US market’s best headphones.

The best headphones on the US market are listed here, including designs from Sony, Bose, and other manufacturers.

The very finest headphones are available in every category and at every price point.

If you like to listen to music, podcasts, and movies, you need the best headphones. They are a must-have if you travel a lot, have a lot of video calls, need music to help you work or stay motivated while you work out.

There are a lot of different kinds of headphones, and new ones come out every week. This makes it hard to find the best headphones or earbuds for you. You have to think about a lot of things, like your budget, the features you need, and how you want them to look and fit.

Try one of the best wireless headphones or the best true wireless earbuds if you don’t like dealing with wires. If you travel a lot or commute to work, we suggest noise-cancelling headphones with a high level of immersion. If you don’t have a lot of money, instead look for a cheap pair of over-ear headphones with passive noise cancellation.

Over the years, we’ve tried out hundreds of earbuds and headphones, including some of the most popular ones on the market, so we know what to look for. No matter how much money you have, the guide below will help you find the best headphones for your needs.

We’ve listed the best prices for each of our picks, so you’ll be able to find the best headphones deals when they go live, and you’ll start to see good deals before the big day.

Even though many of the headphones and earbuds below look different, they all share key features that helped us choose them. It has a comfortable design, the best sound quality in its class, and great extras like voice assistants and wireless connectivity. You won’t be disappointed with these choices, whether you want to listen on your phone, laptop, or one of the best MP3 players.

The best headphones, our top picks

They don’t seem to be much different than the Sony WH-1000XM3 that came before them. However, they are a vast improvement over their predecessors thanks to additional capabilities including multipoint pairing, DSEE Extreme upscaling, conversational awareness, and auto-play/pause using an in-built sensor.

Throughout our testing, we found the Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones to be a comfortable and lightweight option with great noise cancellation and sound quality.

Thanks to their superior noise cancellation and modern codec support, a superb pair of wireless noise-cancelling headphones delivers on all fronts.

The LDAC codec can transmit a bitrate of up to 990 kbps, and the WH-1000XM4 headphones feature Sony’s 360 Reality Audio format, which brings multidimensional audio to stereo headphones. Unfortunately, it dropped support for aptX and aptX HD, so your experience with high-quality music may differ depending on your device.

When we reviewed the Sony WH-1000XM5, we called them “the greatest headphones in the world” because of their excellent noise cancellation and overall sound quality. The Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones, despite their “higher price point and identical functionality to preceding versions,” are a somewhat more difficult sell than their predecessors.

The new design is sleeker and has smaller drivers, but the trade-off is that they don’t fold up as compactly as previously when not in use. The noise cancellation is top-notch, effectively blocking out the higher-pitched noises that other ANC headphones have trouble with, and the sound quality is superb. These headphones don’t leak as much as other over-ears, so your coworkers or fellow commuters won’t take a disliking to you wearing them.

The battery life is the second major improvement, increasing by 10 hours to a maximum of 40 hours without the ANC and 30 hours with it enabled.

If not for the fact that the discontinued WH-1000XM4 can do practically everything the newer Sonys do for a far lower price, you’d find them atop our list of recommendations. While they are the superior headphones, the XM4s are the better purchase right now.

Although they are the best noise-cancelling headphones on the market right now, the earlier, less expensive model is almost as excellent and offers greater value for the money.

The Cambridge Audio Melomania 1 Plus are a far more enticing alternative than ever now that they’ve had a permanent price reduction, bringing their price down to more than half its initial amount. They already had the desired five-star rating in our review, so they weren’t even at their original price.

Additionally, the sound isolation is excellent despite the lack of noise cancellation. Finally, you should get up to nine hours of battery life each earbud charge if you’re okay with using them in low power mode (up to 45 hours with the case).

These are a considerable improvement over their predecessors, giving great audio performance, a handy app, and simple controls. They provide a ton of vitality and character in terms of audio quality, with a vibrant presentation, good accuracy, and a lot of detail, as we discovered during testing.

These headphones offer a fervent sound that will have you bobbing your head enthusiastically wherever you go, an app that you’ll appreciate, a comprehensive feature set, simple on-ear controls, adept adaptive noise cancellation, and a 60-hour battery life. These headphones may not seem like much, but their performance speaks for itself: they are ridiculously fantastic for their price.

The Momentum 4 Wireless from Sennheiser comes with a plethora of features, including Sidetone for improved call clarity and “Sound Zones,” customizable equalization and active noise cancellation settings that activate automatically when you’re in your groove. But the sound is still the main draw for attention. Wow, that’s quite a noise! Imagine something that is transparent, specific, vast, impartial, and utterly fresh. It’s never too hot, and the low end is never muddy or busy.

Put away your Sony XM5s; there’s a new pair of headphones in town, and they’re superior in every way. Oh, and they’re less expensive than the XM5.

In a noise-cancelling true wireless package, Sony has accomplished a combination of performance, ergonomics, and build quality that is more effective than it has ever been. This package is the Sony WF-1000XM4s. During our testing, we discovered that the newest wireless earbuds, in comparison to its forerunners, the Sony WF-1000XM3, offer sufficient improvements in quality-of-life characteristics to make it worthwhile to upgrade to them, despite the fact that they are a little bit more expensive. The ability to auto-pause the music and adjust the earbuds to fit the contours of your ears are both really helpful features.

Although there are some true wireless earbuds that are superior to the Sony WF-1000XM4 in certain aspects, such as noise cancellation, for example, there is no other model that even comes close to giving as amazing quality across the board as the Sony WF-1000XM4. Because of this, the Sony WF-1000XM4 are, without a doubt, the greatest true wireless earbuds that can currently be purchased.

These earphones are smaller, more comfy, and less conceited than their predecessors (remember the kidney-bean sized, rose gold Galaxy Buds Live? These (which have nothing in common with them) are jam-packed with features that you’ll really find helpful, such as IPX7 water resistance, great ANC, speech detect, wearer identification, and a set of fully programmable on-ear controls.

Samsung’s new Galaxy Buds 2 Pro are a turning point for the company, as they forgo futuristic aesthetics in favor of superior 24-bit quality, head-tracked multidimensional audio, and a comfortable fit.

But the big news is that if you have a Samsung Galaxy handset (and hence the Samsung Wearable companion app and home-screen widget), you can use your phone as a center to focus more of the new end-to-end 24-bit high-res audio on whichever ear you like.

All of the top wireless earbuds makers, including Apple, Sony, Bose, Sennheiser, and others, now have Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 Pro to study. They hold up well. They’re good, honest to God.

In comparison to Sony’s competitors, the Bose headphones aren’t nearly as bassy, but we found that their sound quality and clarity were consistently remarkable. While their hefty form shape may put some people off, we found these noise-cancelling earphones to be surprisingly comfy and well-balanced throughout our testing.

These earphones are not just an improvement in design but also in noise isolation. There are 10 ANC tiers available here. At maximum volume, your favorite songs create a virtual cocoon around you, isolating you from the outside world. Only the highest pitched sounds, like sirens, will reach your ears, and even those will be reduced somewhat.

Bose QuietComfort Earbuds are the company’s second try at truly wireless headphones, and they’re a huge improvement over the SoundSport Free.

The Beyerdynamic DT 1990 Pro are open-back headphones that are similar to the Beyerdynamic DT 1770 Pro, which were named the Editor’s Choice for their superior imaging, stylish design, and reasonable price.

The DT 1990 Pro are open-back headphones designed for critical listening at home or in the studio. The open back design of the DT 1990 Pro allows for the free flow of sound in all directions, creating a spacious and open listening experience.

Beyerdynamic is a German audio manufacturer that, although maybe not as well-known as its brother business Sennheiser, has a history of producing some of the industry’s finest-sounding audio equipment.

Furthermore, the soundstage is fairly wide, allowing even the most careless listener to identify the precise position of where each instrument is playing. As we discussed in our report, “It’s not often that a pair of headphones leaves me so impressed that I stay up until 2 in the morning listening to old songs for the first time in years. We put the Beyerdynamic DT 1990 Pro headphones through their paces to find out what previously unseen nuances they may expose by listening to several records.”

These headphones are the finest option if you’re looking for high quality cans that can compete with the best in the industry.

When compared to the Sony, the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2 over-ear headphones are priced similarly. They’re comfortable to wear, well put together, and, depending on your aesthetic preferences, either strikingly simple or a little too modest. There is active noise cancellation and a mobile app for managing the system, but “extended functionality” is not their strong suit.

They’re built to provide the highest quality wireless audio possible at this price point, and they succeed admirably. Nothing in the frequency range is overemphasized, and nothing is having trouble being represented. The tone is crisp, constant, and very convincing. Numerous options exist for wireless headphones with every conceivable capability. However, the Px7 S2 should be on your radar if you’re looking for headphones that fully use the digital audio data you feed them.

The Bose 700 on-ear headphones continue to be on our list of the finest headphones because of their sleek design and handy extras. The 700s provide clear, well-balanced sound with distinct highs and powerful bass; the lows are especially noticeable when the active noise cancellation is turned up to 11. 

In spite of the fact that its battery life isn’t as impressive as that of other contemporary competitor, it still manages to last for 20 hours with ANC enabled.

When listening to music or conversing on the phone, six of the eight microphones are used to provide Bose’s industry-leading noise cancellation. It has up to 11 ANC settings, and all of them effectively cancel out noise at all frequencies.

With features like voice-assistant compatibility, touch controls, and multipoint technology, these headphones are among the most user-friendly noise cancellers for travelers and music fans.