The 8 Best Wireless Earbuds of 2023

What to Look For in Wireless Earbuds

Wireless earbuds command a massive section of the audio market for several reasons. First, since more and more smartphones are doing away with the headphone jack, Bluetooth-connected headphones are a virtual necessity for those who listen to music on the go. Second, wireless earbuds are much more convenient than pulling a tangled nest of wired headphones out of your bag.

Since Apple released the first generation of AirPods in 2016, flagship wireless headphones have largely gone the way of “true wireless,” so much of this guide will focus on the features and considerations when purchasing this style of headphones. These earbuds cut the cord completely, untethering each earbud, so they fit into your ears. Others usually sport earbuds, keep a neckband for a secure fit, have larger batteries, and add features like water and sweat proofing and various ear tip sizes.

Does Wireless Compromise Sound Quality?

Another thing to consider before jumping into wireless specs: wired headphones are still where you'll find the true audiophile headphones. While there are many excellent options in the wireless space, one thing that will naturally hold the audio quality back: is the presence of Bluetooth transmission. That's because, with Bluetooth, your audio is compressed to make it easier to transmit, but it will naturally lose some information in the original file.

That doesn't mean wireless earbuds can't sound impressive—they certainly can with lossless protocols like aptX and LDAC. On top of that, there's the fact that earbuds like the AirPods Pro come with noise-cancellation, letting them blot out background noise to improve your overall listening experience. It's a feature that you rarely get on a wired pair of earbuds, and best-in-class noise canceling from companies like Sony and Bose is only available through their Bluetooth offerings. 

Form Factor: How Much Cord to Cut?

Before getting into the nuts and bolts, ask yourself how vital true wireless is to you. Before true wireless even existed, consumers could purchase wireless headphones where a wire remained to connect the two earbuds. That is still the case and can give you much more bang for your buck. If you don’t mind having a short wire between the earbuds, you’ll get fantastic sound quality from options like the Bose SoundSport wireless earbuds or the Jaybird Tarah or X lines. 

Many true wireless users are prone to a poor fit in the earbud department so a non-true wireless earbud pair might be ideal. If the headphones fall out, they will still be draped around your neck rather than falling to the ground. However, you tend to lose battery life with non-true-wireless earbuds because most don’t include the typical charging case with true wireless units.

Design: Keep Profile in Mind

The look of a pair of earbuds can go in a few directions: you’ll have the bud-and-stem design made famous by Apple, or you’ll have the oblong oval design seen on earbuds from Sony and Anker’s Soundcore brand. You can also get earbuds that are so low-profile that they virtually disappear into your ear, sticking out only marginally.

While many brands stick to a darker color for their earbuds, others stand out with many color options (think: Samsung Galaxy Buds or the M&D MW series). While earbuds are, on some level, always earbuds, this category has a fantastic amount of versatility. But this is subjective, so we recommend considering a lot of brands to find your style.

Comfort: A Snug Fit Matters

One common gripe about AirPods is that they don’t fit snugly into your ear—a fact that Apple responded to with the silicone-tipped AirPods Pro. The stakes for earbud fit become much higher when you consider that true wireless earbuds can fall out of your ear and suffer actual damage when they hit the pavement or get lost.

Most earbuds will come with interchangeable silicone tips (some even include additional foam options), so it’s essential to try all the sizes before wearing them outside. Another consideration of fit and comfort is whether there is a second point of contact outside that ear tip. 

While some of the most popular brands (Sony and Apple included) rely solely on a snug ear tip fit, other brands like Bose and Samsung offer an additional rubber wing that grabs the cartilage of your outer ear. This is a game-changer for those who can’t find a proper fit and is an important consideration.

One last point is on snugness: on the one hand, you want to ensure the earbuds are snug enough to stay in and provide a good seal for better sound quality. However, this can be a little stifling for some listeners. If you don’t love a snug fit and want some breathability, consider Bose SoundSport’s pinched, breathable ear tips or the Apple-style fit.

Build Quality and Durability: Protect Against Water and Sweat

The build quality of wireless headphones is paramount for two reasons: first, it ensures that this often-premium purchase will last you a reasonable amount of time, and second, it ensures that the headphones feel fancy and premium, just like their price tag. Most products are made of soft-touch plastic and a softer-touch silicone ear tip design. Many of the more budget options will lean on a plastic build—so if you want a premium-feeling product, you'll have to shell out for it. 

The other key factor here is waterproofing and dust resistance. This is not a given. Most will sport an IP rating. The letters, followed by a number, denote the "ingress protection" or how well the devices keep out dust and water.

You will often see earbuds with IPX4 or IPX5 (the 4 and 5 denoting mid-to-moderate splashes and drip resistance but minimal resistance to complete immersion into water). Regarding water resistance, the higher the number, the better. An IPX4 device is resistant to splashes from any direction, while IPX5 can resist low-pressure water (being run under a sink, for instance). IPX6 can handle higher-pressure water sprays, while IPX7 means the earbuds can survive complete immersion in 1 meter of water for 30 minutes. 

Most earbuds don't fill in a number for that X, meaning there's no dust resistance, though there are a few exceptions. What this amounts to is that most true wireless earbuds are water-resistant enough to survive a sweaty gym workout or moderate precipitation on the run but might not survive if dropped into a pool.

Controls: Buttons or Gestures

Onboard controls sit in two categories: push buttons and touch gestures. The former is more common in low-to-mid-priced models and tends to be clunkier as they require you to push the earbud into your ear physically. Touch gestures can be tricky to get the hang of, but they will give you much more powerful onboard control of your earbuds.

Expanding that control, many manufacturers offer a significant and robust accompanying smartphone app. An app can add functionality like allowing for EQ controls, battery monitoring, and intelligent assistant adjustment. Some earbuds will enable you to adjust commands for the touch area using the app. In short, a well-made app can differentiate between a good experience and a great one.

Audio Quality: Your Biggest Considerations

From an audiophile perspective, there are standard specs across all headphones that you should keep in mind. First, what is the frequency spectrum? Usually displayed in hertz/kilohertz, this number represents the frequency range (bass through treble) reproduced by the headphones.

The widest range the human ear can hear is 20Hz through 20kHz. Most earbuds will cover slightly less than this, usually skimping on the bottom end, but that is a tradeoff for portability. That's mainly due to the earbud speaker's driver size—usually measuring only a few millimeters, and therefore, less able to produce a truly bolstered bottom end. 

As a result, most manufacturers choose to include a lot of software audio processing to boost bass or clarify the midrange of earbuds artificially. Therefore, if you like that flatter Bose sound, your ear will likely prefer Bose's wireless earbuds. If you prefer Sony or Sennheiser, go for their earbuds. You aren't getting a perfect audio representation like you would in a pair of wired studio monitors. Still, you're getting a top-timanufacturer'sr’s best attempt at molding a quality sound spectrum for your ears.

Drivers: Size Matters But Isn't Everything

Generally, the size of a pair of headphones drivers (the tiny speaker inside each earpiece) primarily affects its power across the frequency spectrum. At its simplest form, the larger the driver, the more capable it is at performing at a high level on the low end of the sound spectrum. Earbuds across the board have much smaller drivers (usually around a quarter-inch) than over-ear headphones, and as a result, they will tend to perform better in the high/mid-range of the spectrum.

This is why cheap earbuds tend to sound tinny and thin. On the premium side of the market, brands use techniques like ported enclosures and digital EQ processing to give you additional low-end for the smaller drivers. But for genuinely bass-heavy performance, go for earbuds that sport slightly larger drivers when possible.

Audio Codecs: How Do They Improve Sound Quality?

The other side of this conversation is the Bluetooth codecs available on the device. A codec is the Bluetooth device's compression format to send the data, often making a trade-off for file size vs. speed.

Three codecs are at play here: SBC, AAC, and aptX/aptX HD. The Bluetooth standard requires at least compatibility with SBC. SBC and AAC are standard across most modern headphones and need the most compression of your file. It's oversimplifying the technology to say that more compression means more degradation to the file, so you get less sound quality.

AptX and its HD counterpart employ a proprietary compression algorithm Qualcomm developed to give you a better-represented source audio file while maintaining quick transmittance. Many higher-end earbuds use this protocol to achieve awe-inspiring sound quality. While the codec is only half the story (the headphone hardware and digital processing are the other half), it's essential if sound quality is high on your list.

Noise Cancellation: Blot Out Background Sound

The only other major feature you’ll likely find on a pair of wireless earbuds is the presence of active noise cancellation and active pass-through of outside sounds. The top brands, like Jabra, Sony, and now Apple, all offer perfectly serviceable noise cancellation, and reversing those microphones and passing through sound from outside helps maintain awareness of your surroundings while wearing the headphones.

This does tend to be a premium feature only, so don’t expect to find these marquis functions or a robust app with anything under $100. You’ll also generally find better quality noise canceling on over-ear headphones rather than earbuds. 

Connectivity and Software: Staying Connected While Listening

The setup process for Bluetooth earbuds sits in two camps: basic Bluetooth pairing and software-based connectivity. In both cases, your phone or computer will connect to the earbuds via Bluetooth, but some device manufacturers have chosen to develop software-based walkthroughs to make it easier.

The most prevalent example of this is Apple AirPods. Thanks to Apple’s S1 chip in each earbud, when you unbox headphones that include this protocol, you have to snap open the battery case, and there will be a popup on your iPhone asking you to pair. This skips a few steps, making it a more seamless pairing experience.

Other earbuds require you to make sure they’re in pairing mode (most earbuds, if charged, will be in pairing mode automatically upon their first power-up) and then enter your device’s Bluetooth menu to find the device to pair. Once initially paired, turning on your headphones should automatically reconnect them to the most recent device.

The two most common Bluetooth versions in today’s market are Bluetooth 4–4.2 and 5.0. The former allows your headphones to remember multiple devices but only play music one at a time, while the latter will enable you to play dual music on multiple devices. In practice, for headphones, you’re still going to want to switch between host devices manually, but we’ve found that Bluetooth 5.0 allows jumping between computers, phones, etc., to be much easier.

Range and Stability: How Far Can You Wander?

Much detail goes into Bluetooth 4.0–4.2 and 5.0; the two most important things for the average listener are range and stability. The Bluetooth 4 family allows for about 10 meters or 33 feet of coverage in most environments, though that range can extend through the line of sight when outdoors. 

While this is likely plenty for the average user, Bluetooth 5.0 gives you more than 40 meters or over 130 feet of indoor coverage. While most of us don’t have rooms that require this much range, what it means is that you are likely never going to push a Bluetooth 5.0 pair of headphones to their range limit. And because Bluetooth 5.0 transfers data much faster (virtually double the speed of 4.0), you’ll get a much more reliable connection with your device and slightly less lag when syncing with video.

Battery Life and Charging Cases: How to Stay Charged on the Go?

The final piece of the puzzle here is the charging case that comes with the earbuds. Because the onboard batteries for the earbuds have to be small to keep the device small, manufacturers have opted to put a larger rechargeable battery into the case. Interestingly, this is the feature where you'll see the widest swing of difference, with some devices giving you only about 12 hours of use even with the case and some providing closer to 30 hours.

Interestingly, a high price tag doesn't always guarantee battery life—we've seen some budget pairs clocking in at over 36 hours and some premium brands lacking. Most cases charge via micro-USB, but we're seeing a strong push in the market toward USB-C charging cables. Some charging cases even support wireless charging, letting you eliminate the wires.

Price: How Much Do You Want To Spend?

The price of wireless earbuds ranges from sub $20 to $400+. What’s more, when you get into the premium side of the price range, you’ll still have to make some trade-offs. Bose SoundSport Free earbuds, for example, have excellent fit and solid sound quality but don’t offer much battery life. Soundcore Liberty headphones, on the budget end, are competent in the battery department but feel cheaply made. In short, you can spend as much or as little as you want in this category, but research is paramount.