16 best wireless earbuds for audio quality, convenience and noise control

You don’t need to spend over £100 for great in-ear headphones. After testing the Sony WF-C710N earbuds, we think these buds are a top value all-rounder, with upgraded in-ear detection, wind noise reduction, clearer calls, better battery life and improved noise cancellation over their predecessors, the WF-C700N.

They have a compact size, comfortable fit, and rich, detailed sound quality. They’ve also got highly effective noise-cancelling, silencing sounds like our commuter train and office chatter with no issues. We’re big fans of Sony’s Adaptive Sound Control feature too, which adjusts the noise-cancelling mode based on your activity and can be set to recognise locations and turn on the best noise control modes.

There are a couple of minor downsides, such as the lack of customisation for the touch controls and the case feeling overly bulky. You can also get more battery life from a model like the Soundcore Liberty 4 NC, or ever so slightly better sound, dust and water resistance from a rival like the Nothing Ear (a). But the competition is close between these affordable rivals.

We think the Sony WF-C710N earbuds are an excellent choice, with some of the best sound and noise-cancellation we’ve heard in this price range, along with a comfortable fit. Not fussed about noise-cancelling? We recommend the similar but even more affordable Sony WF-C510 (also on this list), too, for those after small and capable earbuds that are under £60.

Read our Sony WF-C710N review

Available in semi-transparent white, black or yellow designs, the Nothing Ear (a) earbuds are our top pick for anybody after quality wireless earbuds under £100. With a cool, see-through design and compact size, they’re also packed with impressive features.

The sound quality is genuinely top-notch, delivering crisp and clear audio that could easily challenge earbuds that cost twice as much. Plus, they’ve got adaptive noise-cancelling that works brilliantly, cutting out background noise whether you’re on a busy commute or just trying to focus at work. Compared to the pricier Nothing Ear, they miss out on a few app features and don’t have wireless charging, but those are easy to overlook considering how well they perform for this price. The intuitive pinch controls are simple to use too, and the companion app adds some convenient features and perks.

When you stack them up against rivals like the Soundcore Liberty 4NC and Sony WF-C710N, the Nothing Ear (a) hold their own with an edge when it comes to style and sound quality. Now that the Sony pair is typically at a lower price, we recommend those if you’re on a tighter budget and we’d choose these instead if you have up to £100 to spend.

Sure, the battery life isn’t the longest out there, but you’ll still get over 24 hours of use with the case, and 5.5 hours per full charge is more than enough for daily use. Overall, when we tested the Nothing Ear (a), we found them a great mix of affordability and high-end features. They prove you don’t need to spend loads to get fantastic earbuds, and they leave us questioning how others can charge so much more for similar quality.

Read our comparison between the Nothing Ear (a) and Nothing Ear

In our view, the best all-rounders are premium wireless buds that deliver in all the key areas without missing features. These are the buds to go for if you use a variety of different devices and want an option with top-tier noise-cancelling, transparency, sound quality, multi-device connectivity, app control, features, customisability and more.

Right now, it’s the flagship Technics EAH-AZ100 that deliver the most convincing performance of all the options we’ve tried. They’re also a big upgrade on the EAH-AZ80, which were our previous pick for the best all-rounder buds on the market. The new ones have greatly improved noise-cancelling, a more comfortable design, exceptional sound quality from the “Magnetic Fluid Drivers” and an impressive 10-hour battery life on a single charge.

On test, we were blown away by just how much the hi-fi brand has managed to cram into these compact but high-spec buds. They’re great for taking calls, amazing for music, powerful for noise-cancelling, and so much more. We know the £259 price may seem steep, but if you’re after buds for multiple different uses, these are the best we’ve tried. It’s also worth noting that earbuds from Technics are the only ones on the market with triple-device multipoint, so they can stay connected to your phone, tablet and laptop simultaneously, with seamless switching.

You can tell we're impressed when the cost is the only real downside. Of course, Apple fans may still prefer AirPods, and Samsung users may be best with Galaxy buds, but anyone using several different platforms will get a lot out of the AZ100. We think they’re an ideal all-in-one pair for frequent use. Yes, they’re pricey, but they’re also hard to fault.

Read our Technics EAH-AZ100 review

They may not have an eye-catching design, but these budget Soundcore buds are one of the best deals in wireless audio with a low price under £30. They’re the best cheap wireless earbuds we’ve tested. They're well-rounded, with good app controls and a lot of playtime from a single charge.

It’s impressive to see a pair with such comprehensive app support at a low price. They offer a range of equaliser presets, a low-latency gaming mode, and customisable touch controls. They do miss out on extras like multi-device pairing, active noise-cancelling and wireless charging, though.

We like that they have a compact and comfortable design, long-lasting battery and they come with a convenient lanyard. The default sound signature of the earbuds is quite bass-heavy without quite as much clarity as we’d prefer. However, it’s possible to change the sound with the range of options in the app, like “Acoustic”, “Podcast” and “Electronic” modes.

While these are great for those on a budget, it doesn’t cost too much more to step up to an option like the Soundcore Liberty 4NC when they’re on offer. We also recommend the Nothing Ear (a) and CMF Buds Pr0 2 as better options that are still under £100. However, the P20i is great value and our top recommendation to anyone on a very tight budget.

There’s a lot of choice in the earbud market, but there’s a reason why Apple still dominates eight years after it launched its first AirPods. If you use an iPhone, iPad or Mac, the flagship AirPods Pro are our all-around top pick for noise-cancelling, transparency, sound quality and extra features.

The 2nd generation AirPods Pro are full of convenient features for Apple users, including personalised Spatial Audio, hands-free support for the Siri voice assistant, “Find My” support (for when you inevitably misplace one of the buds or the case) and audio sharing with other AirPod and Beats models.

They also deliver exemplary audio full of richness and detail, along with the best transparency mode in any wireless bud. However, it’s tricky to access settings and use them with Android devices, so we’d only recommend them for Apple fans.

The call quality is excellent too, so we recommend these for all your phone calls, FaceTime chats, and Zoom or Teams meetings if you work from an Apple laptop. It’s also worth mentioning that these earbuds are comfortable and lightweight, coming in a highly pocketable charging case. They also get a lot of updates, with the most recent one enabling them to be used as hearing aids.

We wish they were available in another colour other than white, but that’s such a minor drawback given that these are tremendous all-rounders for anyone with Apple devices. And, if you love the idea of noise-cancelling but don't like the feel of silicone ear tips, we also recommend the latest AirPods 4 with Noise Cancelling.

Read our Apple AirPods Pro 2 review

There’s quite a lot of competition when it comes to delivering the most features in the smallest earbuds, but we’re confident that Sony’s WF-C510 is the top option for most of us.

Our previous pick for small earbuds, the JLab JBuds Mini, are still the tiniest we’ve ever come across, while the Beats Solo Buds are a solid pick for battery life and the premium Beyerdynamic Amiron 300 delivers high-end sound and noise-cancelling in a compact bud size. The Sony WF-C510 make the fewest compromises at the most tempting price, though, offering excellent sound, a useful app, a comfortable fit, great controls and an ambient awareness mode.

At just 4.6g per bud, they’ve got a lightweight and streamlined design for a comfortable in-ear fit, and they’re packed with features including Bluetooth multipoint for dual device connections, Spotify Tap for quick music access, and custom sound profiles that are accessible in the Sony Sound Connect app. Like the WF-C500 model they replace, they deliver excellent audio with lots of clarity and great vocals, making them a top pick for loads of music genres.

The battery life is solid too, lasting up to 11 hours per charge and giving you a full extra charge with the case. You might miss noise-cancelling (although the passive seal is so good we sometimes forget they don’t have it!) and some premium app-based extras, but these give you loads of features and impress as some of the best small and affordable buds you can buy right now.

Read our Sony WF-C510 review

It's hard to pick between the range of premium hi-fi earbuds on the market. The Technics EAH-AZ100 and Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 are fantastic, but you shouldn’t overlook the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 4.

They’re better value than those pairs, and highly refined with several handy features in the outstanding Smart Control Plus companion app. These include Auracast audio sharing, a low-latency mode, personalised sound and fully customisable controls. The sleek metal design is stylish (and available in three great colours), but the chunkier charging case is a bit of a downside.

The number one reason to invest in this pair is for a natural and immersive sound quality. They deliver a wonderful listening experience if you’re after richness, detail and a wide soundstage. You can take a hearing test to personalise the sound, too. Sennheiser hasn’t designed its subtler noise-cancelling to beat the best, but it still does a good job in most scenarios, and these are comfortable to wear.

We've found that the fabric-covered charging case can pick up scuffs and isn’t what we’d call pocketable. But, beyond that, we’d struggle to come up with major critiques. We’ve tested them for over a year, so can confirm they’re some of the most reliable pairs we’ve used, especially with their future-ready features and battery-preserving functionality. The Momentum True Wireless 4 have several rivals, but they’re among the best you can buy.

Mainly using your earbuds with an iPhone or iPad? Trust us that you’ll be better off with a pair of AirPods over rival options. That’s because they’re easier to set up and use, and come with several Apple-exclusive modes and options. The AirPods Pro 2 are the best ones, but the AirPods 4 aren’t far behind!

They offer many of the same premium features as the flagship pair at a more accessible price point. And they're the best buds if you find a semi-open design without ear tips comfortable. They’re also super lightweight and compact. They do “perch” in your ears rather than locking in with silicone tips, but we’ve found this design great for everyday wear as long as you’re not doing vigorous exercise.

They integrate seamlessly with Apple products, and support features like automatic pairing with every device in your Apple account, auto-device switching, notification announcements, improved call quality and personalised volume. The premium pair with noise cancelling also gets conversation awareness and adaptive audio, all thanks to the high-end H2 chip.

The sound is great for everything from pop music and classical symphonies to podcasts and films (especially with the immersive spatial audio support). They’ve also got noise cancelling, if you go for the version with that option, and we found it more impressive than you’d expect given the semi-open fit.

Ultimately, if your top priorities are convenience, portability and ease of use with Apple devices, the AirPods 4 are where we’d start.

Read our Apple AirPods 4 review

While we recommend Apple users pick up the AirPods Pro 2, it’s not worth getting those if you’re on an Android device. It’s possible to make them work and they still sound good, but many features won’t be available and it’s harder to change settings. Apple doesn’t offer an app for Android, so it’s a non-starter.

But if you love your flagship Samsung smartphone, the tech giant offers high-end buds to match. The latest Galaxy Buds 3 Pro are ideal for Samsung compatibility, pairing seamlessly with Galaxy smartphones and delivering crisp high-res audio, in addition to excellent microphone performance.

They also come with exclusive Samsung features including high-res and 360-degree audio, quicker pairing, automatic switching between Samsung devices, hands-free access to the Bixby voice assistant and location tracking via the SmartThings app. They now have built-in voice control and smart pinch and swipe gestures on the buds.

On test, we noticed the feature set is comparable to the fast pairing and auto-switching of AirPods, along with Apple’s hands-free Siri access and spatial audio options. In real-world environments, we found the noise-cancelling was good enough to silence a busy office and decent for use on a loud tube carriage, although the “siren detect” feature was too easily triggered in our experience.

Overall, we love the dynamic audio experience from these buds and they’re definitely worth it for Samsung fans who’ll use the perks.

Read our Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro review

These Bose buds don’t come cheap, but they’re worth it if your main priority is active noise-cancelling. We’re yet to hear any buds cut out background distractions this effectively, although Apple’s AirPods Pro and Sony’s WF-1000XM5 come incredibly close.

For top-notch ANC and sound quality, though, we think the Bose option makes for an appealing package, especially as the customisable fit helps them block more passive noise than others. They come in a compact and pocketable charging case, deliver a solid battery life, a comfortable design that we can wear for hours and an immersive mode to make the audio sound like it’s all around you.

We find that these are able to deliver near-complete silence, whether we’re in a busy cafe or needing to focus at the office. When testing them, we took them on a flight and found that they thoroughly muted the cabin, just as well as in louder environments like certain sections of the London Underground. The customisation in the app is also impressive – we like how you can create different specific profiles (like “Home” or “Commute”) with different noise-cancelling levels.

It’s a shame the case doesn’t have wireless charging, but must-haves like the audio performance, fit, and ANC are so impressive that we’d pick these over competitors with some extra features.

Read our Bose QuietComfort Ultra earbuds review

Our top choice for gym-goers, the Beats Fit Pro wireless earbuds are an excellent pick if you're after reliable workout earphones that work just as well with iPhones as they do with Android phones. The best feature is the secure fit provided by flexible silicone wing tips. This makes sure they always remain in place during intense workouts, unlike several other options we wouldn't trust to stay put.

Performance-wise, the Beats Fit Pro delivers. They boast impressive sound quality with a bass-heavy profile that enhances your workout playlists. The active noise-cancelling feature is comparable to leading competitors, so they're great whether you're at the gym or commuting. Additionally, the transparency mode allows you to remain aware of your surroundings, a useful safety feature when running outdoors.

For those worried about compatibility, these earbuds are suitable for both Apple and Android users, thanks to features like Google Fast Pair and a dedicated app for customisation. While they may lack wireless charging and have a somewhat bulky case, these are minor issues compared to their overall benefits.

The Beats Fit Pro also aced the Good Housekeeping Institute tests to make it into their roundup of the best exercise headphones, and they stayed firmly in place during even bouncy and sweaty workouts. They're competitively priced, have a robust design, excellent audio quality, and they come in a great range of colours too.

The Ear is the latest launch from the London-based tech startup Nothing, and they’re a refinement of 2023’s Ear (2), which was already a massive improvement on the brand’s debut earbuds.

These deliver an impressive sound quality with just the right balance and natural reproduction of your playlist. They outperform several more expensive rivals in this department. These deliver a refined and dynamic rendition of everything from Adele’s ‘Rolling in the Deep’ to Dire Straits’ ‘Brothers in Arms’, never overpowering anything with overly boosted bass (as long as you turn off “bass enhance” in the app).

We continuously pick these up because that nuanced sound is still so evident at lower volumes too, something we can’t say about some of the more expensive competitor models. We also love the distinctive semi-transparent design (available in either black or white) and find these tiny earbuds comfortable to wear for several hours at a time. However, the battery performance isn’t quite as competitive compared to some rivals.

Overall, though, these are an excellent buy that gives you amazing sound, an eye-catching design and solid connectivity for £129 (RRP). The noise-cancelling is decent too, but the real value here is in the audio quality itself.

If you use a Google Pixel smartphone – or almost any Android phone – it’s worth knowing that the latest upgrades to the Pixel Buds Pro 2 offer a noticeable improvement and make them the clearest AirPods Pro alternatives for those on Android.

Google has done a great job of miniaturising all the components here to give these a really compact size and comfortable fit in your ears. It has done so while improving active noise cancellation, transparency and the richness and detail of the sound quality.

They’re a seamless fit into Google’s wider ecosystem of Pixel devices – like the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, 9 Pro Fold, and Pixel Tablet – with a handful of Pixel-exclusive features (360-degree audio and head tracking) but most of the functionality is available on any Android phone.

They have a great companion app that gives you an ear tip fit test, conversation detection, sound equaliser profiles, Find My Device support, Bluetooth multipoint, automatic device switching and hearing wellness settings. You also get hands-free Google Gemini access and support for “Gemini Live” for free-flowing conversations with the AI assistant.

While there’s no iPhone app and the charging case tends to pick up dust and marks, there aren’t really many significant downsides to these tiny buds.

Read our Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 review

The most important feature for gamers is “low latency” and the Arctis GameBuds deliver ultra low-latency when used with the little USB-C dongle nestled away in the charging case.

Once plugged into a games console or audio source and switched over to the 2.4GHz radio connection, there's far less lag between what happens onscreen and the sound you hear in the buds. In practice, this latency is almost imperceptible, and the big benefit is that this allows players to react to gameplay more quickly.

While we’re not serious gamers, we’ve tested this connectivity by using the GameBuds with a Nintendo Switch, iPad Air and MacBook Air. The buds are designed to work seamlessly with any product that can output audio via a USB-C port, but they do come in two variants: one designed for PlayStation and one made for Xbox. In reality, both types work with PlayStations, computers, handheld consoles and mobile phones, but the Xbox version has extra security within the chipset and a switch on the dongle to connect to an Xbox.

What about use beyond gaming? The GameBuds share a lot in common with Jabra's discontinued Elite range of earbuds. That’s unsurprising, as SteelSeries is owned by GN Group, which also owns Jabra. Just like the great Jabra buds, the GameBuds offer excellent sound quality for music and films and include fantastic physical button controls in an ergonomic design.

They’ve also got capable active noise-cancelling and transparency modes, a great companion app, wireless charging, a pocketable case, IP55 water and dust resistance, and 10 hours of gaming time on a single charge when used with the dongle. Essentially, they’re a full package for on-the-go gaming fans.

A built-in little screen on the charging case for a pair of earbuds is both innovative and useful. We’re big fans of the smart case on the JBL Live Beam 3 earbuds, as it works like a tiny phone display to show you alerts and make controls easier to access.

It's useful for setting a custom wallpaper (such as the Good Housekeeping logo we added to ours), viewing notifications from your phone, checking battery percentages and controlling noise-cancellation, ambient modes, volume levels and playback without getting out your phone.

What about the other features? Well, we’re happy to say these are packed with useful additions that are both accessible on the case and the companion smartphone app. Some of our favourites include a personalised hearing test to get the sound just right for your ears, a safe volume limit and low-volume adaptations to keep the playlists sounding good without you needing to turn it up.

They’ve also got effective noise-cancellation and ambient modes, and the overall sound performance is engaging, energetic and detailed. Aside from the slightly larger case size, we’d struggle to find downsides to these inventive buds. They’re the full package with personalised sound, a good fit, lots of battery life and a versatile charging case – and you get all this for under £150 too.

It's also worth noting that JBL now makes a highly advanced Tour Pro 3 pair with a bigger screen on its charging case and far improved comfort, sound quality and noise-cancelling. These are pricey but worth considering for the best connectivity and future-facing features.

Read our JBL Live Beam 3 review

We’ve yet to hear a pair of wireless earbuds that deliver as much precision, musicality and clarity as the Bowers & Wilkins Pi8. If sound quality is your top priority, these luxurious buds have got to be at the top of the list, even with the high price tag of £349. In addition to the superior sonic experience, these are thoughtfully redesigned when compared to their predecessors, with improved comfort and controls.

The sound is the main appeal, though. These bring in 12mm high-end carbon cone drivers – the same material used in B&W’s flagship over-ear PX8 headphones – for a rich and balanced experience. The performance feels natural and engaging – the high notes are clear and the bass is deep, controlled and immersive.

They’ve also got effective active noise-cancellation, which is improved by the optimised fit, and we’re fans of the audio retransmission feature from the charging case, which allows you to plug it into an analogue source – like an inflight entertainment system, gym equipment, CD player or turntable – and will beam the sound over to the buds.

As much as we love these, you need to be a real music lover to get the most out of them, and we think it could be hard to justify the premium price. B&W has also launched a more affordable Pi6 pair at £219, but we haven’t tried those yet to see how they compare to the new flagship.

Read our Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 review