Headphone Buying Guide
In Your Ears or on Your Head?
The best headphones for you are largely dependent on your lifestyle. For example, many people like portable earbuds for working out, while others gravitate toward over-ear models for relaxed listening at home. There are no hard-and-fast rules, beyond choosing a model that sounds great and delivers a fit that’s both secure and comfortable.
In-Ear Earbuds
Earbuds sit inside your ear canal or sometimes in the outer part of your ear. While a few have hard plastic ear tips like the original AirPods, most models now have silicone or foam ear tips in different sizes to help keep the earbuds secure in your ears and reduce background noise (passive noise cancellation that works in concert with the model’s electronically driven active noise cancellation).
The feel is a bit like a pair of earplugs you might use when operating noisy power tools or attending a heavy-metal rock concert. Many users like this feel. However, if it’s a turn-off for you, models like the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds and the Sony LinkBuds achieve good sound without sitting in your ear canal, while the Apple AirPods 5 have a hard plastic ear tip rather than silicone or foam.
Most earbuds come with a small case that doubles as a charger. While there are a few wired models on the market, most modern earbuds don’t have any wires at all and pair with your phone via Bluetooth.
Over-the-Ear and On-Ear Headphones
We use the term “home/studio style” to refer to larger headphones that sit on or over the ears, with two ear cups connected by an adjustable headband. Some fold for storage and come with carrying pouches.
Over-ear headphones have earcups that form a seal around your ear. This provides some degree of isolation from nearby sounds and also prevents the sounds from your headphones from leaking out and disturbing those around you, a plus if, say, you work in an open-plan office.
On-ear headphones sit on your ears and offer little sound isolation. Some users find them more comfortable, and like the more "open" sound they can deliver.
Tips on Finding the Right Pair
Prioritize Sound Quality
Our testers listen to each pair of headphones very carefully, comparing them with a selection of high-quality benchmark models using a wide variety of music to expose the flaws in any given pair. A couple of things to remember: Sound quality doesn’t always correlate with price; some expensive headphones don’t sound special, and some cheaper models sound stellar. And sound quality is the most important factor in our overall ratings.
Choose a Design That Fits Your Expected Use
Over-the-ear models are great for listening at home, but may be too bulky for listening on the go. Earbuds that you can stash in your pocket are great for a walk, a workout, or your daily commute. If you need some peace and quiet while working at home or in other environments, consider headphones with active noise cancellation technology. But if you plan to use your headphones on a busy sidewalk, crossing a trafficked road, or anywhere else where, for safety’s sake, you want to keep tabs on the activity around you, try a model with an ambient or transparency mode that intentionally pipes in some outside noise.
For the Very Best Sound, Stick With a Wire
For serious music listening, consider one of the top-rated wired models. Wireless headphones can sound really good, too, but so far we haven’t found any that provide the sonic clarity of the very best corded models.
The Best Headphones for You
There’s a variety of headphone styles to choose from, and our testers will tell you that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Some people love earbuds and other in-ear options, while others have a hard time getting the right fit or comfort level. Over- and on-ear models can be great, but some users balk at their size or complain that they interfere with eyeglasses or earrings. While most of today’s models are wireless, there are still some wired models, many of which offer top-tier sound. You may want to consider features like noise cancellation, or go in the opposite direction with an open-backed pair. Use this guide to help you find the type that best suits your needs.
Noise-Canceling Headphones: For Peace and Quiet
While many headphones seal off your ears and physically muffle outside sound, models with active noise-canceling go a step further. They use tiny microphones to monitor the frequencies of outside noise, then pipe in those same frequencies out of phase to block them. When it works well, this technology cancels out external sound before it gets to your ears. It can be used to reduce the background noise when you’re listening to music or simply want peace and quiet.
Noise-canceling headphones used to be pricier, but we’ve seen some great, less expensive pairs surface in recent years. Noise cancellation is available in both over/on-ear models and earbuds.
Earbuds: For Activity
“Earbuds” is the term most people use for any in-ear model, but a variety of styles get lumped under that name. They’ve become essential tools for smartphones and daily companions for millions of people. We rate any smaller model that doesn’t fit on or over the ears in this category. Some sit in the bowl of the ear, while other models plug up the ear canal, helping to block outside sound. Many insert-style pairs come with tips of varying sizes to help you get a good fit.
Wired vs. Wireless Headphones: For Optimum Sound Quality
Wireless models are common and typically use Bluetooth, which has a range of about 30 feet, to connect to smartphones, laptops, and even some TVs. Once a novelty, they’ve become almost ubiquitous since phone manufacturers started abandoning the headphone jack. They come with a variety of features, from compatibility with Alexa and other digital assistants to ambient sound monitoring modes, which let in noise from your environment on purpose so you can keep an ear on your surroundings. But, ultimately, wired models provide the very best sound, according to our testing.
How We Test Audio Quality
Every year, dozens of headphones pass through our labs. Trained audio technicians assess each pair by listening to the same set of high-quality music recordings. These tracks were selected to highlight different parts of the audio spectrum—think bass, midrange, and treble. Other tracks are used to test audio characteristics, such as the spatial ambience of the room where the music was recorded, the delicate nuances of the solo human voice, or complex audio passages crowded with many different instruments.
We use the same songs to compare the model we’re testing with a set of reference headphones that represent different levels of audio quality, ranging from excellent to poor in our ratings. That gives us a clear, consistent picture of how each headphone measures up.
Personal preferences will influence your feelings about what makes a pair of headphones great. For example, some listeners crave the impact of a loud bass note above all else, while others prefer a more clinical sound that lets you pick out the fine details of a jazz quartet or a chamber orchestra. At CR, we value accuracy in audio products, or how well the headphones reproduce the sound of an original recording. In other words, the closer a pair of headphones approaches what the producers heard in the studio, the better they rate in our tests.
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