Grado's new wireless headphones suddenly look like an instabuy

(Image credit: Grado)

published 17 November 2022

Grado makes some of the best headphones you can buy, with models such as the Grado SR325x delivering T3 Award-winning sound for impressively low prices. And now there's a brand new wireless set of cans from the maker and they look like a shoo-in for inclusion in our best wireless headphones buying guide.

The new Grado GW100X Bluetooth open-back headphones are the fourth generation of the GW100 series, which was the very first open-back Bluetooth headphone on the market. This new model has a fourth-generation X-series driver, Bluetooth 5.2 and a whopping 46-hour battery life.

Serious sound with long battery life

The new drivers have a more powerful magnetic circuit which, in conjunction with a redesigned voice coil with decreased effective mass and a reconfigured diaphragm, should deliver significantly improved efficiency and lower distortion. The housings and internals have been completely revamped too, partly to reduce the amount of sound leakage: open-back headphones are bliss for the wearer but likely to make you unpopular on the train, so the promised 60% reduction in escaping sound (compared to Grado's wired open-back headphones) is very welcome.

Of course, there's no point in having fancy headphones if the inputs aren't up to scratch, but there's good news here too: Bluetooth 5.2 with aptX Adaptive as well as the familiar AAC and SBC should deliver impressive streaming quality, and there's enhanced pairing to make it easy to switch between devices. There's also a 3.5mm headphone cable for wired connections.

The Grado GW100X is available now from Grado.co.uk for £249 / $275.

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).