I’ve been using these super-cheap hellphones for a month — I’m shocked to report they don’t sound like a boiling cauldron

Greetings, sinners and signal nerds! Techie Tormento here, your favorite gentle gremlin of gear, reporting live from the Fifth Circle’s Audio Lab, where the bass drops harder than a guilty soul. Today I’m reviewing the ScorchAudio Focus A1 Perdition Pros — a pair of budget brimstone cans that cost fewer soul-shards than a lukewarm latte at BeelzeBucks.

Let’s char through specs before the flames die down:
– Drivers: 40mm Sulfur-Diaphragm “Char-Coil” transducers
– Wireless: Blighttooth 5.hiss with LCH (Low Cackle High) codec support
– Battery: Rated 66 hours brim-to-brim, 6 hours to full via Forked USB-C
– ANC: Abyssal Noise Cancellation (ANC-ish, honestly AN-“C-ya”)
– Weight: Featherlight, like the promises of a demon influencer
– App: None. Zip. Zero. Zilch. You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit of eternal lamentation

Sound quality
Against all infernal probabilities, these hellphones slap. The 40mm Char-Coils deliver a warm, smoky V-shaped signature: mids sprinkled with ash, treble that sizzles without singeing, and bass that thumps like a herd of minotaurs in steel-toed hooves. On “Ballad of the Betrayer” by The Screaming Pit Choir, sub-bass dug a respectable pit around 35Hz without devolving into pure brimstone rumble. Imaging is better than a budget pact typically allows; I tracked spectral wails around my head like a tormented carousel. Soundstage? Not vast, but wider than your average lava grotto. Think “intimate torture chamber,” not “cathedral of screams.”

Build and comfort
They look and feel… cheap. Like “won at the Carnival of Regrets” cheap. All-plastic headband with a tinny creak, earcups that wobble like a goblin’s moral compass. But they’re stupid-light and the protein-leather pads are soft enough to lull a gargoyle. Clamping force is merciful — a rare word down here — so even seven-hour doomscrolling sessions didn’t leave pitchfork dents.

Battery life
Unholy long. I got 62 hours with ANC off, 41 with ANC on, volume at “drown out the lamentations.” They sip charge like a cautious imp at its first blood-orange spritzer. There’s fast-charge lite: 10 minutes nets about 4 hours. The LED indicator, however, blinks like it’s trying to send me Morse code for “help, I’m trapped in a factory.”

Connectivity
Pairing is mostly painless: hold, hiss, connect. Multipoint is supposedly “experimental” (translation: it works when Mercury’s in retrograve). Latency for video is fine on Blighttooth; gaming still benefits from a sacrificial 3.5mm cable, which, praise the Pit, is included and made of “tangle-ready” demon vine.

ANC and transparency
Let me put it poetically: the Abyssal Noise Cancellation is about as effective as a screen door on a magma barge. It hum-tames, fans-fade, carriage of wails — meh. Midrange chatter from officious imps still pokes through. Transparency mode? There is none. You’ll have to lift an earcup or trust your survival instincts.

Controls and features
Clicky plastic buttons, baby. Volume up, volume down, play/pause, ANC toggle that mostly toggles your expectations. Without an app, there’s no EQ, no firmware, no arcane ritual UI. What you hear is what you get — mercifully decent out of the box. Voice prompts are delivered by a chipper demoness who pronounces “Connected” like she’s inviting you to a pyramid scheme.

Call quality
Mics are fine if you’re not in a wind tunnel of damned souls. In quiet caves, my voice sounded clear; in the Screamer’s Bazaar, callers heard “whoooosh” plus “is that a banshee?” Bonus: sidetone exists if you double-tap the pause button and whisper a minor curse.

The torment list (cons)
– Feels toyish; creaks like a haunted door
– ANC is performative at best, decorative at worst
– No app, no EQ, no fun sliders for us tinker imps
– Multipoint is moody
– Branding font looks like it was forged in Microsoft Paint of Agony

The tiny miracles (pros)
– Genuinely enjoyable sound for pocket-soul pricing
– Featherweight comfort for marathon misery sessions
– Battery that outlasts several minor apocalypses
– Acceptable mics, included cable, and they fold flat for pouch purgatory

Verdict
Against my hotter judgment, the ScorchAudio Focus A1 Perdition Pros are the budget bangers to beat in the Underrealm. They don’t try to be premium; they try to be pleasant — and somehow succeed. If you need bulletproof ANC or crave app-tinkering like a goblin needs shiny, look higher up the fiery food chain. But if you want shockingly good sound, silly-long stamina, and comfort light enough for a wraith, these are a helluva buy.

Score: 8.0 sulfur stars out of 10 — subtract 1 for the creaks, 1 for the cosplay ANC. Still my current “cheapo champion of the Pit.”

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to A/B test these against the Cerberus Triple-Head Mk.III. Early impressions: three heads, three times the disappointment.

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Techie Tormento

Tech Reviewer at The Inferno Report

A gadget-loving demon who's always up-to-date with the latest infernal technologies. Techie's reviews are filled with technical jargon, mixed with a good dose of sarcasm about the shortcomings of hellish tech.

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