Best wireless earbuds
Séamus Bellamy reveals the earbuds that will free your from the tyranny of cables
Earbud makers have been busy doing away with wires – a good thing whether or not your phone still has a headset jack. You no longer have to deal with cords if you don’t want to. True wireless earbuds connect to one another and your audio source via Bluetooth. No wires mean no inline microphones or controls, but truly wireless earbuds sound just as good as traditional Bluetooth counterparts (for better or worse). They also boast all of the features we’ve come
to expect from earbuds designed to work with your smartphone, tablet, or PC.
Since Apple’s AirPods became a runaway hit, an endless stream of companies have rolled out their own true wireless earbuds and earphones. As you might expect, not all of them are worth your time or money – so we’ve got your back with buying suggestions to meet a wide variety of needs. What to look for Audio Sounding good is a set of earbuds’ raison d’être. When you invest in a new pair of true wireless earbuds, it’s fair to assume that they should make everything sound its best.
We start each sound test by listening to a playlist of five songs that spans different genres and features strong, layered performances: that we know very, very well: FeelRight (Mark Ronson, featuring Mystikal); Up&
Rise (Hazmat Modine); ShakeYourHips (The Legendary Shack Shakers); DéjàLoin (Yann Tiersen); and I’maLittle
Mixedup (Diana Krall). We play this set of songs for an hour, paying attention to low, mid, and high-frequency performance, and whether they provide a broad, rich soundstage. We also listen for any sign of distortion at low or high volumes. Afterward, we use the earbuds in our daily lives for a minimum of three hours a day over the course of a week, making sure to take in at least one TV show or movie. (This allows us to verify that the audio keeps in sync with the video we see.) Finally, we pay attention to incoming and outgoing call quality, to make sure that you won’t get annoyed during a chat.
Fit A set of earbuds or earphones may sound amazing, but no one will know it if they don’t fit well – a good seal keeps environmental noise out and your audio channelled into your ears, where it belongs. Because no two pairs of ears are identical, we note if a set of true wireless earbuds comes with different ear pieces.
We also pay attention to the tightness of a seal, as a snug fit provides passive noise cancellation (aka the hush that falls over your life when you jam a pair of earphones or earplugs into your skull). If you’re in a noisy airport, tuning out your environment is a plus – but it’s less than ideal if you’re out running, for safety reasons. We take this into consideration when evaluating earbuds designed for working out.
Comfort They might fit and sound great, but if your new true wireless cans hurt your ears, you won’t wear them. We wear the earbuds for at least three hours a day for a week and note if a particular set becomes uncomfortable after a few hours of use. Connectivity
True wireless headphones use Bluetooth to connect to each other and to your audio device. We pay attention to connectivity issues stemming from signal interruptions between the earbuds and their audio source, and also note if audio drops from the left or right side during playback. Features At minimum, a good pair of wireless earbuds should be able to accept calls as well as play and pause music. If a pair offers additional features beyond the basics, those functions should work well and be easy to use. Price It almost goes without saying that if you pay a premium for earbuds, they should sound spectacular. If a pair sound great and don’t cost much? Even better. Best true wireless earbuds Winner: Jabra Elite 65t true Price: £149 inc VAT from fave.co/2VI5D8e
Since Apple released its AirPods, true-wireless earphone makers have been working hard to
match Cupertino’s balance of price, solid industrial design and pleasing audio. A few like Jaybird, with the excellent Run earphones, have come close. Others, like Bose and Beoplay offer a superior audio experience compared to AirPods, but at a significantly higher price. And then you have the Jabra Elite 65t, which do almost everything better than Apple’s AirPods, but at an almost identical price (see page 41).
And the Elite 65t even manage to outdo the AirPods in a number of areas.
Design
Cupping them in your hands like a pair of dice, the Jabra Elite 65t are surprisingly light, especially when
compared against the heft of Jabra’s athletics-oriented Elite Sport (version two) earphones. But there’s a good reason for this: the 65t lack internal storage for music, heart-rate sensors and accelerometer sensors, which all come baked into the Sport version.
Thankfully, the 65t retain the waterproofing that makes the Sport such a great choice for sweaty athletes. They’ll remain safe during a shower (I tested this to make sure), and they’ll be fine if you get caught in the rain. But just don’t take them swimming. With their IP55 rating, they’ll stand up to a blast from a jet of water. But submersion? Not so much.
The 65t comes with three different sizes of silicon ear cups, which are malleable enough so that one of the pairs should suit you well. Unfortunately, even with a snug fit, I didn’t find passive noise cancellation to be impressive. If this is a deal-breaker for you, consider buying Comply’s aftermarket foam earphone tips – though they’ll raise the price of owning the 65t by about £20.
I found the 65t more comfortable to wear than Apple’s AirPods or Jabra’s Elite Sport earphones. This is likely due to the fact that they don’t hang
from your ear like AirPods do, nor are they as heavy and stout as the Elite Sport. In fact, the 65t almost feel like they’re not even there – perhaps a function of their light weight and the long stems for their silicon cups. Of course, depending on the shape of your ears, your experience could be different than mine.
Like many of the truly wireless earphones we’ve reviewed, theses come with button controls built into the butt of each earpiece. However, unlike many competing earphones, the 65t don’t require such a hard push that the units become lodged in your skull whenever you want to skip tracks, increase the volume, or take a call. That I wasn’t jamming the 65t deeper into my skull every time I needed to control them most certainly added to the amount of comfort I felt during testing.
If you remove one of the buds from your ear, it’ll pause whatever you’re listening to. Put it back in, and the music continues – a nice touch of sophistication. And staying true to Jabra’s roots as a Bluetooth headset maker, the Elite 65t can also be used with just one earbud, the right one, pushed into your ear canal. This makes the earphones a good choice for anyone looking to use his or her phone hands-free while driving. And should you lose one of your earphones, Jabra makes it easy to buy a replacement through its accessory site.
Battery life and audio quality
Jabra says the 65t can run for up to five hours off of a single charge. I found this estimate to be reasonably accurate. The earphone’s slim charging case, while larger than what you’ll see with a set of AirPods, has
enough juice to provide two additional five-hour charges. Users will appreciate the fact that 15 minutes worth of charging in the case will provide about 90 minutes worth of music.
From an audio point of view, the 65t’s standout feature is rock-solid connectivity. During the week that I tested the earphones, I experienced very few disconnections from my audio source. If you’re lucky enough to own an iPhone XS or iPhone XS Max, you’ll be able to take advantage of the fact that the 65t come packing Bluetooth 5.0, which offers superior range and faster connection speeds.
But if you’re stuck in the past, like me, with my iPhone 7 Plus, the earbuds’ audio should sound pretty
much the same. And, in a nutshell, it’s great. Great, but not outstanding.
While listening to the playlist I outlined on our truly wireless headphone hub, I found that the Elite 65t offered excellent aural separation, with clear, crisp midand high-frequency sound. The bass, however, left me wishing for a little more oomph. Even after tweaking 65t’s sound with the Jabra app, I felt the bass provided by Apple’s AirPods and BeoPlay’s pricey E8 is superior. Depending on what style of music you prefer, this could be a deal-breaker, but if you prefer a more balanced sound, the 65t could be exactly what you’re looking for.
Runner up: Apple AirPods Price: £159 inc VAT from fave.co/2AxWJBh
When Apple pulled the headphone jack off the iPhone 7, it also unveiled a new set of wireless earbuds called AirPods, and claimed they were so great, users wouldn’t mind the missing headphone jack.
Oh, heavens no. Like so many Apple products before them, the AirPods bring with them as many problems as they solve. With no on-board buttons, the AirPods require users to ask Siri to do everything, from changing a track to adjusting the volume. What’s more, Siri doesn’t have the same abilities in all music apps – an arbitrary restriction set by Apple to steer you toward Apple Music.
But let’s start with the first question everyone has about the AirPods. Aren’t you worried they will fall out of your ears? Thankfully, I can report that my AirPods stay put when I’m dancing, headbanging, jogging,
hanging upside down, riding my stationary bike, sprinting to catch the bus, and shaking my head around smacking my temple like I’m trying to dislodge water stuck in my ear. Really, they aren’t going to fall out.
They also need to be comfortable enough to wear all day, and not fall out. It turns out they’re very comfortable, virtually the same shape as the EarPods but with more heft. They perch right in my ear openings and stay put better than the EarPods or silicone-tipped earbuds.
The AirPods sound better than the EarPods, but they have that same kind of fit, where the bud itself just rests in your ear opening, instead of going way down into your ear canal. And since they don’t have a silicone or foam tip like the buds that get shoved more deeply into your ear, they don’t seal off outside noise as fully. But their impressive volume quickly drowns
out your surroundings. Once my iPhone is at about 60 per cent volume, I can no longer hear myself speak at a normal volume while I’m wearing the AirPods.
The white stems that hang down from the AirPods hold the microphone, which you’ll need for voice calls, and speaking with Siri. I used Siri to make a voice call both indoors and outdoors, and the people I chatted with reported a slight echoey sound common to Bluetooth phone calls, but only when I really pressed them to evaluate my sound. All in all, the sound was good enough for calls.
Speaking to Siri, though, somewhat mars the AirPods experience. To turn up the volume with the free EarPods, you click a button on the inline remote. With the AirPods, however, you have to double-tap one AirPod, wait for your music to pause and the Siri chime to sound, and say “Turn it up” (or, even better, “turn up the volume,” just to make sure Siri will understand). Then you wait another couple of beats for your music to resume, now two notches louder. If you say “Turn it up to 50 per cent,” the volume still gets turned up two notches louder. It’s an annoying process, so you’re better off using the volume controls on your phone – if your phone is in arm’s reach.
Siri can also control Apple Music and your own music collection stored in Apple’s Music app. But Apple chose not to give full Siri control to third-party music apps, and that’s a huge bummer when you try to use earbuds that require the use of Siri. In Spotify, I could turn the volume up and down, and skip to the next track. But to start a song over (three clicks on the EarPods remote, thank you very much), I couldn’t say “start this song
over”, though “go back one track” was more responsive. And, obviously, I couldn’t call up specific artists, albums, playlists, and songs. The AirPods are at their best when you are all-in with Apple devices and services. If you’re a die-hard user of Spotify or Pandora, these might not be the headphones for you.
But either way, Siri is just too slow and buggy to be a rock-solid control set. I quickly found myself wanting to just use the controls on the iPhone itself. As a side note, I’ve never appreciated iOS’s Raise to Wake feature so much until I got my AirPods, since I can bring up the lock screen play/pause, forward, and rewind buttons so easily, and leave Siri out of it.
The auto-pause feature does work well, and mostly seamlessly across apps. When you are listening to the AirPods, and you take one out of your ear, the sound pauses. When you put it back in your ear, it starts playing again. While the feature is mostly solid, it isn’t
a sure thing. A few times the music would start playing again after I’d stuck one AirPod in my jacket pocket while talking to a cashier. Other times, taking an AirPod out would pause a podcast in Pocket Casts, but putting it back in wouldn’t start it playing again. Instead, I had to hit Play on the iPhone itself. If you do want to play music on only one AirPod for some reason, you can just press Play on the iPhone after taking one out.
Because Apple makes these, the AirPods are locked in to iOS like no other headphones will ever be. You can check the battery life in the Battery widget in Notification Centre. Even just opening the charging case with the AirPods inside will pop up a notification on your phone showing the charge level of your AirPods (left and right – strangely, they don’t wear down at exactly the same level) and the case.
The charging case is brilliant. It’s small and white and easy to stash in a pocket or bag. It kind of looks like a fancy package of dental floss, with a top that flips open and shut with a tight magnetic click. The AirPods charge inside this case, so if you keep them there when they’re not in your ears, and then remember to charge the case now and then, keeping the AirPods charged isn’t too much of a burden. The case itself charges via a Lightning port, so I just try to remember to top it off while I’m using the AirPods at my desk.
In my tests, the AirPods easily get Apple’s stated 5 hours of music time per charge. I’m at five hours on my stopwatch right now, in fact, and the AirPods have 12 per cent charge left according to the Battery widget in iOS 10. Apple says the case should have about 24 hours of battery life in it, and just 15 minutes in the
case can power your AirPods for three more hours (it got me from 4- to 79 per cent). The AirPods make a sad little sound when they reach 10 per cent, so you’ll know they’re almost out of juice.
Connecting the AirPods to an iPhone for the first time is as easy as opening the case. A message pops up on the iPhone offering to connect, and when you do, the AirPods also appear in the Bluetooth menu of any Macs (running macOS Mojave) you use with the same iCloud account. Switching to an iPad and Apple Watch with the same iCloud account is similarly easy, and you don’t have to trick your iPhone into unpairing with the AirPods to listen to them on a different device. They’re always paired to everything, and you can just select AirPods on that thing and press play.
The back of the charging case has a round white button that’s barely visible. With the AirPods in the
open case, you can press and hold that button to turn a tiny LED in the case white. That means they’re in pairing mode, and you can pair them to an Android phone or another Bluetooth device, although without Siri or the extra features.
For iPhone and iPad users, you can’t find an better set of earbuds for ease of pairing. You should know, however, AirPods aren’t as easy to use as other true wireless earbuds for controlling your music. It also has terrible passive sound cancellation, so you’ll hear a lot of the world around you when using it.
Best true wireless earbuds for working out Bose SoundSport Free Price: £169 inc VAT from fave.co/2VAiWHy
Priced at £169, Bose’s SoundSport Free true wireless headphones cost close just £10 more than Apple’s £159 AirPods. But depending on where and how you plan on using them, we feel that Bose’s first stab at wireless headphones are certainly worth the money.
Hardware
With their 31.2x25x30mm dimensions, the SoundSport Free were, at the time that this review was written, the largest pair of true wireless headphones
that we tested. The size of the headphones comes with a purpose: the SoundSport Free come equipped with buttons built into the ear cups. You get your standard volume controls, a button for pairing the earbuds with a Bluetooth device, and a multifunction button that does a bevy of actions – like accepting/declining incoming phone calls, interacting with Siri or Google Now, or controlling the audio that you’re listening to.
I found that the buttons were easy to landmark and use. You should know that for tasks such as starting/pausing music or fiddling with the volume of what you’re listening to, there is a one-second delay between the time that a button is pushed and when the response is received. We’ve seen this delay with other true wireless headsets. As such, we see it as more of an annoyance than a flaw.
Like any set of true wireless headphones, the cup in each ear piece contains batteries, the speaker drivers, and the various electronic bits and pieces that make the
headphones do their thing. Unlike other true wireless models that we’ve seen so far, the SoundSport Free’s cups stick about half an inch out of your skull once they’ve been jammed into your ears. That said, they don’t look terrible while being worn and, at 15g each, you won’t even notice they’re there.
As their name implies, these headphones were made with athletes in mind – but we think couch potatoes will like them, too. To help them survive exposure to the rain and sweat, they come with an IPX water-resistance rating, which is nice, but maybe don’t wear them in the shower. Their silicon tips are well designed to stay in during heavy activity, too. No amount of jogging or head banging would shake them out of my head.
Bose claims that the headphones can operate for around five hours off a single charge. We found this to be an accurate assessment of their battery capacity. You can expect to get an additional 10 hours’ worth of charging from the SoundSport Free’s charging case. The headphones take two hours to recharge completely, but if you’re in a hurry, 15 minutes in the charging case will provide you with 45 minutes’ worth of play time.
Audio quality
The SoundSport Free offered the best reception and the fewest instances of dropped audio of any of the headphones we tested, including Apple’s AirPods. Further to their sport mindedness, at low to medium volumes, the headphones offer a good amount of situational awareness – an important safety factor for cyclists, runners, and gym goers. What’s more, at any volume, they sound awesome. Their forward-
sounding bass and great balance of mids and highs made everything I listened to sound better than I would typically expect from a set of Bluetooth headphones – in-ear or otherwise. Call quality was great, too – taking audio calls in crowded locations, I never had a problem understanding who I was speaking with, or being understood by the person on the other line.
The Bose SoundSport Free offer nearly unflappable Bluetooth reception, water resistance, easy-to-use controls, and brilliant sound.
Best true wireless earbuds for audiophiles B&O’s Beoplay E8 Price: £199 inc VAT from fave.co/2VCuAlw
Let’s get this out of the way: The B&O Beoplay E8 true wireless earphones cost £199. Being both a cheapskate and a music aficionado, I tried, hard, to convince myself that other less expensive true wireless headphones that I’ve tested sound just as good, or better, than the E8s do. But they don’t. If you demand the best possible sound in a compact, wire-free package, these are the headphones to get.
The E8 earphones are constructed from lightweight polymer with aluminium accents. As each earbud weighs about 7g each, most people won’t find it a burden to have them jammed into their skull for hours at a time – provided they’ll fit. Instead of using rubber fins, or hooking into your ears like other in-ear headphones do, the E8s stay in place by being thrust into the opening of your ear canal. That they come with four different sizes of silicon tips to
ensure a secure fit as well as a set of Comply foam tips helps to ensure a good fit – but you might want to buy them from a shop or online store with a solid return policy, just in case.
Available in black or charcoal colour schemes, the E8’s tasteful style run contrary to their audacious price. B&O’s Art Deco logo graces the cap of each earbud, along with a metallic accent. That’s it. Sized at 152x152x51mm, they’re neither the smallest nor the largest true wireless headphones that we’ve seen. When I inserted them in my ears, I found that they were noticeable, but not awkwardly so, like the Bose SoundSport Free.
Then there’s the E8’s leather-bound charging case. Next to the one that comes with Apple’s AirPods, it’s the smallest, sleekest charging case that we’ve come across. You should know that the E8 are not in any
way weather resistant. If you’re looking for something to wear at the gym, look elsewhere.
B&O states that when played at a moderate volume, their E8 headphones should run for four hours before needing to be topped up. With the two additional charges that the carry case holds, you can expect around 12 hours of total use before the works need to be charged via Micro-USB. I found this battery usage estimate to be accurate.
Tinkering with volume, playing/pausing or changing music tracks, taking a call, or engaging audio transparency (more on that in a second) is all done through the use of tapping or holding your finger against a touch panel built into the side of the earbuds. I found that touch was registered by the E8 90 per cent of the time, with worse results occurring when my fingers were wet or cold. Through the use of the free B&O app for iOS or Android, it’s possible to tweak the amount of audio transparency that the headphones provide and to modify the sound profile with a number of presets or with ones that you come up with yourself.
No matter whether you listen to them using their factory preset profile or tweak your tunes, you’ll find that the E8s sound very, very good, especially for Bluetooth earphones. Each earbud contains a 5.7mm electro-dynamic driver, and offer a frequency range of 20- to 20,000Hz. Using their default audio profile, they offer a stunning wide soundstage, with slightly forward bass, that was warm and punchy, but never overwhelming. The warm mids and clear highs that the headphones produced made everything I listen to, from Acquiraga Drom to Żywiolak, sound amazing.
But, the price. At £269, they’re one of the most expensive pairs of true wireless headphones we’ve reviewed, so far. Over the course of using the E8s, I repeatedly asked myself whether they were worth the price. My answer: if you can afford to splurge on a luxury item like this, absolutely.
While they rate among the most expensive true wireless headphones we’ve tested, the B&O Beoplay E8 are without a doubt, the best sounding and most luxurious-feeling headphones that we’ve tested. If you can afford them, you’ll most likely be very pleased with your purchase.