Surroundings Included

The Fit SE S31 feature 14.2mm drivers, which would be massive if we were talking about standard earbuds. Because these drivers don’t sit inside your ear canals, but instead hover just above them, the larger drivers are necessary to have any semblance of bass.

Listening to Soccer Team’s All the Walkers Home I noticed that the S31 were somewhat lacking in low end, especially compared to Beyerdynamic VERIO 200. The lower midrange was also somewhat thin and boxy, but considering the form factor and price, the sound was still relatively full sounding.

Turning to Marvin Gaye’s Flyin’ High (in the Friendly Sky), things picked up significantly. The apparent bass volume was louder and fuller on this track than the previous song. Gaye’s vocals are front and center as usual, but the earbuds treat the strings, bells, and percussion equally nicely, making for a nice listen.

Podcasts and audiobooks sound great on the default Studio EQ settings, as well, so the lack of a voice-friendly EQ preset wasn’t a big deal. That said, one of the EQ presets is aimed at reducing bass, which could be handy if you’re listening to someone with an especially deep or booming voice.

The S31 uses a now-standard four-mic noise-cancellation system to improve voice clarity. While clarity never seemed to suffer, I noticed a slight lack of treble, which makes things sound slightly dull.

Battery Life Stands With Major Players

As we’ve seen with other open-style earbuds, the larger overall enclosure needed for the larger drivers also means more room for batteries. This means that, in the case of the 1MORE Fit SE S31, you get around eight hours of playback time on a single charge.

Pop the earbuds into their included charging case, and the overall playback time increases to 30 hours. This doesn’t include downtime while the earbuds are in the case, but that’s still a good amount of time without needing to plug in your charging case, especially for budget-priced ‘buds.

The case does a good job of showing battery life when you remove the earbuds, with a built-in LED light flashing green, yellow, or red, depending on the overall charge status of the earbuds. It doesn’t support wireless charging, but I won’t complain about this for the price, especially given the difficulties the larger case size may introduce.

Should You Buy the 1MORE Fit SE Open Earbuds S31?

I’ve been both pleasantly surprised and quite let down by open-style earbuds in the past, so I wasn’t sure how my time with these would go. 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 somewhat more than the actual list price.

Not everything is perfect, of course. The controls are fiddly to the point where at times I was sure I was touching the wrong area of the earbuds, and the bass is nowhere near as deep as you’d get in many traditional earbud designs. Of course, these issues also pop up with significantly more expensive earbuds, so it’s difficult to fault the 1MOREs too much here.

If you’re curious about open-style earbuds, but don’t like the idea of spending more than $100 to see if you like them long-term, these are a great way to try them out. Even if you only keep them as a backup for taking on the occasional run or to the gym, you’ll probably find them worth the asking price.