The best wireless earbuds promise comfort, a secure fit, great sound quality and reliable Bluetooth connectivity all packaged in a compact design. Our reviewers have tested hundreds of earbuds – from wired earbuds to the best true wireless earbuds models – so we know exactly what you can get for your money, and which are the best value.
When looking at the best wireless earbuds, we consider audio quality, battery life, comfort, and extra smart features, including active noise cancellation. Every pick in our list below is worth your time – many even feature in our ultimate best headphones guide – and we think there's a pair to suit everyone here, no matter whether you're looking for the best earbuds for Android or iPhone.
The most popular style of headphones today by a long way is true wireless earbuds, and our list consists entirely of these products. AirPods are the best-selling model of them, and the new AirPods 4 and AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation will only help that (our reviews are in-progress) – but AirPods aren't so great if you don't have an iPhone, so you'll find the best AirPods alternatives based on our testing in this list.
There may be wireless earbuds you have in mind that aren't on this list – it doesn't mean we haven't tested them, or we hate them, it just means we think these are a better way to spend your money.
The quick list
Want to cut to the chase and find out which wireless earbuds are the best? Below, you’ll find a roundup of our choices. You can also jump to a more detailed review of every pick, along with our price comparison tool to help you find the best deals.
The best wireless earbuds overall
There's something incredibly special about the sound that these buds can achieve, and with premium features like triple-point connectivity and next-gen Bluetooth, they're very smart, too.
The best mid-priced wireless earbuds
Nothing delivers fun and expansive audio, high-quality active noise cancellation, good app-based features, and the company's signature cool design, all for a great price.
The best budget wireless earbuds
Among our favorite low-cost earbuds of all time. The audio these Sony buds deliver is punchy, their fit is comfortable and snug, and the price is excellent. There's no noise cancellation, though.
The best wireless earbuds for noise blocking
Arguably, the ANC of the new Bose Ultra buds is better than the noise cancellation here… but nothing else is, and those cost lots more. Great sound, supreme silence and a solid fit.
The best low-price noise cancellation
These modestly priced buds are packed full of features that will surprise you, including solid ANC and next-gen Bluetooth. The Nothing Ear (a) are better, but these are cheaper.
The best wireless earbuds for Apple fans
These work seamlessly with Apple products for auto-switching between devices, using Find My if they're lost, Dolby Atmos spatial audio, and more. The sound and ANC are superb, too.
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The best wireless earbuds for Samsung users
These buds have special sauce with Samsung phones, including very hi-res audio and spatial audio, that makes them a perfect fit, along with great sound and noise cancellation.
The best wireless earbuds for supreme sonic clarity
Absolutely exquisite audio quality that's a clear level above other premium earbuds – but battery life isn't great, they're large, and they lack some smart features.
The best wireless earbuds for battery life
With 10 hours from the buds with ANC on, and 48 hours from the case, these earbuds go on and on and on. The cool screen on the case is a highlight too, as is the sound.
I've reviewed over 150 audio products since becoming a tech journalist, ranging from super-budget earbuds to high-end Hi-Res Audio music players. Before joining TechRadar, I spent three years at What Hi-Fi? testing everything the world of audio had to offer; before that, I was a professional dancer. My love of music ties it all together.
Recent updates
October 7, 2024
Replaced the JLab JBuds Mini with the Sony WF-C510 as our 'best budget' pick based on our review.
The best wireless earbuds of 2024
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The best wireless earbuds overall
✅ You like a neutral, natural sound: These impressively coherent, organized and true-to-life earbuds, that will really suit those who want to hear all the detail in their tracks.
✅ You want to switch between devices easily: The triple-point connectivity is the first time we've seen it, and makes it seamless to move between phone, tablet and laptop without re-pairing.
❌ You want huge battery life: The longevity here isn't as impressive as some options – it's fine, it's just not above average.
❌ You need the best noise cancellation: Again, they don't do this badly at all, but the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds 2 at #4 on the list clearly do it better.
The Technics EAH-AZ80 obviously have incredibly tough competition in the form of the likes of the Sony WH-1000XM5 or the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds 2, or Apple AirPods Pro. But the famous audio brand stands out as our general favorite among all those, thanks to the rich combination of features, audio quality and design.
The sound these earbuds make is also highly accomplished – it's both swift and accurate, as well as balanced and detailed. There’s nothing artificial about the way the Technics EAH-AZ80 sound, they offer convincingly realistic and coherent listening in all circumstances. It perhaps could be more energetic and fun, but that's a minor complaint.
In terms of features, their triple-point connectivity is a first in a product of this type, and means you can seamlessly move between three different devices without repairing. It proved stable and useful in testing, too. And thanks to ‘Just My Voice’ technology, we found these earbuds to be far less prone to wind-noise interference than any number of rivals. The active noise cancellation overall is behind the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds 2 at #4 on the list, but they're still strong compared to almost everything else.
They're well-designed, too. They come with a broad range of silicone ear tips to make sure they have a secure fit. We said in our review that "the EAH-AZ80 should stay comfortable no matter the size or shape of your ears".
The battery life is average rather than great, take a look at the JBL Live Beam 3 further down in the guide if playback time is a top priority. But as a total package, they're incredibly impressive and future-proof, with support for next-gen Bluetooth on top of their great app control and rich, involving sound. We rate them as the ultimate all-rounder, though this does all come at a fairly premium price – though still a very competitive one compared to other equivalent earbuds.
Read our full Technics EAH-AZ80 review
| Sound quality (ANC on) | 4.5 / 5 |
| Sound quality (ANC off) | 4.5 / 5 |
| Mic quality | 4 / 5 |
| Battery life (ANC on) | 7 hours |
| Battery life (ANC off) | 10.5 hours |
The best mid-range wireless earbuds
✅ You want great ANC for less: These offer maybe the best noise-stopping power we've heard for their price.
✅ You want serious sound quality: The Ear (a) are a seriously fun and zealous listen, aided by their support for LDAC higher-res wireless tech.
❌ You want spatial audio support: The similar priced Sony WF-C700N offer this, but you won't find it here.
❌ You want long battery life: 5.5 hours with noise cancellation on is distinctly average – again, the Sony buds mentioned above offer 7.5 hours.
Nothing's latest affordable earbuds are a seriously impressive bit of audio power. In our Nothing Ear (a) review, when tested in direct competition with the Sony WF-C700N, which we previously recommended as our favorite buds at around the $100/$100 price, we said "the Nothing earbuds look more premium and feel more foxy. Their noise cancellation is a touch more robust and the sound is every bit as energetic, detailed and zealous, and (dare we say it?) a tad more expansive to boot."
The sound quality is the star here (though it doesn't have all the limelight to itself). Our review called the sound "meaty and arresting", focused less on a delicate hi-fi listen and more on "fun and energy", and we're very happy with that. Naturally, spending more on the Technics at #1 on the list will get you a clear improvement in sound but, as our review said, "for the money, Nothing has tweaked its recipe to near perfection here."
On top of that, we were seriously impressed with the active noise cancellation, which clamped basically all standard droning noise, with only louder and more chaotic sounds breaking through. And with features such as wear detection (so they auto-pause when you take the out), LDAC hi-res audio support, multi-point pairing, and the Nothing app for tweaking the EQ and other features, they're about as well-specced as anything you can get for this price. The 5.5-hour battery life with ANC on is nothing special, but we're happy to forgive it – and it's the same with the lack of spatial audio support. We don't mind at all, not when you're getting such good value in the essentials, as well as other nice features.
Read our full Nothing Ear (a) review
| Sound quality (ANC on) | 4.5 / 5 |
| Sound quality (ANC off) | 4.5 / 5 |
| Mic quality | 3.5 / 5 |
| Battery life (ANC on) | 5.5 hours |
| Battery life (ANC off) | 9.5 hours |
The best budget wireless earbuds
✅ You need cheap buds: They're our budget pick for a reason. If you want affordable buds, this is the best choice around right now balancing price and sound.
✅ You value longevity: It's not the best battery life you'll find. But we measured essentially hours of playback, which is great for the price.
❌ You want noise cancellation: There are budget buds with active noise cancellation (see the Earfun in this list), but these miss out.
❌ You want to take them travelling: So the battery in the buds is great, but the case battery? Not so much. If you want to use them with charging for days, look elsewhere.
The Sony WF-C510 buds have a launch price of $59.99 / £54.99 / AU$109. Can you find cheaper buds right now? Sure, but won't get quite the same features and, especially, sound quality that you get here – and knowing Sony, these will get great discounts during sales events too.
Thanks to Sony's audio tech, algorithms and what we described in our review as "a reasonably responsive equalizer", the sound here is incredibly enjoyable. It tends to prioritize clean treble over thumping bass, but we think that for most people this is the ideal for everyday listening.
When it comes to features, there's a lot to love for an affordable pair of buds, though you won't find wear detection or any kind of ‘find my buds’ feature. Strangely, we both loved and hated the battery on offer. By which we mean the buds pack in a solid 11 hours of standard use, which held up in our testing, or eight hours with Sony's sound pass-through mode on. And this is excellent, but the case is disappointing battery-wise, only bringing you one extra charge of the buds, when most rivals pack two or three charges. What that means is the buds themselves are good for all-day listening. But if you planned on taking them on a trips without access to power for weekends or a week, pick another pair.
There's no active noise cancellation, but in our testing we were impressed by the passive noise isolation, which is probably due to the fact they offer such a snug fit. This is thanks to the improved design, lightweight build at less than 5g per bud, and a grippy material on the exterior. We put them through their paces during testing, even taking them on workouts, but our reviewer reported: "never once did a bud fall from my ears."
All in all, these are a highly accomplished pair of buds that impress even more considering their low price point. They're excellent value and prove that while Sony can do the elite, high-end of audio tech well for those with cash to spare, it can create just as effective affordable buds for everyone else. We wouldn't be surprised if these buds actually draw people away from more premium options, as we wrote in our review: "Who needs to pay double, triple or even quadruple the price when cheap and cheery gets you this far?"
Read our full Sony WF-C510 review
| Sound quality (ANC on) | N/A |
| Sound quality (ANC off) | 4.5 / 5 |
| Mic quality | 4.5 / 5 |
| Battery life (ANC on) | N/A |
| Battery life (ANC off) | 11 hours |
The best wireless earbuds for ANC
✅ Noise cancellation is vital: These offer simply the best noise stopping power for the price (the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds maybe do it even better, but they cost a load more).
✅ You like a finely balanced sound: Whatever Bose's CustomTune does inside your ear, it works really well. The sound is very well balanced.
❌ You want a slim, light bud: These are about as bulky as mainstream earbuds get in this day and age, and their case is pretty large. AirPods Pro 2 (#6 on this list) or Sony LinkBuds S are much slimmer and lighter.
❌ You’d want higher-quality Bluetooth: No LDAC, no aptX – you're on average-quality streaming only here.
If your number one priority is active noise cancellation, then these are our top pick. There's an argument that the newer Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds are actually better for ANC, but they're significantly more expensive (especially since these buds have had some great price drops) and the difference isn't so large that we think it's necessary to go for the 2023 model – the ones we're recommending are still ahead of everything else here.
The best news is that this excellent noise cancellation isn't at the expense of sound quality. In our review, we wrote: "We can’t stress this enough – the sound is very well balanced, with a heck of a lot of details and textures coming through. And if you still find you need to tweak it, you can via the EQ in the app."
The buds are quite bulky, which will not suit everyone, though they do feel quite secure in ear. Too secure, some might feel, especially those with smaller ears. The six hours of battery from the buds with 18 more from the case is also pretty average – not bad, not great. There's also no high-res audio option, spatial audio or multi-point pairing, but the Ultra model does offer those if you want them.
Not everyone needs all mod cons. Some people want one in particular, and if blocking as much outside sound as possible at a reasonable price is your goal, these are you new best friends.
To save money on Bose products, check out our Bose voucher codes.
Read our full Bose QuietComfort Earbuds 2 review
| Sound quality (ANC on) | 4 / 5 |
| Sound quality (ANC off) | 3.5 / 5 |
| Mic quality | 3 / 5 |
| Battery life (ANC on) | 5 hours |
| Battery life (ANC off) | 6 hours |
The best wireless earbuds for cheap ANC
✅ You want affordable all-rounder earbuds: A comfortable fit, reasonable ANC, decent sound quality, future-proof Bluetooth and great battery life – all under $100/£100.
✅ You want a long battery life: There's a lot to like here, but the battery life is near the top of the list. High-end buds don't even get this much life usually.
❌ You expect total silence from the ANC: Being cheaper means they're not as noise-blocking as more expensive buds. It helps, but if you spend more, you get more.
❌ You want audio fidelity: The sound quality is fine, but stepping up to the Nothing earbuds at #2 on the list is like night and day.
If you're looking for a solid pair of wireless earbuds on a budget with noise cancelling baked in and some future-proofing, then we highly recommend the Earfun Air Pro 3.
These earbuds are only $79.99 / £79.99 officially, which makes them excellent value considering they're such all-rounders, and they're the cheapest in our guide with ANC on board – but actually, you'll pay more like $60 / £60, if that, thanks to regular price cuts.
You get active noise cancellation, good sound, a comfy fit, a whole 45 hours of battery life (which is only bested by the JBL Live Beam 3 at the bottom of our guide), and these buds also boast support for the new Bluetooth wireless standard, Bluetooth LE Audio. Right now that doesn't mean much, as few other devices support it – e.g. major smartphones – but that means your buds are ready for when more phones catch up. We can't think of any earbuds that are currently as cheap as this and yet offer such a range of features.
As well as features, the design also has no business looking so elegant and minimal at this price. Although it is worth mentioning they have a long stem design. We found them comfortable to wear with a good seal – vital for ANC – but did knock them out a few times due to the stem, including a problem with them tangling in long hair (which haven't found with most stem designs).
The sound is not the last word in quality in general – you'll get much better fidelity from stepping up to the Nothing Ear (a) at #2 on our list – but in our review we said we "liked their punchy sound and found them fun to listen to". Similarly, the noise cancellation is notably weaker than more expensive models, but does its job of softening background noise so you can actually hear what's going on.
Read the full Earfun Air Pro 3 review
| Sound quality (ANC on) | 3.5 / 5 |
| Sound quality (ANC off) | 3.5 / 5 |
| Mic quality | 2 / 5 |
| Battery life (ANC on) | 6.5 hours |
| Battery life (ANC off) | 9.5 hours |
The best wireless earbuds for Apple fans
✅ You want superb sound and noise cancellation: The audio quality is extremely strong, and the noise cancellation is nearly as good as you can right now.
✅ You're in the Apple ecosystem: They've got lots of extra features for iPhone users, including Spatial Audio and Find My support – and they switch seamlessly between all your devices.
❌ You want good battery life: These are distinctly average when it comes to the battery – most buds match or beat them, even with similar features.
❌ You don't have an iPhone: If you're an Android user, you'll miss out on features if you get these compared to other earbuds that have app control on Android.
The Apple AirPods Pro 2 offer rich, detailed and powerful audio performance plus stunning ANC in design that's much smaller and more lightweight than most of the premium earbuds competition. In our testing of both the original model and the new USB-C version, we've found the active noise cancellation to be better than the vast majority of earbuds, blocking out almost all external sounds – though the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds 2 (#4 on this list) have them beat.
Battery life in the buds is distinctly average compared to the other options in this guide, but they're good for a long listening period at six hours – and the 30 hours from the charging case as well is actually quite high compared to other options.
As always with Apple products, these buds are best suited to iPhone users thanks to unique features such as head-tracked Dolby Atmos spatial audio that's extremely impressive, Find My support including ultra-wideband precision location tracking (so you can find them down the side of the sofa), and auto-switching between your Apple devices seamlessly, giving the equivalent of multipoint connectivity on more devices than most. Of course, you need an Apple device to enjoy all of this – ideally all Apple devices.
The price is relatively low compared to premium options such as the Sony WF-1000XM5 or the Technics EAH-AZ80, which is why we think Apple users should be seriously considering them as their pick for a premium pair of buds – but if you're not heavily in on Apple, something more platform-neutral may be better overall.
Read our full Apple AirPods Pro 2 review
| Sound quality (ANC on) | 4.5 / 5 |
| Sound quality (ANC off) | 4.5 / 5 |
| Mic quality | 4 / 5 |
| Battery life (ANC on) | 6 hours |
| Battery life (ANC off) | 9 hours |
The best wireless earbuds for Samsung fans
✅ You have a Samsung Galaxy phone: The Buds 3 Pro offer a load of extra smarts when used with Samsung phones, including spatial audio and AI features.
✅ You want Samsung's best audio quality: Samsung's 24-bit audio (again, if you have its own phones to use with the buds) is superb for elite music fans.
❌ You want big features on another phone brand: General Android users won't get as much from these buds, and iPhone users don't even get an app to control them.
❌ You want the absolute best value: They're excellent, but they're not cheap, and non-Samsung owners won't get as much out of them.
Samsung's earbuds are much like AirPods, in that they full of extra juicy features if you're a Samsung phone owner. That ranges from 24-bit hi-res audio that's beyond what most buds can offer, head-tracked spatial audio that works with Dolby Atmos, and AI features including live language translation and a mode to improve speech quality for calls.
The even have a similar design to AirPods, featuring the stick extending down from the earbuds, but the look is a little more futuristic. We said in our review "they look like what you'd get if you threw Apple’s earbuds and a Toblerone into a blender". They also use the same kind of pinching-to-pause and swiping-to-change-volume gestures as the AirPods Pro 2, but pinching the angle stem proved to be kind of a pain.
Thankfully, the sound is a slam dunk thanks to their dual-driver setup. "Frankly, these earbuds sound fantastic, with some of the best sound in any earbuds I’ve tested," our review said. We praised the "meaty bass" as well as the "defined treble" and said it suited all genres we threw at it.
The noise cancellation is very impressive as well, and they're very comfortable in general to wear, though we found that the ear tips are a pain to remove, and are prone to being torn when you try, so make sure you hold them near the base when you pull them off the unit.
We would only steer you to these over the Technics at the top of the list if you have a Samsung phone, but if you do, there are very good reasons to grab these buds.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro review
| Sound quality (ANC on) | 4.5 / 5 |
| Sound quality (ANC off) | 4 / 5 |
| Mic quality | 4 / 5 |
| Battery life (ANC on) | 6 hours |
| Battery life (ANC off) | 7 hours |
