When I first received Bose's QuietComfort Headphones Ultra a few years ago, I was blown away by the comfort, portability, sound quality and just absolutely on-point active noise-cancelling (or ANC, for short).

Later, Bose released a pair minus the 'Ultra' name, trimming back on some of the finer aspects of its top-tier travel headphones. While I didn't get to see those original QC Headphones, however, I've had the updated '2nd Gen' pair on review for a week.

What you need to know about the Bose QuietComfort Headphones (2nd Gen) is that these updated over-ears take many cues from the superior Ultra model – including many trickle-down features that, in some cases, put these headphones on par with the best.

Indeed, if you're a fan of physical buttons rather than touch controls, then these over-ears arguably make the better choice. That said, with the Ultra – which features a slightly nicer finish – now down from its original price, you're spoiled for choice.

Price & Availability

The Bose 'QC 2 HP' – that's the shorthand name, per the Bose app – are on sale now, with an asking price of £299.95 in the UK, $359 in the USA, AU$549.95 in Australia, and €349.95 in wider Europe.

That's actually a lower price for the UK market than the original, but that's an integral move to provide an ample gap between these QC Headphones 2 and the Ultra version (which is also a '2nd Gen' product).

That said, you can find the original QC Ultra Headphones on significant discount, making those an even more affordable purchase – see in the shopping widget embedded above.

That creates some confusion, perhaps, as while the 2nd Gen Ultra isn't quite as close yet, the asking price is very tight between it and these QC Headphones 2 on review.

Features & What's New?

• Updated design with adjustable sliders and new faux-leather cushioning
• Addition of Bose's TrueSpatial technology (Still, Motion, Cinema)
• Active noise-cancelling (ANC) said to be improved
• Battery life reduction (18h using Immersive)
• Lossless playback via wired USB-C

I've included a series of bullet points above to summarise what's different between the original and 2nd Gen model of these Bose headphones.

The more interesting comparison, however, might be between these headphones and their Ultra equivalents – as the gap between the two is fairly close.

I've used the Ultra extensively over the years, so can tell you that its touch-sensitive controls and improved padding are the two aspects that set it apart.

If you prefer physical buttons, however, then that's what the QC Headphones 2 put pride of place – a hark back to the earlier models, such as Bose's QC45.

Design & Usability

I don't mind using those physical control buttons at all, though, with the left earcup housing a Bluetooth connect switch and single button for cycling between the ANC modes (Quiet, Aware, Immersion).

The right earcup, meanwhile, features a play/pause that's straddled by volume up and volume down buttons. This trio lives near to the exposed USB-C port. And that's your lot – no other major distractions to get in your way.

The QC Headphones 2 come with an included carry case, in which is a little pouch with USB-C-to-C and separate USB-C-to-3.5mm cables. That's handy for different outlets, should you want to use a wired connections, such as on planes.

The headphones feature a folding design, so the earcups fold towards the headband, minimising their size for stowing. They sit in the case slightly differently to that, but everything is held nice and secure.

The updated Bose app can register your product, which will give you app-based controls to adjust the Modes, tweak the EQ, customise (or deactivate) the Shortcut button, and toggle between Source options.

The majority of that can be achieved without the app, of course, but it's a good visual way to delve into those settings – especially the EQ, which can't be controlled any other way. There's also a battery percentage visual, which is handy.

I will say that the general feel of the headphones, given their plasticky frame and light weight, might not make you think 'top tier' immediately. But the earcups and headband are well supported, with the slide mechanism of the size adjustment proving smooth and elegant in use.

Performance & Sound Quality

While some aspects of the product's feel – as in, to touch – might not be hyper premium, you'll totally forget about that when wearing these over-ears.

I've already worn them for dozens of hours, whether at home in the office, out on morning walks, or commuting by train and tube, and they almost dissolve away – they're that comfortable.

The sound is truly epic, too. Big bass, enthusiastic mid and high frequencies combine to output a wide soundstage with settings at their most basic.

Play around with the Immersion aspect, however, and this feature – which was originally reserve of the Ultra model – gives you a three-dimensional uplift that makes you feel as if you're moving through the music.

You can adjust Immersion to be static, or based on your motion, which changes the experience. It can over-sharpen some higher frequencies, while battery life is more limited when it's in use – but it's a totally optional processing feature, so up to you whether it's active or not.

Whether it is or isn't, however, doesn't affect just how capable the active noise-cancelling (ANC) system is here. Ideal for blotting out surrounding ambient sound, I've found it ideal to escape the outside world and get focused.

Bose is master with ANC, as the company has long proven, and the version in the QC Headphones 2nd Gen is mighty impressive – no 'downgrade' blips, as I experienced with the Ultra 2nd Gen (issues which, via the power of over-the-air updates, Bose has since ironed out anyway).

There's one thing that can gazump the ANC, however, and that's changes in pressure. That's by no way unique to this product, I just felt it more sensitive and therefore pronounced with some wind-tear issues, or with passing trains causing one side of the ANC to cut out and reset. No biggie, but something you might notice on public transport.

Battery life is technically worse for this generation product, because the addition of the Immersive ANC option dictates that. You'll still get 18 hours at a decent volume, though, and that's been feasible by my in-use calculations – and I don't listen quietly, so Bose isn't pulling your leg here.

Verdict

While the Bose QuietComfort Headphones (2nd Gen) don't have 'Ultra' in the name, there are plenty of ultra features on show here.

If you're looking for lightweight and supremely comfortable travel headphones with decent sound quality, exceptional active noise-cancelling (ANC) and strong battery life, then these tick every box.

If anything, it's only the proximity to the higher-spec QC Headphones Ultra (2nd Gen) that makes purchasing these questionable – given the close pricing between the two.

Should you prefer physical buttons to touch-sensitive ones, the non-Ultra model is actually your best match. And while the build might not look great at every turn, the cushioning materials and wear factor are second to none.

Also Consider

One of the QC Headphones 2nd Gen's issues is that the original 'Ultra' version is now available for less. They look a bit smarter, with fewer visible buttons, and on a price basis are the most logical buy.

There's also a heap of competition in this market, with many worthy competitors to consider. The Sonos Ace is supremely comfortable, for example, while Sony's WH-1000XM6 offer arguably the supreme travel headphones design.

Every time I test a bit of Marshall kit, whether it's a new speaker or some headphones, I tend to say a similar thing at the start of my review – that few audio brands have anything like the defined visual identity of its lineup. That cursive Marshall logo, generally in brass or white, atop either a grille or some leatherette, makes for a genuinely iconic look.

It's one that's seen the brand carve out an impressive niche for itself among those who want punchy audio and a more old-school aesthetic, and that's getting a further twist with the release of three new parts of its ongoing tribute to Jimi Hendrix.

It's apparently 60 years this year since Hendrix used a Marshall amplifier to level up the sheer noise of his sound, and Marshall's already released a couple of tributes, but the newest ones include probably the most approachable and attractive designs yet.

They include new versions of the very solid Emberton III Bluetooth speaker, along with the ever-popular Major V headphones. In both cases, purple is the name of the game.

They've both been given new colours; in the case of the Emberton III, it's a more all-over job, with a new purple-hazed colour that Marshall calls "psychedelic graphics", along with a Hendrix-themed version of the brass control knob on top of the speaker. Even the status lights have been turned purple instead of red.

The Major V has the same purple accents, but it's a little more subtle, since it's only on the ear cushions of the headphones, rather than the outside. This might make it the most sleek of the lineup, since it's different but doesn't shout about it.

There's a third part of the tribute, but it'll ship in far smaller quantities – a hand-assembled JMH Studio amp, with that gorgeous purple design all over it. It's genuinely staggeringly cool to look at, but obviously will be a far more niche prospect aimed at real musicians.

To that end, the Emberton III and Major V versions can be ordered from Marshall today for £129.99 and £149.99 respectively, while the JMH Studio amp comes in at a cool £1749.99 and will be available from 9 September.

CMF, the affordable sub-brand of Nothing, has announced the CMF Buds Neo, a new set of earbuds that include active noise cancellation at an incredibly low price.

With CMF stepping away from smartphones (for this year, at least), the focus appears to be on accessories. CMF recently announced the Clip Pro, its new open ear model, but this new addition returns to CMF's traditional earbud design.

As such, there isn't a huge change to the aesthetic, with CMF sticking to a two-tone case, the earbuds themselves offering contrasting bodies and silicone tips. Three tips are supplied to make sure you can get the right fit.

That's where the price comes in: they launch at ₹1999 (about £15), which is really affordable. CMF says that the whole aim is to make the CMF Buds Neo easily accessible.

There's a 12.4mm driver, but it's the active noise cancellation that's impressive at this price, said to offer up to 35dB noise reduction, with a choice of two different strengths.

The sound can be changed using the EQ in the Nothing X app on your phone, while the battery is said to last for 11 hours (without ANC) on a single charge - and up to 52 hours total thanks to recharging via the case.

With ANC on that drops to a total of 30 hours, but that's still fairly typical for earbuds that cost a lot more. Recharging the case via USB-C takes 70 minutes, while 10 minutes in the case will give the earbuds 5.5 hours of playback.

CMF's existing Buds 2a are the next step up, costing ₹2499 (£29) offering 42dB ANC, but otherwise appear to be much the same, perhaps making the Buds Neo an easy choice.

The CMF Buds Neo are listed as being exclusive to India, although it's not clear if that's just launch exclusivity or if that's going to be for the life of the product. With the Buds 2a currently priced at £29 in the UK, coming in at around £15 would be about right for the UK - the question is whether CMF offer the new earbuds outside India.

The CMF Buds Neo can be ordered from Flipkart.

Sennheiser might have just fixed one of the few remaining problems posed by true wireless earbuds in 2026 – when their batteries degrade, in most cases they're rendered near-useless. For a long time, when your earbuds started to barely hold a charge, you were toast.

Now, with the newly unveiled Momentum True Wireless 5 (joining the five-star over-ear Momentum 5 Wireless from earlier this year), we finally have a mainstream earbud that features a fully user-replaceable battery system.

With just a regular (albeit small) screwdriver, you'll be able to replace the battery on each of these earbuds when it's degraded, with Sennheiser committed to selling that spare part. In fact, the charging case itself will also feature the same boast, so you can take care of all parts of the earbud system.

Anyone who remembers the last two generations of Momentum True Wireless will also easily spot a very new design for the earbuds, too. Gone is the squared-off shape, replaced by a far smoother and more ergonomic one. Sennheiser told me that the overall volume of each earbud hasn't changed much, but that this new version should be more comfortable for most people.

Excitingly, Sennheiser is also bucking its former plans and launching a range of colours immediately, rather than drip-feeding them over the next two years. You can choose between Graphite, Cream, Copper, Denim and Lavender, with that blue denim colour looking particularly handsome to our eyes.

It's also upgraded the earbuds' actual battery life, which now stands at around 12 hours on a charge with ANC on, and a total of around 40 hours including the power in the case.

That ANC should also be improved, too, with extra microphones, one of which is a bone-conduction mic to help the earbuds pick up your voice more accurately and reject outside noise better for your call quality.

Another headline addition is full Dolby Atmos compatibility, which could make these an immersive choice for your commute movie-viewing if you're using a compatible service (like Apple TV in many cases).

All of this adds up to quite an exciting launch for Sennheiser, after the superb Momentum 5 Wireless, and the earbuds will be available to order from 3 September, coming in at £249.99, €299.90, $299.95 and $479.95 AUD (the same as the last generation at launch).

Apple has long been rumoured to be working on next generation AirPods that house cameras to see the world around them. This will allow the wearer to engage Visual Intelligence features – much like the cameras on smart glasses, like the Ray-Ban Metas.

It could make street navigation suggestions more accurate, with the buds seeing landmarks and signs, or you could find out more information on objects around you.

The only issue is that this has been just rumour and speculation. Until now, that is.

MacRumors has discovered an instructional video clip inside the latest release candidate build of macOS. The short demo shows a man allegedly wearing the new AirPods and being able to "save" a physical book "for later".

We assume that using Visual Intelligence, Siri AI will be able to log that book in a diary or calendar entry so you can be reminded to check it out again when you're free. And while we don't know for sure, maybe this feature can be used to look at a book cover in a store, but then check it out online too when you get home.

This could help you check out alternative prices or buy a digital equivalent. There are plenty of other use cases that could be unlocked too.

According to MacRumors, the AirPods will also inform you if the cameras have been obscured by objects, such as long hair or a hat. It's claimed that you'll receive an alert: "To get the most accurate information about things in your environment, make sure AirPods are not covered," it says.

It's not yet known when the new AirPods will launch, nor what they'll be called. It's believed that they'll look like AirPods Pro and the cameras will be hard to detect.

Apple will undoubtedly host its annual iPhone launch event in early September, so we could find out more then. And with the iPhone Ultra also likely to appear, it could be the most exciting presentation in a few years.

Nothing's cheaper sub-brand CMF teased a new product yesterday, which led to online speculation – we also covered it. However, it now seems more clear what the company has up its sleeve.

A second tease has been posted on X with a brief video clip showing a volume rocker on what looks to be the corner of a charging case. The text is even more precise: "Buds Neo. 20 August," it says.

Basically, as we guessed yesterday, it looks to be a new pair of earbuds from CMF by Nothing, which will launch properly this Thursday.

We still haven't got many details, nor have we seen anything but the original vague image of what looks to be an earbud, but the video clip does hint that the CMF Buds Neo will borrow something from the open ear CMF Clip Pro pair released recently.

The charging case that comes with the Clips Pro has a dial on the front that can be used to manage playback, change the volume and even answer calls. That seems to be the case (literally) here too.

We can also see that the new buds will come in three colour options – white and orange, cyan and black, and simply black.

Other than that, we'll have to wait for more information. But that won't be long considering the launch is just a couple of days away.

It'll be interesting to see where the CMF Buds Neo fit in the lineup. The label already has earbud models for most affordable price points, starting from just £29 / $29. Will the CMF Buds Neo replace the Buds 2 Plus or Buds 2a, for example? Or are we looking at a new entry-level pair?

T3 will let you know the minute we find out.

It's only been a couple of weeks since Nothing's budget brand CMF launched the Clip Pro open earbuds, but it seems that's not the only product on the horizon.

An official X post from CMF by Nothing has revealed "a hint of what's next", but without furnishing followers with any further information.

Comprise of what looks like three elements, the "device" is seemingly capped off with a silicone ear tip. So maybe that points towards newly-designed CMF Buds. Maybe even buds that can swivel into different shapes to fit your ears better.

However, others provide more radical speculation – @pauwmaa suggests it's CMF's answer to Star Wars droid BB-8, for example.

It's certainly not of anything currently in the CMF stable, and won't be anything to do with a new CMF Phone. It's already been confirmed that we won't see a new budget handset from the brand until next year at the least – when RAMageddon and the components crisis hopefully starts to turn around.

It also doesn't really look like a replacement for the CMF Headphone Pro over-ears, which have proved excellent for the price.

So that doesn't really leave much other than new earbuds. Sadly we might have a few more weeks of teases (and inevitable pictures of Pokémon) before we find out for sure.

CMF Clip Pro open earbuds now available

At least the CMF Clip Pro earbuds are now available to buy, so that should keep us all amused in the meantime.

Priced at £79 / $99 a pair, they are the label's first open ear buds, with an innovative clip that secures them around each ear. They are designed to be worn when you need to also hear your surroundings, so don't expect any noise cancellation wizardry.

You do instead get IP54 protection, making them sweat and rain resistant if you're in the gym or out for a run. And battery life is an impressive 10 hours, with a further 22.5 hours in the included charging case.

It's not only a decent laptop that you need for your next year going to university or college – a decent pair of headphones can, for many people, really help to focus in and crack on with work.

Other times it's just great to have a pair of earbuds or headphones that you can use in your personal time to skip on the distractions – without disturbing any of your cohabiting colleagues.

As a student, of course, budget is a major consideration. So in this round-up –where I'll dig into three top audio picks – I'm selecting a cheapy pair of earbuds, a more premium pair of noise-cancelling over-ears that'll serve their worth for years to come, and a pair of over-ears that won't break the bank.

If you're more explicitly looking for workout headphones for running and exercise, take a look at our Running Headphones Guide instead, as I won't be delving into a sports-based outlook here otherwise.

T3's Top 3

Pricing

As you can see from my selection of top headphones picks, I've selected a pair that'll cost you pocket money, versus some top-tier over-ears that are 10x the price, with the fancy AirPods option sitting in between the lot. The three aren't therefore directly comparable.

You do, however, get what you pay for. The Bose are the nicest made, best-sounding, and most feature-laden of the lot, as you'd expect for the price. Apple's option is just plastic, so there's a premium on the features – but they'll still ideal for most people. Sony, meanwhile, has pulled off magic in offering over-ears at such a lean price, with such bold sound.

As you can see from the best-price shopping widgets attached to each of the products above, the price variance across this range of options is fairly significant.

Beginning at £30 / $38 for the alternative suggestion Sony over-ears, and rising to £299 / £359 for the top-tier Bose headphones, budget may be a big part of what dictates your purchase.

You'll need to pay more for active noise-cancelling (ANC), inevitably, so if that's a must-have then you can rule out anything in the double digits – unless you get very lucky with a Soundcore Q45 deal anyway.

Personally I wouldn't want headphones without ANC – the quiet they can bring, that escape from noise and distraction, will bring worth to your life for years to come. So spending a little more now is a better economy.

Alternatives?

There are good and bad reasons to buy any one pair of headphones. From features you don't need, to pricing that's out of whack with your budget, or just a design difference – the fit, for example – that won't agree with you.

Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3

If you want materials and comfort that are second to none, plus some decent ANC that doesn't feel like your head's in a vacuum, then Bowers & Wilkins makes superb headphones.

They're expensive, mind, so might not be the most obvious go-to for students. But these Px7 S3 cans will last the test of time – and were a T3 Awards 2026 winner.

Sennheiser Momentum 5 Wireless

Another super strong ANC pair of over-ears that often gets overlooked is from Sennheiser, whose latest Momentum 5 Wireless cans are an easy 5-star product.

These are all about a neutral yet impressive soundscape, so you can immerse yourself in your music, paired with some great control refinements that make using them a breeze.

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While we've got the Pro version of Apple's in-ears as our go-to pick, if you don't want the ANC and don't want to spend as much, then the step-down AirPods 4 (Without ANC) are a great pick.

This is all about balancing the budget sheet, really, as while the ANC is missed, the sound quality is still on point. They're even IP54 rated, so you could use them for sports and fitness, not just in class or when doing out-of-hours work.

The Winner Is

You'll have personal preference whether it's in-ear, on-ear or over-ear that most suits – but for a more relaxed fit that gives your ear canals a break, I'd suggest over-ears.

Of the lot, it's Bose's lightweight, comfortable, yet well-designed QC Headphones 2 that take the prize. Yes, they're more expensive – but the advanced features here will last for years and are worth the investment.

That's because the new-and-improved ANC is impressive, as is the inherent sound quality – with a great dollop of bass to keep everything sounding its fullest.

Need a lower-price alternative? Glance back over our other top suggestions and their budget alternatives, as each are a quality, viable option – it just depends how much you've got to spend and whether in-ear or over-ear best suits your needs.

Bose makes some of the best noise-cancelling (ANC) headphones on the planet – as the QuietComfort Ultra Headphones make abundantly clear.

The New York-based company also makes step-down over-ears as part of its line-up, dropping the 'Ultra' for the QuietComfort Headphones namesake.

Now, Bose has revealed its updated take, in the aptly named QuietComfort Headphones 2nd Gen, which add a variety of design changes and feature updates.

QuietComfort Headphones 2nd Gen: What's New?

• Updated design with adjustable sliders and faux-leather cushioning
• Addition of Bose's TrueSpatial technology (Still, Motion, Cinema)
• ANC renamed as QuietControl, improved performance
• Lossless playback via wired USB-C (to 24-bit/48kHz)
• Battery life reduction (24h / 18h with Immersive)
• New colourways and two-tone design

The 2nd Gen version of Bose's QuietComfort Headphones aren't akin to the originals with new colourways – although the addition of new colour options is part of the latest.

Instead, Bose has redesigned the QuietComfort Headphones 2nd Gen with new materials for greater comfort, plus updated adjustable sliders for the headband fit.

The active noise-cancelling (ANC) technology has been renamed QuietControl – presumably a staple for Bose products moving forward? – and brings some enhancements for poor fit.

Bose specifically cites its improvement for glasses wearers, where an imperfect seal due to glasses stems can be optimised for, still offering great ANC results.

A feature previously reserved for the Ultra model also trickles down to this new 2nd Gen Headphones: the TrueSpatial technology brings a trio of motion controls – Still, Motion, Cinema – that adapt to the wearer's head movements, depending on the desired effect.

However, the quoted battery life is now lower as result of these design changes. It's still good, though, with up to 24 hours per charge, or a maximum of 18 hours with the Immersion mode of ANC activated.

If you're keen to keep the cord and ditch wireless mode, then the QuietComfort Headphones 2 also introduce a lossless playback via wired USB-C, for 24-bit/48kHz audio.

Or simply you want the ability to handily use a cable, should you want to plug into, say, an in-flight entertainment (IFE) system on your travels.

The Bose QuietComfort Headphones 2nd Gen are available for pre-order right now (you'll need to sign up to MyBose for early access), with an on-sale date set for 13 August. They're priced at £299.95 in the UK, with other regional pricing to be confirmed.

The price remains the same irrelevant of which colour you pick, too. The staple Black and White Smoke duo return, but there's also a trio of new additions: Eucalyptus Green, Dewdrop Mint, Rosewood Mauve. These seem to embody a 90s nostalgic movement.

Nothing has been teasing a new CMF product for over a week and now we know exactly what it is. The CMF brand has its own open-ear earbuds – Clip Pro.

Supporting Hi-Res Audio and with an ergonomic 3-point clip design to fit around your lobe, the CMF Clip Pro buds further the trend of open-ear audio that seems popular right now.

They are designed to provide a solid, rounded audio experience but without fully drowning out external noise. That means they especially suit runners and wearers who want to move around a city while remaining aware of their surroundings.

Each ear contains a custom-tuned 10.8mm dynamic driver, with CMF's own Ultra Bass technology that enhances lower frequencies.

The buds support LDAC, AAC and SBC playback, while the lack of active noise cancellation has the added benefit of up to 10 hours battery life in the buds. This extends to 32.5 hours with the included charging case.

A 10-minute fast charge will provide up to four hours of listening time, so they'll pretty much always be ready for you.

The charging case can also be used to manage playback and change volume remotely, as well as answer calls, with a smart dial on the lid. This matches other CMF product design.

Bluetooth 5.4 is on board, along with a low latency mode so they're suitable for gaming too. IP54 protection means they're also sweat and rain resistant.

Nothing has, of course, already got a pair of open-ear buds in its lineup – the Ear (open) – but the CMF pair are more compact and come in at a reduced price point.

You'll be able to order the CMF Clip Pro buds for £79 / $99 in the UK, US and Japan from 15 August in dark grey, light grey and coral colourways. They'll also be available in other regions across Europe and the rest of the world from 15 September.

While retro-inspired gadgets are hot property right now, wired headphones (which could be labelled as vintage, due to their lack of modern features like wireless chips) have never really gone away.

Case in point: most high-end headphones have always featured a cable, because it just sounds better that way.

And Apple has never stopped selling its simple EarPods, though they're just more inclusive these days: 3.5mm, Lightning, and USB-C. They also cost just £19, so you can join the anti-wireless revolution without having to take out a bank loan.

SENNHEISER HD 620S

Until now, Sennheiser's ‘600' range of over-ear headphones have been open-backed – they sound great but leak sound, to the annoyance of anyone nearby. The HD 620S are closed-back, and so nothing like as anti-social in this regard – but Sennheiser has somehow managed to retain the sense of air and space that's the hallmark of its open-backed designs.

£299.99, sennheiser-hearing.com

MEZE AUDIO 99 CLASSICS (2ND GEN)

By combining balanced and insightful sound with an excellent build and finish, and throwing in a USB-C DAC dongle, Meze Audio has made the second generation of its 99 Classics very easy to admire. Smaller-headed listeners should try before they buy, though…

£319, mezeaudio.com

CAMPFIRE AUDIO ALIEN BRAIN

Given the name that's on them, let's not pretend to be surprised by the way these earbuds look or the price they carry. Almost as predictable is the stunningly direct, positive and controlled sound the Alien Brain earphones serve up – must be something to do with those five (five!) drivers per bud…

£999, campfireaudio.com

MARSHALL MODE USB-C

They're necessarily small, of course, but the rock 'n' roll credentials are clear from the way they sound. The presentation has punch and drive, with a combination of detail and energy that turns the excitement in a recording all the way up.

£45, marshall.com

APPLE EARPODS

The lack of eartips remains a weird idea, but in every other respect the Earpods are a tremendously competitive product and arguably the best value item in the entire Apple line-up. Big, confident sound, sleek design and the usual pride of ownership that comes free with every Apple product makes these the best affordable wired headphones around.

£19, apple.com

SHURE SE215

The SE215 have the usual Shure benefits of sky-high comfort levels, impressive scale and prodigious bass power – but what really sets these wired earbuds apart is the level of passive noise isolation that's provided by their carefully designed ergonomic shape and super-snug eartips. Which means you're able to listen to your tunes in peace, freed from most external distractions.

£109, shure.com

GRADO S750 SIGNATURE

The broad design of Grado's products doesn't seem to have changed much since the early '60s. And neither does the effortlessly dynamic, tonally convincing and beautifully poised sound that's the calling-card of the company's wired over-ear headphones, either.

£1,695, grado.co.uk

FOCAL HADENYS

Lighter than they look and every bit as comfortable as they appear, the Focal Hadenys present a warm, informative and welcoming sound that's the aural equivalent of a cuddle. These tasteful open-backed charmers are the complete package.

£599, focal.com

Nothing's affordable arm, CMF, is teasing the launch of a new product, taking to social channels to get fans excited ahead of the big reveal.

That's seen Igglybuff shared, as CMF and Nothing love to use Pokémon for product codenames and teases, while Akis Evangelidis, co-founder of Nothing and CMF, said that it was a "new product category".

While that might set the mind spinning, it's thought that it could be the CMF Clip Pro, an open ear style headphone like the Nothing Ear (Open).

CMF recently announced that there would be no new phones for 2026, while existing phones have been removed from some stores like the UK. That sees CMF looking more like an accessory brand, offering a range of headphones and an affordable watch.

The suggestion of a new product category could be a distraction: Akis has subsequently shared a speaker emoji confirming that's it's an audio device, while CMF's official channel then went on to share what looks like a speaker grille of some sort.

But the biggest hint comes from an established leaker Yogesh Brar, commenting on the post of Igglybuff, simply saying "Ear Clip…" That's what leads us to thinking it’s the CMF Clip Pro.

Fortunately, the CMF Clip Pro naming was previously confirmed with a listing on Singapore's IMDA certification database, revealing that this is a product that's in development and preparing for launch.

However, while that seems like the simple solution, we're also treated to a product number - B189. That doesn't correspond to Igglybuff who is 174. That would have been poetic - some Nothing device product numbers have matched exactly to their Pokémon codename numbers - but CMF doesn't always do this.

Arguably, this isn't a new product category, but could result in an affordable open ear style headphone, perfect for those who want to listen to music while staying aware of what's happening around them.

That could be why CMF said "built for what's coming" in one of the teases. It's a headphone that let's you hear what's coming.

To celebrate the release of their 25th studio album, Foreign Tongues, The Rolling Stones have teamed with Technics for a limited edition version of the EAH-AZ100 earbuds.

We awarded the standard variant five-stars in our review last summer, saying that they "sound excellent" and improve on their predecessor in every way possible. Clearly Mick and the gang agree, as they've allowed Technics to release the buds in a special edition collector's case.

The rubberised shell features the band's Lips & Tongue logo, with each version sold also engraved with an individual serial number from 1 to 5,000. That gives you an idea of how limited these could be, with just 5,000 pairs being available worldwide.

They are priced the same as the original version though (pre-discounts), so you'll have to be quick if this is the model you fancy. You can find them on the Technics website now for £259 / €299.

What do the Technics EAH-AZ100 offer?

A true step up from the AZ80 wireless earbuds release before, the EAH-AZ100 buds feature adaptive noise cancellation and excellent battery life. They can be charged from flat to full in around two hours, but last up to 10 hours with noise cancellation switched on.

The case can expand that to 28 hours with ANC on.

Each bud sports a proprietary 10mm Magnetic Fluid Driver, which promises low distortion and accurate bass. They support spatial audio for Dolby Atmos playback, as well as Dolby Head Tracking, and you get multipoint connectivity for up to three devices with seamless switching.

Bluetooth 5.3 is on board for wireless hook-up to your phone or another device, and there's IPX4 weather and sweat proofing, so you could wear them in the gym or on a run.

The Rolling Stones x Technics buds are available now.

It's no easy task to break into the world of gaming accessories as a newer brand. While some giants like Sony and Logitech have big fan bases, there are also plenty of smaller gaming-specific brands with long lineages, from Razer to SteelSeries. Glorious is a far newer beast, founded in 2014 and with a heavy focus on PC accessories.

It's branched out into headsets in the last couple of years, though, and finally has a high-end flagship in the form of the GHS Wireless InfinitePlay. I've had my hands on it for over a month, and have run the rule over it in real detail, to see whether it could disrupt the established hierarchy of headset makers. So how does it fare among the best gaming headsets?

Price and Availability

The GHS Wireless InfinitePlay can be ordered directly from Glorious, with stock likely to trickle through to other retailers imminently. As mentioned, this is a high-end headset in Glorious' own terms, although it's lower-cost than some other flagships I've tested.

It comes in at £199.99 here in the UK and $229.99 in the US, which leaves it in a quite interesting window in the market. At that price most of its competition don't offer a base station of its sort – but equally, much of that competition does have active noise-cancelling (ANC).

Design and Features

Glorious has kept things pretty safe when it comes to the GHS Wireless InfinitePlay's design, and I think that's almost certainly the right call. The main headset is a simple enough thing to look at, although it conceals some smart design choices.

Each earcup comes with a good amount of cushioning, and the headband has a semi-hidden strap system that suspends some of its weight, making it nice and comfortable for long sessions in my testing.

One earcup has a volume dial, while the other has a more multipurpose one – letting you turn the headset on and off, but also balancing its chat/audio mix.

Those lovely dials are metal, which makes them different from the rest of the headset, which is mostly plastic. This keeps the weight down, at 360g, but it does mean that it feels a cut below more premium alternatives.

There's also a mute button and a Bluetooth pairing button (swapping between Bluetooth mode and the 2.4Ghz connection).

The right earcup also houses the removable boom microphone. This is the first duff note – it's made of a sort of flexible plastic, but doesn't flex all that well and is frankly fiddly to position correctly. The material means you'll need to do this each time you remove it, too.

The other big inclusion is a swappable battery, also in the right earcup. Fair play to Glorious here – this is the best implementation of such a system I've ever tested.

Rather than requiring you to open a panel and pry out a battery (like in SteelSeries' case), you simply push on the spring-loaded battery and it pops out, before you slot in the replacement. Crucially, that replacement is symmetrical in its power pins, so you don't have to worry about getting it the right way around.

To make this system even more impressive, each battery gives a huge 85 hours of play before needing to be swapped. The cherry on top is that the headset has an internal battery in addition, with around three hours of reserve charge so that you don't lose audio after 10 seconds like most of the competition. This makes the battery-swapping system pressure-free and genuinely so slick to interact with.

It's clear that Glorious' aim with this headset is to provide an approximation of the flagship experience, but at a substantial discount, meaning the box has to come with extras. The first, as is logical, is a base station that houses your spare battery, charging it when docked.

That station also has a slot for the included 2.4GHz USB-C dongle (handy since it lets you separate them if desired). There's a USB-A adaptor, too, so you're covered from all angles. That said, it's worth knowing that, like almost every headset out there, this won't work with Xbox consoles at present – but PlayStation, Switch and PC are all covered.

Finally, Glorious' software solution Core lets you customise quite a few elements of the headset's sound, including microphone gain, custom EQs, sidetone and more – including different settings for game audio and chat audio. It's functional and a welcome layer of customisation for those who want it.

Sound and Performance

Glorious has managed to pack a lot of features into a headset without inflating the price too badly, which means I was really curious about how it would perform in sonic terms.

Luckily, from a sheer audio quality standpoint, I'm impressed – the GHS Wireless InfinitePlay is a great headset that won't let you down when it comes to immersive or competitive play. I got through a lot of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag Resynced, but also hours of Battlefield 6 for comparison.

In both cases, the spatiality of the sound was well preserved, leaving me able to hear cues and environmental details with a good amount of precision. There's also plenty of oomph, with really high volumes possible, and good amounts of bass by default.

There's one big omission in the GHS Wireless InfinitePlay's array of features, though – active noise-cancelling (ANC). So long as it's well-implemented, this can help hugely with immersion, so it's a shame not to see it here – although keeping the price down makes it easy to see why it's absent.

There is some noise-cancelling on the microphone, but I didn't find it all too brilliant. As well as being tough to adjust physically, the microphone was extremely sensitive straight out of the box, and picked up my breathing to a distracting degree for teammates. This was adjustable in software, but I suspect many people don't bother with that layer, so there's a small warning.

Still, the real meat of a gaming headset's performance is in its sound, and I'm impressed at what Glorious delivers at this price. That's even more the case when it comes to that battery system, which had me basically forgetting I'd ever need to swap one out. The 85 hours on a single charge is stunning stuff, even before the swappability feature's considered!

Verdict

Glorious has taken on a tough task in breaking down the order of things in the headset world – but its first take on a higher-end option is an impressive warning shot for bigger brands.

The GHS Wireless InfinitePlay headset's design is 'safe' but extremely effective, with great comfort levels and visual flair. Meanwhile, its battery life and swap system are best-in-class and outperform far more expensive rivals.

The sound is extremely solid, too, but there are a couple of letdowns. Including ANC would be a huge win if it didn't spike the price much, while the microphone lets the side down in both sound and design terms.

Overall, given the GHS Wireless InfinitePlay's asking price, this headset feels like a really great option in many areas. If you can forego ANC but want the best battery system then this one's a total winner.

Also Consider

The obvious major competitor is SteelSeries' own swappable-battery headset, the Arctis Nova Pro Omni (our reigning champion in our best gaming headset buyer's guide). Despite shorter battery life, SteelSeries wins out on sound quality and design, for me, but it's way pricier – ANC seals the deal, and if you have a bigger budget, it's the obvious choice.

If you want to stay below £/$200, I'd take a look at the Razer BlackShark V2 Pro, a wireless headset that keeps things much simpler with just a dongle to worry about, and which has a far more industrial design. It feels more premium than Glorious' effort, but has a slimmer array of features as a compromise.

Nothing is having an interesting year. Having said that, the smartphone world is moving too quickly in terms of inflation, so it's supposedly taking things slower there, yet shows no signs of a similar lull on the audio front. We've already had the good value Headphone (a), so now it's time for some even more affordable earbuds.

The Nothing Ear (3a) look a lot like the brand's Ear (3), unsurprisingly, at least as far as each earbud is concerned. But they're a very different product at a really attractive price point. Do they make that money feel worth it, though? I've used these 'buds for a week straight to find out.

Price and Availability

Nothing has now formally launched the Ear (3a), which means you can order the earbuds direct from its store, or find them on Amazon. They'll set you back £/$99, which makes them a little over half the price of the Nothing Ear (3).

It also means that, compared to much of the competition, they're a very low-cost option – most rival audio brands have completely separate product lines at this price, albeit with similar features to Nothing's offering (with some exceptions that I'll get into).

Design and Features

From a design perspective, the Nothing Ear (3a) is extremely familiar in two different ways.

Firstly, if you check out the case itself, it's the same as the Nothing Ear (a) with some minor differences; the earbuds themselves are very difficult to tell apart from either the cheaper Ear (a) or pricier Ear (3) models.

Returning to the case for a moment. It's rectangular with rounded corners, but the majority of the actual body is a pill-shaped part within this rectangle. This basically gives the case a lip around the outside, and while I normally really appreciate Nothing's design work, I can't give this much praise.

While it does look striking, it also makes the case a good chunk bigger in your pocket than it needs to be – form over function, which is pretty sinful stuff, I'd say. The lip also makes it actively fiddly to open the case, requiring a fingernail to pry it, and it's annoying to do so one-handed. Again, not ideal.

The earbuds themselves are far more impressive, though, retaining the stem design that Nothing has used on its other earbuds thus far. Selecting the right eartip from four options in the box, I found the fit to be really comfortable and reliable, while the earbuds' stems have that cool transparent look for which the brand is well known.

One final design moan is that, for slightly intangible reasons, these earbuds are the first I've tested in ages where putting them back in the case can be a mixed bag. The placement of the magnets on each stem sometimes sees them grabbed at the wrong angle, requiring a brief fiddle to fix. At least the three-part charging indicator LED is really natty and works great with animations to give you more information.

Where the case was the Ear (3)'s big innovation thanks to an on-board microphone, with the (3a) Nothing has gone a different route. The big change is that the earbuds have on-board storage that can let them directly record audio and phone calls rather than relying on an outside app or service.

Nothing seems to think that people want this feature, and I can't speak to that demand personally, but I can't say I wanted the feature. Let alone the paid membership to get more accurate and faster transcripts – although you do get free recording and slower transcription as standard.

In more traditional territory, the Ear (3a) does have active noise-cancelling (ANC), and you can expect to get around 6 hours of battery life while it's active before you need to top them up in the case. That's now about par for this sort of earbud.

Sound and Performance

Nothing says that the Ear (3a) comes with a new 12mm dynamic driver. The big difference that you can hear when you wear them compared to older Nothing 'buds is that the bass is definitely boosted – although that might just be a tuning choice, too.

It means that these earbuds do give a pretty good first impression, and before I get into more detail, I'll confirm that for the price, I think their sound quality is pretty much bang on what I'd expect. You get decent clarity and relatively balanced performance across the frequency range.

Take Five is a testing classic for good reason, and its sprightly jazz comes across pretty well, while the more folkish stylings of Animal Fear by Marika Hackman do well too, with the unsettling lower notes coming in decently.

That said, I found I had two different listening experiences in different circumstances. At home in relative quiet, the earbuds were solid. On the move, on public transport and with background noise for the ANC to tune out, it was a far muddier and weaker listen.

The villain here is the ANC, of course, which I won't fly much of a flag for – it's not particularly powerful, and is probably where the budget of the (3a) is most obvious compared to pricier competitors. That's no surprise, but it's still a little disappointing – I thought the Ear (3) performed decently at its higher price tag, for instance.

The on-earbud controls on offer are simple, with each one detecting a squeeze, but lacking any more sophisticated touch controls (like AirPods Pro, for instance). This works well enough, but it does mean you'll need your phone to, for example, adjust the volume of your audio.

Squeezing both at one time activates the "audio snapshot" feature that I mentioned above, recording your audio whether you're on a call or just out and about. The fact that it captures what you're listening to regardless of the source (meaning it could be any video on the web, for example, or a phone call that notifies the other party when it starts) might make it useful for clipping, but I remain unsure why this would be much of a marketing win.

Verdict

Bouncing from high-end earbuds to lower-cost ones is always a bit of a whiplash experience, but the Nothing Ear (3a) softens the blow in some interesting ways.

I really like how the earbuds fit, and they sound extremely solid for this asking price, which immediately makes them a strong pick.

However, subpar active noise-cancelling (ANC) brings the score down, and I don't love all the design choices, with the case particularly warranting a second pass in my view.

For value, the Nothing Ear (3a) are really hard to argue with, but I'd point people towards slightly pricier Ear (3) alternatives to acquire solid upgrades in terms of their sonic experience.

Also Consider

If you're willing to spend just a little more, I'd say the better ANC in the Ear (3) make them a solid upgrade. I much prefer the included case, too, and these 'buds only lack the recording features of the (3a) – which I don't think most people actually want.

If you're committed to staying below the £/$100 mark, then Sennheiser's Accentum True Wireless earbuds are a great counter-option. They're simpler from a design perspective, but I think they sound a little better and have better ANC, too.

When you think about noise-cancelling headphones, there are a couple of brands that will spring to mind. Sony is one, Apple and Bowers & Wilkins are also likely to be considered, but Bose most definitely will be. Now there's another to add to the list.

Skullcandy has partnered with Bose for its Crusher 1080 ANC headphones, pulling off something no other headphone brand has managed before: getting Bose to hand over its prized noise cancellation tech for a pair of over-ears that aren’t Bose-badged.

What's so special about the Skullcandy Crusher 1080 ANC?

The Crusher 1080 ANC headphones marry Skullcandy's signature bass technology with a full suite of Bose audio smarts, including its adaptive noise cancellation, spatial sound and voice-clarity features.

It's the first time Bose has allowed another headphone manufacturer to integrate the full suite of Premium Sound by Bose audio technologies into a single product.

For anyone who's tried Skullcandy's Crusher line before, the idea is simple: turn a physical haptic bass dial on the earcup (or open the accompanying app) and adjust the sensory "rattle" of your bass from normal and balanced sound to a rumble you can basically feel.

That sensation is built on a dual-driver setup, and Skullcandy says the version in the 1080 ANC is its most refined yet, with sharper detail and separation than previous Crusher models.

Layered on top is Bose's contribution: QuietControl adaptive noise cancellation with Quiet, Aware, and Off modes, TrueSpatial 3D audio with head tracking, and the WaveForm audio engine to keep sound balanced at any volume.

There's also SpeechClarity for calls, so background noise doesn't drown out your voice.

Battery life is claimed to be 60 hours with ANC off, or 50 hours with it switched on, plus a 10-minute rapid charge that delivers four hours of playback.

Other useful extras include multipoint pairing, wear detection, a low-latency mode for gaming and video, and Bluetooth 5.3 with LE Audio and Auracast support.

Skullcandy CEO Brian Garofalow calls it an attempt to build "the world's greatest headphone" by combining the two companies' strengths, while Bose's Nick Smith frames it as a chance to reach new listeners through Skullcandy's playful, sensory-first approach.

The Skullcandy Crusher 1080 ANC headphones are now available for £219.99 in Black, Candy, Primer, and Cement colourways through Skullcandy.co.uk and select UK retailers.

Huawei has unveiled a premium new version of its FreeClip 2 open-ear earbuds.

The Chinese tech giant teamed up with French jewellery brand Les Néréides in a bid to make wearable audio as much a fashion statement as a tech accessory.

The FreeClip 2 S Signature Edition retains the open-ear earbuds design of the standard model while adding metallic finishes, exclusive clip-on accessories and a more luxurious aesthetic.

Huawei says the Signature Edition is designed around a "luminous aesthetics" philosophy, introducing new Deepsea Blue and Space Silver finishes alongside a range of decorative accessories created by Les Néréides.

The charging case has also been redesigned using more than 100 manufacturing steps, with Huawei claiming the internal storage space has increased by 20% while keeping the case compact enough for everyday use.

Each earbud weighs just 5.1g, matching the lightweight comfort that helped make the original FreeClip stand out in the increasingly crowded open-ear category.

More than just a pretty face

The FreeClip 2 S Signature Edition uses a new third-generation audio chip and an AI-powered adaptive volume system that automatically adjusts playback based on your surroundings.

Adaptive voice enhancement aims to improve clarity for calls, podcasts and audiobooks, while dual-diaphragm drivers promise richer vocals and more impactful bass.

Like the standard FreeClip 2, the earbuds work with both Android and iOS devices and feature Huawei's interchangeable left and right design, meaning either earbud can be worn in either ear.

They're also IP57-rated for dust and water, while battery life is up to 9 hours per charge or 38 hours with the charging case.

The FreeClip 2 S Signature Edition is available from today in the UK from Huawei with an RRP of £199.99 (~$267 / €234 / AU$385), although Huawei is offering an introductory price of £169.99 (~$227 / €199 / AU$327) until 17 August.

A limited-edition bundle including a pair of Les Néréides accessories is also available for £199.99 during the launch promotion.

Audio is integral to so many people's lives – and 2026 has seen the ways in which you can source your favourite music, in particular, look as much forward as back. From the vinyl and CD resurgence to the proliferation of powered bookshelf speakers – a new category in this year's Awards – there are more ways to engage than ever.

This category also houses many staples in the audio market, whether picking the best headphones to pipe your favourite tunes into your ears, or opting for a more classic plug-in wireless speaker to fulfil Hi-Res over your home Wi-Fi network. There's something for everyone here.

The T3 Awards 2026 celebrate our brand's core areas of coverage – across Tech, Active and Home pillars – and the quality over the past 12 months has been undeniable. In addition to this Best Audio and Headphones page, do also check out the Best Tech and Best TVs Awards features.

Picking each of the winners from our broad range of reviews from the last year was no easy task, of course, but there can only be one winner per category. So without further ado, let's get to it: here are the T3 Awards 2026 winners across Audio and Headphones.

Best Headphones

Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2

In a market with so many competing for this title, you have to be something particularly special to earn the crown.

Which is exactly what Bowers & Wilkins' second-gen PX8 headphones represent. They're a class act, with second-to-none sound quality and an exuberant finish.

The design details, material choices and pristine finish really set them apart. There's stronger active noise-cancelling (ANC) elsewhere on the market, it's true, but the goal here is for all-round quality, comfort and home-listening appeal.

These are the business class of headphones – and once you've settled in, you won't ever want to downgrade again.

Highly commended: Sony WH-1000X The Collexion

Best Travel Headphones

Sony WH-1000XM6

Despite such considerable competition, Sony has managed to maintain its firm grip on producing the best headphones that you'll want to take on your travels.

The XM6 has been joined by a new, higher-end model this year – The Collexion – but it's the folding design of this established older model that maintains it as the clear winner in this category.

With active noise-cancelling (ANC) that's the very best money can buy, plus superb sound quality, and a lovely carry case included, there's no stone unturned in these headphones' quest to be your perfect travel companion.

Highly commended: Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones 2

Best Earbuds

Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen)

While the second-gen version of Bose's QC Ultra Earbuds doesn't bring huge additions over the first model, that doesn't detract from what are the best active noise-cancelling (ANC) earbuds that money can buy.

The slight improvements generation on generation – wireless charging and software tweaks to the ANC's operation – further improve what was about as close to perfection as you could obtain just a couple of years back.

While these new earbuds may appear physically large, when in the ears they feel so well-considered and lightweight to wear that you'll barely notice them – even for extended periods.

Highly commended: Apple AirPods Pro 3

Best Wired Headphones

Meze Audio Poet

For the ultimate audiophile experience, high-end headphones that only deliver a hard-wired experience are a real luxury experience. That plugged-into-quality-source listening experience can bring out-of-this-world quality that wireless just cannot.

The best wired headphones are quite often eye-wateringly expensive, though, as they're often crafted from luxurious materials and feature drivers of a build and size that you won't find in cheaper and more transportable models.

Embodying all of that (in the best of ways) is this year's winner, the Meze Audio Poet. Delivering a "direct, confident and impressively musical listen," these beautifully constructed headphones are simply sensational.

Highly commended: Meze Audio Liric (2nd Generation)

Best Gaming Headset

SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Omni

We loved last year's Arctis Nova Elite, but its price tag was hard to swallow – by contrast, the Arctis Nova Pro Omni is a headset with no asterisks attached, which makes it one of the clearest award winners in any category this year.

The headset doesn't rip up the excellent design work that SteelSeries has done in recent years, using a design that's basically identical to previous versions, but the improvements are clear. Its swappable batteries will last longer and its sound is subtly better too.

The biggest upgrade, however, is a base station transmitter that now works with all consoles (including Xbox) in one version, letting you even mix between sources. This makes the Omni a powerhouse for those with multiple devices that they use for gaming. The fact that it's also a dream to wear for hours at a time is a lovely bonus.

Highly commended: SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite

Best Powered Bookshelf Speakers

Cambridge Audio L/R S

A major new category for this year's T3 Awards, but no surprise given that 'The biggest new hi-fi trend of 2026 is powered wireless speakers – as buyers pivot from traditional separates setups'.

The number of brands entering this market is increasing at pace, but Cambridge Audio's established quality has seen its L/R system deliver a rare 5-star first attempt – and in strong style, too.

This is the small version – hence 'S' model in the range, with the 'M' and 'X' medium and large models delivering bigger, pricier and more advanced options – but its sound and quality is quite the opposite.

Highly commended: Ruark MR1 Mk3

Best Wireless Speaker

Sonos Play

We feel like we waited years for Sonos to make exactly this speaker, but it was worth the patience. The Play puts the multiroom experience into a genuinely convenient portable option, much like a more sensibly sized Sonos Move 2.

The Play sounds excellent and compares pretty well to an Era 100 fixed speaker, but it sits on a charging dock, ready to be lifted out and carried around as and when you need it.

With sound that can adapt to the open air when outside, and a design that's durable enough to be fine in bad weather (hot or cold), the Play is just wildly convenient to use as a home speaker that you can cart around the house.

For those who like the idea of speakers that can work equally well when home or away, this is Sonos' most flexible product to date. It stands apart from the more permanently fixed speakers that are also part of this category, but if that's your want then Focal's runner-up position is a solid alternative.

Highly commended: Focal Naim Mu-so Hekla

Best Portable Speaker

Bang & Olufsen Beosound A1 Gen 3

Bang & Olufsen's smallest speaker has been a long-time favourite among the best portable Bluetooth speakers thanks to its sheer quality of design and sound.

Now in its third generation, the latest model enhances the looks, the bass output, and extends the battery life. That's a win-win in all departments, then, which ensures its place at the top in this already saturated market.

This speaker is so exceptionally well-made and delivers audio that's a level well beyond what its scale suggests, so you'll barely believe the results. You'll have to pay for the privilege – but it'll reward you handsomely for your investment.

Highly commended: JBL Xtreme 5

After telling the whole world what it was working on, Nothing has now properly unveiled its latest earbuds – the entry-level Ear (3a), with perhaps the biggest news being some absolutely wild colour options.

There will be four variants of the Ear (3a), including standard white and black options, but also a bright yellow one and a neon pink variant, the latter two of which are undeniably different looking compared to your averages set of 'buds.

Of course, this being Nothing, these aren't just a tiny update to the Ear (a). Nothing is also making another bold play when it comes to audio recording tech. The pricier Ear (3) changed things up by having a microphone built into the case for better audio when recording content. Now, the Ear (3a) has actual built-in storage in the earbuds themselves, to let you make recordings without needing your phone.

As Nothing explained to me in a briefing, the Ear (3a) comes with 32 MB of built-in flash storage, powering a new feature it's calling Audio Snapshot. This will let you clip whatever audio you're listening to through the earbuds, whether it's a phone call with a friend or a video you're watching.

The feature is activated by pinching both earbuds at the same time and captures a little audio before and after the trigger to make sure it doesn't miss the moment. When you connect to your phone, these recordings will port over to the Nothing X app for you to review and share as you like.

Similarly, you can also record entire calls (up to that 32MB limit) right on the earbuds, so you could get around two hours of recorded audio on the go. Thankfully, there will be a privacy announcement when you activate the setting, so the other party always knows you're recording.

In terms of the actual audio quality of the earbuds themselves, Nothing says the Ear (3a) have new 12mm dynamic drivers that allow them to boast Hi-Res Audio Wireless certification, which is a nice metric for wireless quality. Noise cancelling has also been improved, along with quite big steps in the transparency mode, apparently.

Finally, the earbuds get 10 hours of use on a charge, and the case has just over three more charges in it, giving you about 42 hours without needing a power cable, which is very decent.

All of this comes at a price of just $99 / £99 / €99, so Nothing's entry-level tech remains very impressive from a value point of view. You should be able to order them today from Nothing's own store, and they'll doubtless spread to other retailers soon, too.

There's no shortage of headphone brands out there, so when a new one turns up out of nowhere it needs to stand out. Enter Daisy Sound, a new audio company coming out of California, with a natty pair of headphones with a design which will go toe-to-toe with the AirPods Max.

That comparison comes thanks to the aluminium outer shell, which gives the model a really premium look. At the base of one of the earcups is a knurled aluminium dial, complete with a daisy motif on the outer edge.

Inside, magnetic ear cushions are employed, to make it easier than ever to remove and clean the contact point of your headphones. They're also made with memory foam cushioning, to make sure your ears stay comfortable as possible in use.

Each of the cups houses a 35mm dynamic driver, which should be capable of delivering impressive sound. In particular, the low-end is optimised with the brand's own proprietary algorithm.

Elsewhere, you'll find a hybrid, adaptive ANC, a natural transparency mode and a noise filtering algorithm with voice isolation. It's an impressive suite of tech focussed features, and should be enough to let the Daisy One keep up with the best on the market right now.

In terms of battery life, you can expect 35 hours with the ANC engaged, or 45 hours with the ANC off. That's pretty decent, and is made even more impressive with the quick charging feature, which delivers two and a half hours of listening time from a three minute charge.

Another peculiar feature is still mode. That sees a range of five immersive tracks recorded in the California wilderness embedded directly onto the device, meaning you can listen to a range of relaxation tracks without needing to pair to your phone.

The other bright point is the price. At £365 / US$399 (approx. €426 / AU$705), these sit beneath a lot of the established competition, which should make them an attractive prospect. I'll reserve further judgement until they've been tested, but it's certainly an attractive option.

Nothing is far from done with product launches for the year. Having already released the Nothing (4a) phone series earlier this year, alongside the new Headphone (a) over-ears, it will soon introduce a budget phone – the Nothing Phone (4b) – and new earbuds.

Indeed, the latter have now been confirmed, with a full launch planned for next Tuesday, 7 July. Called the Nothing Ear (3a) they will be the latest in the brand's affordable audio range, and we've just received a teaser in preparation.

We don't know a whole lot about the new buds yet, save for the fact you can sign up for a launch notification on the Nothing website. But interestingly, the teaser video doesn't only have music connotations (with a vinyl deck displaying a zoetropic animation), it effectively gives us the colour options that will be available – white, black, yellow and pink.

Oh, and it just so happens to have been shot using the camera on the forthcoming new phone – the Nothing Phone (4b).

Other than that, the rest is guess work for now. That includes price, although we wouldn't be surprised if the Nothing Ear (3a) replace the current Ear (a) pair. That would put them around £79 a pair at launch.

The flagship buds – the Nothing Ear (3) – are currently £149, so these new additions will be cheaper than those, for sure.

It's hard to say what features you might get – active noise cancelling and Hi-Res Audio support are likely. Although we doubt there'll be the Super Mic case, as found on the more expensive devices.

You won't have too long to wait to find out, although it's also worth considering that if you are in the market for budget earbuds at a decent price, the Nothing Ear (a) are currently down to £49 – probably in anticipation of this latest launch.

They're very decent for that price.

Camera-equipped AirPods sound familiar? That's because this is far from the first time the idea has surfaced.

T3 previously reported on claims that Apple was exploring AirPods with built-in cameras, and multiple reports since then have suggested the project has moved from experimentation to active development.

Now Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says the earbuds are being lined up for a late-2027 launch alongside Apple's foldable iPhone and 20th-anniversary iPhone.

The latest report suggests Apple sees the earbuds as one of its first true AI-era wearables. According to Gurman, the devices would include tiny cameras embedded in the stems, allowing Siri to understand what's happening around you in real time.

That might sound invasive, but the cameras reportedly aren't designed for taking photos or recording video. Instead, they're expected to act as sensors that feed visual information into Apple's Visual Intelligence system, helping Siri identify objects, answer contextual questions and provide more useful assistance without needing you to point an iPhone camera at something first.

The bigger picture is that Apple appears to be building an entire ecosystem of AI hardware. Recent reports suggest the company is simultaneously working on smart glasses, camera-enabled AirPods and other wearable devices that use visual context to make Siri more aware of the world around you.

Rather than relying solely on a phone screen, future Apple devices could continuously gather information about your surroundings and provide assistance when needed.

The AirPods can make more sense than smart glasses in one way: hundreds of millions of people already wear earbuds every day. Adding visual intelligence to an existing product category may prove easier than convincing consumers to adopt an entirely new form factor.

There's even academic research demonstrating that low-power camera-equipped earbuds can provide surprisingly effective environmental awareness for AI systems.

There's still no word on pricing, and Apple hasn't confirmed any of the rumours. But after multiple reports over the past two years – and claims that the hardware has reached advanced testing – AirPods with cameras are starting to look less like a strange experiment and more like a product that's genuinely on the way.

The mystery surrounding Beats' next pair of over-ear headphones is disappearing one teaser at a time.

The latest clue comes from long-time Beats ambassador LeBron James, who shared a series of Instagram Stories showing himself at a golf driving range wearing what appear to be the unreleased headphones.

More importantly, the clips seem to demonstrate one of the rumoured new features borrowed from the Apple AirPods Max 2: magnetic, swappable ear cushions.

Accompanied only by a string of emojis – a golfer, golf flag, padlock and headphones – James removes the ear cushions, replaces them with another set and carries on hitting balls.

The padlock emoji appears to be a playful nod to the fact that the product is still under wraps.

At this point, it's becoming increasingly difficult to believe these sightings are accidental.

Over the past few months, the headphones have appeared on the heads of several high-profile athletes and celebrities, including Lamine Yamal and Kobbie Mainoo.

The first time we learned about the potential swappability of the ear cushions was in a social media post from South Korean football player Lee Kang-in, who teased the upcoming cans just a couple of weeks ago.

Following a familiar playbook

James is by far the biggest name to tease the mystery over-ears and has played a key role in Beats' launches in the past, across both guerrilla and standard marketing channels.

A couple of years ago, he helped tease the return of the Beats Pill speaker before its official unveiling, and he's also fronted campaigns including Beats' first collaboration with Nike.

Using one of the company's most recognisable ambassadors – who has 154 million followers on Instagram alone – to showcase an unreleased product on their social media channels fits neatly into the company's established marketing strategy.

The biggest takeaway from James' latest appearance is that he appears to be highlighting their modular design.

Previous leaks have pointed towards removable magnetic ear cushions, and this is the clearest public demonstration of that feature so far.

Beats has yet to officially acknowledge the headphones or announce a launch date, but the steady stream of carefully choreographed sightings suggests the reveal can't be too far away.

If anything, LeBron's latest tease feels less like another leak and more like the next chapter in a marketing campaign that's already well underway.

If you've been looking for an exceptional pair of headphones – despite the warm weather! – then look no further. Yes, eyes off Beckham, please, much as he makes these 5-star over-ears look even more appealing.

Bowers & Wilkins has long made the best over-ear cans for the luxury market. The brand has Becks on the team as an ambassador, too, with the latest PX7 S3 (plus the even-higher-end Px8 S2) part of his repertoire.

Check out the B&W PX7 S3 new low price

Even if the PX7 S3 weren't Becks' apparent choice headphones, however, they'd still be an assured top-class buy. We said they offer "mark Bowers & Wilkins' arrival into serious active noise-cancelling (ANC) territory," in our review.

As they're so high up the league, however, the PX7 S3 has never been a bargain basement purchase. The £399 suggested retail price has been lowered marginally since launch in April 2025, but it's only now that these headphones have dropped lower than ever before.

As this is part of the Amazon Prime Day sale, it's limited to stock or until the end of Friday 26 June – as that's when the promotion ceases. You never know, though, Black Friday could see an even better return in late November – if you dare to wait!

If price is a big incentive to your shopping, however, then you could consider the PX7 S2e model – i.e. the previous generation – which has also fallen to a new price low in the same Amazon sale.

I've tested a whole heap of the best noise-cancelling headphones on the market in recent years, and while my tastes tend to lean in the direction of stealthy and subtle ones, every so often I love the look of a more interesting pair of headphones. The Nothing Headphone (1) was a great example, but looking a little further back, KEF has repeatedly done cool design work.

Its Mu7 headphones are some of the funkiest, smoothest and alien-looking headphones the market has ever seen, with basically no straight lines anywhere on them, and I love how they look. They're a great pair of headphones to listen to, as well, and Amazon Prime Day means that you can currently grab them for a lot less than usual.

From a brand that really doesn't do discounts very often, this is a super intriguing and downright enticing deal, but it won't be around for all that long, so if you're interested in KEF's work you might want to jump on it.

KEF is the sort of brand that has prestige you might not even be aware of – as demonstrated by how often it pops up providing sound expertise to other brands, whether it's in speaker tuning or providing sound systems for cars and more. It's a storied house of audio expertise, basically.

The Mu7 offer a long list of reasons to pick them up, but their sound quality is high up that list, with really precise and impressively neutral clarity. They have smart noise-cancelling that adapts to your surroundings, keeping them up with the latest and greatest, while 40 hours of battery life is also way more than even recent flagships from Sony and others.

Touch controls take some getting used to, but KEF's work well enough, and the overall package is really quite excellent at full price, let alone with this 20% discount applied. If you want to look a little unlike most people wearing headphones, be sure to check them out.

If you twisted my arm and asked me which headphones I used the most, I probably would have said Apple's AirPods Max 2. Then, if you twisted my arms a bit further and demanded to know my second-favourite over-ear cans, I would – through the pain, because come on, at this point, my arms are in a proper jerk – name Beats' Studio Pro.

Shop all headphone deals in Amazon's Prime Day Deals sale

One aspect of Beats' headphones that might tip the scales in its favour is their price. Amazon just discounted them to £159, which is less than half price, making them one of the best-value cans on the market today. And they look pretty good, too!

The Studio Pro are Beats' most advanced over-ear headphones (although a new model is certainly on its way), combining premium sound, effective noise cancellation and improved compatibility across both Apple and Android devices.

They feature custom 40mm drivers that deliver richer bass, more detailed mids, and clearer highs than previous Beats headphones.

The Studio Pro have fully adaptive Active Noise Cancelling (ANC), which continuously monitors ambient sounds and adjusts noise-cancellation levels in real time.

When you need to stay aware of your surroundings, Transparency mode lets outside sounds pass through naturally without removing the headphones.

The Studio Pro also support personalised Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking, creating a more immersive surround-sound experience for compatible music, movies and games.

Battery life is another strong point, with up to 40 hours of listening time and up to 24 hours when ANC or Transparency mode is enabled. Fast Fuel charging provides up to four hours of playback from a quick 10-minute charge.

The headphones support lossless audio via USB-C and offer three distinct sound profiles depending on whether you're listening wirelessly, through USB-C or via the included 3.5mm cable.

Bluetooth Class 1 connectivity helps maintain a stable wireless connection, while upgraded microphones improve call quality and voice pickup.

The fact that the DX3000CL are the most affordable model – as well as the first closed-back model – in Final Audio’s ‘DX’ range is not the same as saying they represent any sort of bargain.

Final Audio's DX6000 flagship costs approaching four times the price – at nearly £1900 / $2000, after all – so everything is relative. However, the DX3000CL could conceivably represent great value for money if you're looking for a wired closed-back over-ears.

Price & Availability

The Final Audio DX3000CL have been on sale since late 2025. In the United Kingdom they sell for £549. You’re looking at $599 in the United States. And it's around the AU$1099 mark in Australia.

This is affordable by the standards of Final Audio’s ‘DX’ range, sure – but this is still a fairly pricey pair of headphones, one that faces plenty of competition from plenty of equally credible brands among the best wired headphones.

Features & What's New?

Some cable and some drivers – that’s generally it for ‘features’ where passive hard-wired headphones are concerned. And Final Audio is not the sort of company that will pile on the fripperies just for the sake of it. What you get here are the essentials.

Which means a 2m length of oxygen-free copper cable in a flexible polymer sheath, with a 4.4mm balanced termination at the business end and a chunky unbalanced 6.3mm adapter too. The other end of the cable divides into two 3.5mm terminations, as each earcup needs to be wired.

The cable sends analogue information to a pair of 40mm free-edge dynamic drivers, designed and engineered in house by Final Audio in Japan, and which feature a paper/carbon composite diaphragm.

The company is claiming a frequency response of 10Hz - 40kHz, and given that sensitivity is quoted at 96dB and impedance at 37Ω, the DX3000CL shouldn’t be any kind of hardship to drive.

Sound Performance

Being a specialist is not automatically a bad thing – it means that people know where to come when they need something specific done to a very high standard.

But when you’re spending this sort of money on a pair of headphones, you’re entitled to expect a level of across-the-board competence that the Final Audio DX3000CL don’t seem capable of mustering.

To be fair, the things the DX3000CL are good at outweigh the things they’re not quite so good at to quite a degree – and at their best, the Final Audio are among the very best around. Certainly when you consider ‘detail retrieval’ and ‘insight’ as disciplines, off the top of my head I can’t think of a more effective way at this price point.

In the simplest terms, the Final Audio know everything about the recording you’re listening to. There isn’t an aspect of it that’s too minor, too deep in the mix or too transient to escape their notice – and once they’ve identified a particular detail, they have absolutely no problem in putting it into context with just the right amount of weighting.

They’re analytical in the least pejorative sense, because they don’t make teasing out the most fleeting details in your favourite recordings the whole point. They simply want to give you as complete a picture as possible.

The fact these headphones are capable of mustering a large, well-defined and very spacious soundstage helps no end when it comes to revealing all these fine details, too.

The DX3000CL give the participants in even the most complex recordings all the space they need to express themselves – but they also ensure a performance is knitted together convincingly at the same time.

There’s a togetherness and a singularity about the way these headphones present music that might seem at odds with the sheer scale of their staging – but only until you hear them in action.

They are very well judged where tonality is concerned, too, with just the tiniest hint of heat at the bottom of the frequency range making them less than utterly neutral.

Frequency response is similarly judicious: low frequencies hit with determination, and are controlled to the point that rhythm expression is very assured, but they’re never overstated.

The same is true of the midrange, and the brightly substantial top-end of the frequency range too. The amount of weight each area receives is entirely appropriate in every circumstance.

What’s lacking in the way the Final Audio present music is a convincing sense of drive or dynamic impetus. Some recordings simmer along at a consistent level of volume and intensity, and in these circumstances the DX3000CL are perfectly happy.

But those recordings that indulge in big shifts where volume or intensity are concerned – or, even more problematically, both – will expose a lack of willingness on the part of the Final Audio to properly dig in and attack these fluctuations with anything approaching conviction. It makes for an overly 'polite' listen – and that’s not always what’s required.

Design & Usability

Unusually, the DX3000CL earcups move up and down on a slender length of shaped steel in order to adjust the fit of the headphones – it’s more common in over-ear headphones to find the earcups are fixed and the headband has some adjustment.

But that’s it as far as esoteric design choices go – in every other respect, the Final Audio adhere closely to the long-established ‘over-ear headphones’ template.

The earcups are made from a resin that’s reinforced with glass-fibre, and a couple of pronounced circular grooves in the material constitute a design flourish.

The earpads are of synthetic leather, and they’re padded with quite a lot of medium-density memory foam – so be prepared for these headphones to make your head quite a lot wider than many alternative designs insist on.

There’s more synthetic leather on the outside of memory foam for the inside of the headband, too – although thankfully a slightly more manageable amount.

The total weight (with cable) is 410g – which looks like more than it feels like, thanks to a judicious hanger arrangement and some carefully judged clamping force.

It’s worth mentioning that Final Audio uses no adhesives in the DX3000CL's construction – instead, a combination of precision screws and ‘O’-rings are used, and the result is exemplary build quality. Plus, of course, the headphones are much easier to disassemble and repair or renew, and are more sustainable as a result.

Final Audio DX3000CL review: Verdict

If the DX3000CL could attack a recording with as much conviction as they extract all of the information from it, they’d be a shoo-in for that fifth star and be real wired contenders. As it is, they have a remarkably specific skillset that is bound to delight as many listeners as it frustrates.

Also Consider

The best wired over-ear headphones we’ve heard at this sort of money aren’t, strictly speaking, alternatives for the Final Audio DX3000CL at all.

The FiiO FT5 are a tremendous pair of headphones, and at the money are about the most affordable taste of planar magnetic driver technology around – but they’re open-backed, and so nothing like as realistic a proposition for listening to when in company.

The same is true of the Sennheiser HD 660 S2 – outstanding sound quality from a company that is as credible as they come, but from an open-backed design that leaks sound quite readily.

So unless you’re prepared to spend quite a lot more than DX3000CL money, or to spend less and compromise on sound quality, the Final Audio have a little part of the market all to themselves.

I've been testing the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro – aptly, given the product's name – for four months now. I've tested using the Galaxy S26 Ultra and a bunch of the year's other best Android phones – including Oppo Find X9 Ultra and more.

During my time reviewing these earbuds, I've jostled between a batch of other review units – Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds 2nd Gen included – and have also seen various software updates further finesse the Samsung's already solid offering.

Compared to previous generations, the Buds 4 Pro up the comfort and noise-cancelling ante. But in a field that's already full of big-hitters, do Samsung's flagship earbuds stand out? If you've got a flagship Galaxy phone to match then the ecosystem tie-in may well be reason enough.

Price & Availability

The Galaxy Buds 4 Pro launched in tandem with the Galaxy S26 phone series earlier this year. The initial on-sale price was £219 / £249 / AU$399 – which represented a like-for-like price position per their predecessors.

Since the launch date, however, the price has dipped a bit – as you can see in the live shopping widget above. However, the earlier Galaxy Buds 3 Pro are far cheaper still, if price is your main purchase incentive.

Buds Pro 3 vs 4: What's New?

Paying the extra may well be worth it, however, as the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro bring some tasty extras over the previous model.

Design is the most considerable shift, with the 'Blade lights' of the older model – yes, there were actual lights on the stems – banished from the Buds 4 Pro.

The new model's stems are now finished with a brushed metal, providing a different aesthetic that helps stand them apart from looking like "yet another AirPods replica".

Sound has also been revised, with the 10mm woofer of the previous model upped to an 11mm version. The separate 5.5mm tweeter has also been retuned in balance with that upgrade.

In addition to the promise of better sound, Samsung has also revised the active noise-cancelling (ANC) for greater aspirations, too, with less "hiss" and greater reduction of ambient sounds.

The latest Bluetooth standard and better wide-band call quality are also added to the Buds 4 Pro.

Comfort & Setup

For years I've been an advocate of the best over-ear headphones, but recent years have shown me that in-ear 'buds have come a long way – this Samsung pair very much included.

That's because the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro have been created following "10,000 simulations with global ear data points", Samsung tells me, to create a 'master' average that's more likely to be comfortable for more people.

It's worked a treat for my ears, as even after all these months of on-and-off wearing, from the very first time I put the 'buds into my ears through until now, I've felt largely satisfied with the comfort.

There's no real stress or sensation of pressure, although this can build to some degree after longer periods of wear. I find the Bose QC Ultra Earbuds 2 feel nicer, even if their far larger design might seem at odds with such a statement.

How the 'buds will actually look in your ears is another matter, of course, and this will come down to personal preference. White is the review model I possess, when I'd pick the Black finish all day long – or there's also a Pink Gold, if that's more to your tastes.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here: as setting up the Buds 4 Pro is the first thing that you'll have to perform after taking the earbuds out of their box and, indeed, the included charging case.

Pairing via Bluetooth is easy: simply place the earbuds into that case, with the lid open, then perform a typical Bluetooth pairing function. That's the most basic connection established, but for fuller functionality you'll need Samsung's Galaxy Wearable app to handle everything.

The app is an important aspect of setting up the finer details, as the Buds 4 Pro can do a lot more than just deliver audio straight to your ears. They can read notifications from specific apps, for example – a feature that I found nothing but infuriating in disrupting my music flow (and which took ages to locate and fully disable – a 'do not disturb' override would be lovely).

Other features include a 'fit test' for how well the 'buds sit into your ears; pinch and voice control settings; a fully adjustable graphic equaliser (EQ) with preset options available; 'Adaptive' automated adjustment between noise-cancelling and ambient modes; plus various tutorials.

Sound & ANC

Samsung's hardware upgrades have worked some audio magic, as the Buds 4 Pro sound spectacular right off the bat. Make some EQ tweaks and they'll only sound better, in my view – avoiding distortion and delivering more personalised audio.

While the abundance of bass is the obvious takeaway from these earbuds, the rest of the frequency range is well handled, too, with higher frequencies nicely separated thanks to that dual-driver design. It's a very clean, wide and enveloping listen – which is just what you want from a pair of earbuds.

This sound profile can take on the best of them, plus those with a Samsung Galaxy phone can benefit from even better audio thanks to SSC (UHQ) codec support – that's Samsung Seamless Codec (Ultra High Quality – designed for connection stability with up to 24-bit/96kHz hi-res audio sources. There's also Seamless Earbud Connection to flit between Galaxy ecosystem devices with ease.

If you don't have another Galaxy device, however, then no need to fret – the audio quality remains top-notch, as I've experienced on my various test devices, from Google to Oppo and Honor to OnePlus. From a sound perspective, therefore, there's little to criticise about Samsung's top-end earbuds.

The active noise-cancelling (ANC) has also shown generational improvements, seeing it do a great job at keeping ambient sounds further at bay. You can adjust the degree of ANC through five levels within the app.

You can also permit some 'ambient sound', i.e. the amount of surrounding sounds that can pass through, again on a five-level slider control. This doesn't have to be done manually, though, as Adaptive mode can take control based on your scenario.

Adaptive can be set to maximise ambient sound when there's voice or sirens detected, or during calls, for example. Call quality is very good, by the way, with microphone improvements making a big difference in clarity – whether or not you have Adaptive switched on.

Personally, I'm all about ANC being on and set to its maximum. Even at this setting, however, the Buds 4 Pro can't blot out some 'clickier' high-frequency sounds – which will continue to pass through. So Samsung's ANC solution isn't the best on market for my money – close as it gets.

It's still very good in most scenarios, though. Whether you're surrounded by road traffic or noisy air-conditioning fans, or on an aeroplane where the background "hiss" is abundant – all of which are effectively muted through this ANC system. It just needs a few tweaks to be 100% effective.

Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro review: Verdict

If you're looking for comfortable earbuds for your Samsung Galaxy phone that offer big bass, a broad soundstage, and decent active noise-cancelling, then the Galaxy Buds 4 Pro are an all-round success.

Even if you've got another type of Android phone, while you'll lose the Samsung-specific audio codec and some baked-in operating system controls, these earbuds deliver features to take on the best of the competition.

Indeed, it's only really the ANC allowing some ambient sounds to cut through that hold these 'buds back from near perfection. Battery life is also beaten by Apple's key competitor, at a maximum of 6 hours per charge – but the case will deliver three further full charges.

All in all, though, Samsung's flagship earbuds deliver a raft of improvements in a better-looking and better-sounding design than it's ever managed before. I'm still wearing them months on from acquiring a pair – and will continue to do so.

Also Consider

If you want the best-of-best in ANC, however, then Bose's QC Ultra Earbuds are a winner – and the 2nd Gen is preferable, should the price be on point.

Otherwise, Apple's AirPods Pro 3 do make a strong case for themselves – albeit more for iPhone users. Indeed, Samsung's efforts are the equivalent tie-in for a Galaxy ecosystem.

Apple's unannounced Beats headphones have surfaced once again, this time on England midfielder Kobbie Mainoo, suggesting the long-rumoured over-ear cans could be nearing an official reveal.

The latest sighting comes via a comparatively small Instagram post from Manchester United fan account united.core, showing Mainoo wearing a pair of previously unseen Beats headphones alongside teammate Marcus Rashford.

Curiously, I was unable to trace the image back to an original source.

A reverse-image search using TinEye returned no matches, indicating the photograph has yet to appear elsewhere online.

That could mean this is one of the earliest public appearances of the mystery headphones to date.

The design matches earlier leaks but appears in a new colourway, featuring white earcups paired with dark blue ear cushions.

It's the third public appearance of the mystery headphones in recent weeks.

Previous sightings included Spanish footballer Lamine Yamal and South Korean star Lee Kang-in, with each athlete wearing a different colour combination.

That growing collection of finishes hints that Beats could be planning an unusually broad colour lineup at launch.

More than just another leak?

The repeated football connections are particularly notable, with every major sighting so far involving players competing at or associated with the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

This suggests Beats may be using elite athletes as part of a coordinated teaser campaign, which is not uncommon for the brand.

There's also a possibility that the contrasting colours point to some form of customisation.

While there's no evidence that ear cushions or other components are interchangeable, the different combinations seen so far have sparked speculation that Beats could be experimenting with a more modular design.

For now, though, Apple and Beats remain tight-lipped about what could become the company's first major over-ear headphone release since the Beats Studio Pro launched in 2023.

The 'open-ear' market is going from strength to strength this year, with many additional brands having entered the 'not-in-your-ears' earbuds market – with Sennheiser also adding to your choices with the all-new Accentum Clip.

That's hot on the heels of Shokz's latest, the OpenDots 2, and follows the likes of Bose, which released its Ultra Open Earbuds more than two years ago. Other big names in this space include Huawei.

There are different types of open-ear 'buds with different intents and target users, of course, to which Sennheiser is no stranger – having launched the Accentum Open last year. The focus of this product was to always permit ambient sound to enter your ears for awareness.

The new Clip, however, is as its name describes: a clip-on design that suits a wider range of use-cases, given the assurance of it remaining in place. So whether you want it for the office, or when out running, there's greater versatility.

Sennheiser has long been in the audio business, with over 80 years of expertise. That's one of its big upsells with the Accentum Clip, which promise to deliver audio quality first and foremost – something that many open-ears are criticised for, in offering 'thin' sound.

The Accentum Clip use 12mm drivers to deliver their sound, which can easily be from multiple sources thanks to Bluetooth 6.0 multipoint connectivity. There's LDAC streaming offered for higher-fidelity audio sources, too.

Design-wise the Clip 'buds are super-lightweight for comfort, offering an IP54 rating to ensure resistance to water splashes – a feature that'll be a must-have for sports users.

The battery life is quoted at 9 hours per charge, with a further three charges in the case bringing that up to 36 hours in total. A 10-minute charge delivers 2 hours of playback, should you come up short.

Sennheiser's Accentum Clip go on sale from 23rd July – so you've got almost a month to wait at the time of writing – with pre-orders at uk.sennheiser-hearing.com available now. There are Black, Cream and Ice Blue variants, priced at £149 / AU$289.95 each.

It's always a bit of a task to sift through everything that Apple announces at WWDC, and this year was no different. It was a big year for the tech giant, with huge changes unveiled for Siri and showcases of all its new operating systems to get through in around an hour and a half of keynote time.

Still, Apple managed to run through it all, and that was partly by skipping through some surprisingly impactful announcements really quickly. My pick of the bunch? A tweak to how AirPods and AirPods Pro work that could mean way more control for people when they listen to music.

We're now almost a decade into the AirPods era, and for much of that time, some audio experts have been clamouring for one thing – EQ customisation on the earbuds. Apple has long taken the simplest possible approach by shipping its earbuds with a fixed tuning setup and ensuring that everyone, therefore, gets the exact same experience.

However, plenty of much more affordable earbuds let you tweak their sound signature to get something a little more personalised, and since the release of the AirPods Pro 3, these demands have been louder than ever. I love the Pro 3, but some people feel that its sound is a little less natural than the Pro 2's, despite clear improvements in other areas like ANC and battery life.

Perhaps because of that reaction from some of its audience, Apple's finally bringing a very limited form of EQ customisation to its AirPods in iOS 27, which is a game-changer in many regards. It showed off the feature in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it part of the WWDC presentation, but that confirmed a few things for us.

Firstly, this is just a three-band EQ system that lets you adjust the strength of lows, mids and highs, without any more granular control than that. Secondly, Apple isn't labelling these segments with frequency ranges, and it also doesn't give a scale of how much you're boosting or limiting frequencies, so you'll be mostly going off a graph and your ears.

That makes this a pretty rudimentary version of the system that others use for their earbuds, but in this case, something is a million miles better than nothing. I've been wanting any control over my AirPods for years (since I used the Pro 2 for their entire lifespan), so I'll definitely be jumping on it the moment iOS 27 drops later this year. I'm not a beta kind of guy, though, so I will have to wait until the official release to get my ears on it.

I'm adamant that the AirPods 3 are the best earbuds going for the majority of iPhone users, even without EQ, but you can always improve things. It's great to see Apple leaning more into customisation, and the only big question left is which AirPods models will support the feature. The more the better, of course, so let's hope it's all of those still on sale, and a couple of generations back, too.

Sennheiser made some of my favourite headphones ever when it brought out the Momentum 4 Wireless. It updated what I'd personally found to be an off-putting design in the originals, yet retained its excellent yet neutral sound signature – with the addition of adaptive noise-cancelling (ANC). I've used those over-ears every time I've travelled for a couple of years (save for when testing the best headphones for work).

That position had recently been taken over by the Sony WH-1000XM6, though, so I was hugely interested when Sennheiser announced the Momentum 5 this summer. With the brand's long-term health a topic of some debate, I've found it fascinating to use the Momentum 5 for a few weeks to see how it stacks up to the ever-increasing competition.

Price and Availabilty

The Momentum 5 Wireless was unveiled in May and is available to order now, so you can pick it up from a range of retailers around the world. It comes in at £329 / $399 – which means that it's quite cannily priced from Sennheiser's point of view.

While it shares a lot of its features with the likes of the Sony WH-1000XM6, and the same can be said of Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones 2, it comes in as a decent chunk cheaper than those competitors. That could give it quite an advantage among smart buyers, although the proof is obviously in the performance.

Design and Features

There are people out there who'll still tell you that the updated design Sennheiser brought in between the Momentum 3 and Momentum 4 was a total shame, and left the Momentum line looking generic and boring. I get where they're coming from (there's much less exposed metal now), but don't agree at all – I really like the refined and subtle look of the newer design.

That's lucky, since it's barely changed between 4 and 5, which suggests that Sennheiser was pleased with its work, too. In the years that have passed, all that's really changed is some minor finishing detail. This time you can buy the headphones in black (as tested here), white or "denim" blue, with the last of those being the most eye-catching (albeit not really to my taste).

The earcups here are pretty massive, yet they're nicely cushioned for comfort. The Momentum 5 comes in at 290g, so it isn't the lightest set of cans out there – but I find they sit on the head nicely and comfortably. That's something about Sennheiser's design that's always been on point for me.

The build is almost entirely plastic, though, so if you're looking for some headphones that scream "premium" from every stitch and bolt, this isn't the answer for you. Then again, nor is the more expensive WH-1000XM6 from Sony, for some context (the WH-1000XX The Collexion push that envelope further, though).

Normally, I'd talk about on-earcup controls, since most headphones have an array of buttons and dials, but Sennheiser takes a different road. In design terms, it keeps things admirably simple – even if not everyone will like it.

On the right earcup, there's a power and pairing button, some LEDs to give you charge and status indicators, and a USB-C port for charging. That's it – everything else is controlled through swipes and taps on that same earcup's outer surface, while the other side is completely bare.

The Momentum 5 does come with a nice slim hardshell case, impressively smaller than the equivalent for the Momentum 4, and therefore great for travel. The headphones fold flat in it, rather than into any smaller arrangement.

From a feature point of view, the battery life situation has stayed relatively stable, but at a very impressive level. You'll get around 57 hours with ANC turned on, which means the headphones can more than make it through a week of use in normal situations. One huge but less obvious upgrade is that said battery can be easily replaced, with just a Philips-head screwdriver needed to access it.

There's also fairly comprehensive codec support (SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD, aptX Lossless, and aptX Adaptive), which means that LDAC is also covered, making these a great choice regardless of how you listen wirelessly. The headphones ship with Bluetooth 5.4, but a future firmware update will bring this up to 6.0, apparently.

I think the Momentum 5 is a really solid iteration on what's come before it – even if the only visible or obvious changes are some more external grilles for ANC microphones. They're still among my favourite headphones to wear from a subtlety standpoint, as much as I value crazier choices like the Nothing Headphone (1).

Sound and Performance

We don't just look at headphones and wear them without any connection, though – how the Momentum 5 actually sounds is just as important.

That does require starting with some ergonomics, though, because Sennheiser's touch controls are a factor in the headphones' performance. In short, they work ably, but I'd still much prefer some more buttons in addition. Swiping and tapping are responsive enough, once you learn what does what, but the lack of volume buttons in particular feels churlish.

Sennheiser's SmartControlPlus app is a smooth enough way to get some extra control over these features (including turning them off entirely if desired). It also lets you choose when (if ever) the headphones will turn themselves off after a period of idling, and gives you a decent amount of EQ control, too.

That last point is relevant because the Momentum 5 makes a slightly bigger change to the sound signature of the Momentum line than I'd expected, principally in the form of a boost to the low-end bass register. It's certainly beefed up, and that might cut differently for different people.

I really liked the neutrality of the Momentum 4, so the new sound tuning is a little less to my tastes straight out of the box – albeit a quick EQ tweak basically reverses it entirely (praise be the EQ controls coming to AirPods soon for similar reasons). Still, even before any tweaks, the overall sound quality is excellent.

I used the Momentum 5 to run the gamut of genres, from a little bit of Vivaldi (get me) to test the highs, to some Queens of the Stone Age to get a sense of that boosted bass – and it was a really zesty yet precise listen the whole time. Plus, there's one audio area where the upgrade is far clearer and more unequivocal – ANC.

The Momentum 4 had good ANC for its day, but that day is now years ago, and rivals have made some big steps in the intervening time, so it's reassuring to report that the Momentum 5 takes a welcome leap forward. That's not to say that this adaptive noise-cancelling is completely different from what came before, but it definitely blocks more ambient noise and does so with less of an audible static feedback, in my experience.

I used the Momentum 5 on a long trip to and from Edinburgh from my home in London as my first proper stress test of their quality, and they kept me really nicely bubbled whether I was connected to my phone or my Switch 2. This combination of really solid sound quality and much-improved ANC is a winner, in my book.

Verdict

The Momentum 5 feels like a really solid return to the top table from Sennheiser, not least because it continues to offer a sensible option to those looking for very similar features to a top-end pair of headphones, but for a little less. Sure, the asking price is hardly tiny, but it's still a chunk cheaper than much of the established competition.

Given time and sales, that advantage should be maintained, and I think that leaves the Momentum 5 positioned really nicely as a great option for those looking to spend a little more cannily. You'll still get excellent sound, and a design and fit that I personally find comfortable in the extreme – making these over-ears a pretty stellar way for Sennheiser to at least partially silence the doubters of its longer-term health.

Also consider

The obvious upgrade if you are willing to spend that extra cash, of course, is the WH-1000XM6. The Sony's ANC is just a little superior and the headphones' more compact folding options might float your boat too. I think they're in a similar bracket comfort-wise, though, so the gap is pretty small.

Another option is Sennheiser's own HDB 630, which is much more geared for home listening. You lose ANC and battery life, but gain in sound quality quite noticeably, especially when using the included dongle for your connections. If you're intending to do your listening at home, they might be a great choice.

As an avid AirPods Max user, I can only recommend these premium over-ear headphones – they look great and sound even better. The only issue is that they are rather expensive. Well, not anymore! The USB-C version is at its lowest-ever price on Amazon ahead of the big shopping event next week.

Shop all Apple Featured Deals on Amazon

To clarify, these aren't the latest AirPods Max 2 but the previous version, which, to be fair, is very similar to the new cans. Those added better noise cancellation and somewhat better sound, but between you and me, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the ANC and sonic quality of the USB-C AirPods Max.

The Apple AirPods Max USB-C retains the same distinctive design as its predecessor (and successor), featuring anodised aluminium ear cups, a stainless steel frame and a breathable knit mesh canopy that helps distribute weight more evenly across the head.

It utilises the company's H1 chip, enabling features such as Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), Transparency mode and Adaptive EQ. ANC continuously monitors external sounds and works to reduce unwanted noise, while Transparency mode lets you hear your surroundings without removing the headphones.

The USB-C AirPods Max also support Personalised Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking, creating a more immersive listening experience when watching films or listening to compatible music. Apple has additionally enabled lossless audio and ultra-low-latency audio over a wired USB-C connection, making the headphones a stronger option for music enthusiasts and content creators.

Battery life is rated at up to 20 hours with Active Noise Cancellation and Spatial Audio enabled. Other highlights include automatic device switching, Find My support, voice control via Siri, and effortless pairing with iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV.

If Beats wanted people talking about its next pair of headphones, mission accomplished.

The Apple-owned audio brand appears to be continuing its unusual pre-launch campaign for a new set of over-ear headphones, with another football star now spotted wearing the unreleased cans ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

This time, it was South Korea international Lee Kang-in, who was photographed wearing the mystery headphones following his country's victory over Czechia.

While the sighting alone wouldn't be particularly noteworthy, eagle-eyed fans quickly noticed that Lee's headphones feature neon yellow ear cushions and a matching headband paired with white earcups, creating a striking two-tone look.

That detail has fuelled speculation that Beats could be introducing interchangeable components, allowing people to customise the appearance of their headphones.

Drip-fed by design

It's the latest chapter in what increasingly looks like a carefully orchestrated teaser campaign.

The headphones first appeared at the end of May when Spanish football superstar Lamine Yamal was spotted wearing a bright pink version during Spain's World Cup preparations.

A few days later, Yamal shared images showing a second colourway, suggesting Beats was intentionally drawing attention to the unreleased product.

Although Beats hasn't officially acknowledged the headphones, several clues point towards a launch drawing closer.

The model has already surfaced in US Federal Communications Commission filings, while multiple athletes from different national teams have now been photographed wearing the product in public.

As for what these headphones actually are, that's still up for debate: the design doesn't closely resemble either the current Beats Solo 4 or Beats Studio Pro.

The flatter earcups, slimmer support arms, and more premium-looking construction have prompted comparisons with the Apple AirPods Max 2, particularly now that interchangeable-looking components are in the mix.

There's also speculation that Beats could bring some of Apple's more advanced audio technology to the new model.

Recent Beats products, including the Powerbeats Pro 2, have incorporated Apple's silicon, raising hopes that these headphones could offer deeper integration with Apple's ecosystem than the Studio Pro currently provides.

If history is any guide, Beats may not keep us waiting much longer. Two years ago, basketball superstar LeBron James was seen carrying the unreleased Beats Pill speaker in April, and the product officially launched on 25 June.

That puts roughly two months between the first high-profile sighting and the official reveal.

Applying a similar timeline here would place a potential announcement of the new headphones sometime in July.

With the World Cup providing the perfect global stage for athlete endorsements and product placement, it wouldn't be surprising to see Beats continue its drip-feed campaign throughout the tournament before unveiling the headphones shortly after the final whistle.

[via 9to5Mac]

In life, there is very little as cool as an electric guitar. Whether it's Slash wandering into the desert before the solo in November Rain, Hendrix setting fire to his Strat at the Astoria or the myriad of other legends who have used the instrument to earn legendary status, it has become a staple of modern life.

Now, Audio-Technica has partnered with Fujigen Guitars to create a limited edition pair of headphones inspired by the instrument. They feature wooden panels on the outside of the earcups, complete with an iconic three-tone sunburst lacquer on the outside.

Those are based on the ATH-WP900 series headphones, which actually already offer wooden cups provided by Fujigen. The regular model makes use of flame maple, though, where this limited edition is crafted from solid ash.

It's also got the much more pronounced three-tone burst, where the standard model is more of a two-tone fade. It's a subtle difference, but one which will matter to audiophiles and music lovers with exacting standards.

Inside, you'll find 53mm drivers, which should offer a decent low-end representation, complete with enough detail at the top to make things pop. The model uses the brand's A2DC detachable connectors, offering 4.4mm balanced and 3.5mm standard options for different use cases.

There's also a handwritten serial number card in the box, as well as a Fujigen cleaning cloth which is specifically designed for lacquered finishes.

If you're not familiar with the Fujigen name, fear not – you almost certainly know the work, with the brand producing Japanese-made guitars for Fender, Gibson, Ibanez and more over the years. Prior to moving to T3 to write about the best tech, I worked in a popular guitar store, and the Fujigen stuff was always up there with the very best.

The ATH-WP900SE will be available from today, priced at £599 / €699 (approx. US$800 / AU$1,145).

I've been reviewing the best ANC headphones for many years now – and it's rare that a pair of in-ears stands out enough for me to jump up and pay attention. I'm usually too much of an over-ears guy, ultimately.

But then Bose's 2nd Gen version of its QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds are no standard 'buds by any means. These offer the pinnacle of active noise-cancelling (ANC) in an in-ear format – which I've found very comfortable to wear for long periods, too.

However, that "2nd Gen" badge might not mean quite as much as you'd hope, for these earbuds aren't dramatically different from the original QC Ultra Earbuds model, as I'll get into below.

However, a March 2026 firmware update further enhanced the ANC controls. And, having used the QC Ultra Earbuds 2 for a week for this review, my initial state of 'nothing but impressed' has only been further reinforced. Here's why Bose still reigns supreme.

Price & Availability

The Bose QC Ultra Earbuds 2 launched in the summer of 2025, with some markets only receiving them towards the later part of that year. With a key 2026 firmware update having rolled out in March, these are still Bose's most flagship earbuds – and just as relevant now as at launch.

Price-wise, things have also improved over time. The £299 / $299 / AU$450 launch price has dropped, with some pretty strong discounts at the time of writing – as you can see in the shopping widget above. That closes the gap somewhat between the original model and this 2nd Gen release.

What's New?

• New colour options: Deep Plum, Desert Gold, Midnight Violet
• Adds wireless charging to case
• New 'Cinema Mode' preset
• Adjusted ANC profile

To look at there's no difference between the QC Earbuds Ultra 2 and the original version – unless you purchased one of the more standout new colourways, as listed above, which join the staple of Black and White Smoke.

The same design is matched with the same weight as previous. No surprise, as the battery capacity within these 'buds and the included charging case also sees no change. There is, however, wireless charging for the latter, which for the original product was an add-on accessory option only.

Aside from improved earwax guards, it's otherwise largely software-based changes, with a new Cinema Mode preset added, and an adjusted ANC profile and Aware Mode improvements now part of the package.

While I found that in the equivalent over-ear Headphones Ultra 2 this made for a weaker ANC experience overall, in the Earbuds Ultra 2 it's actually an improvement. The new adjustable Noise Control slider can be manually set as you please in custom settings, giving you full control if you wish.

Design & Usability

As the idiom goes: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Bose had really hit the nail on the head with the original QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds, so the 2nd Gen model treads the very same path – with at least equal success.

While initially I thought the 'buds looked rather large, this scale doesn't affect the comfort or fit. I've found even long periods of wear over many hours very comfortable indeed, while a trio of eartips included in the box ensures you can find the correct seal for your ears.

Each protruding silicone eartip is soft and comfortable, complemented by a stability band edging that's made of the same material. That means when these buds are in your ear, they're well and truly there to stay.

Even with motion I've found these earbuds to stay in firmly, contrary to what the visual appearance may suggest. They can be easily controlled via touch directly from the ear-mounted position, too, with the app educating you on those actions.

The app is a key part of the usability, as this is the gateway to accessing the Modes, adjusting Noise Cancellation (ANC), equalisation (EQ), Immersive Audio processing, and selecting your Source, while also being able to see the battery charge level of each earbud and the charging case.

By default you're presented with Quiet, Aware, Immersion and Cinema. Those cater for: full ANC; auto-adjusted passthrough using Bose's ActiveSense tech; spatial enhanced output; and three-dimensional audio when paired with a TV viewing experience.

But as you can create custom extras, this general overview can be manipulated as you please. Personally, I don't use the Aware option, as I'm not a big fan of passthrough in ANC modes.

That said, the 2nd Gen product has gone at lengths to ensure its ActiveSense is more subtly responsive than in the original product, rather than making any abrupt changes based on ambient noise spikes.

Sound Quality & ANC

The real treat with the QC Ultra Earbuds 2 is the overall sound quality. That's important, too, as many competitors continue to up their game – including the likes of Technics' AZ100.

Just as said of the original Ultra Earbuds, the 2nd Gen model continues to deliver "astounding audio" with great fidelity. Bass is abundant, which is a Bose signature trademark, hitting those low notes to such dizzying degree that you might not expect it from a pair of in-ears.

Bose is also a dab hand when it comes to processing, too, which isn't something that many audio-makers have got quite as correct. Here it's Bose's Immersive Audio tech that I really enjoy, subtly enhancing the soundstage to feel more three-dimensional – even 'moving' as you physically move your head throughout the space (a setting that you can turn off as you please).

That excellent audio signature is one part of the Bose puzzle, but it's the ANC that really ramps these 'buds up a notch. The brand has been very, very good at delivering cancellation that's so considerable that ambient sounds you'd be sure you'd hear when wearing them can all but disappear.

I've used these earbuds on trains and planes, at my desk or when walking at lunchtimes, and regardless of the scenario they just consistently deliver. Some may prefer the ActiveSense tech takeover in Aware mode, which has been nicely smoothed out – and I can see the worth in that for, say, those park walks.

The final part to mention is, but of course, battery life. It's rated at 6 hours per charge, but that dips to 4 hours when you've got Immersion active. Which, given how much I enjoy using that feature, is how I use these headphones. I'd like longer innings, really, but it's still a fair showing overall.

The case will deliver a further three full charges, which will help you along, and the case can then be recharged too – although its 2-hour top-up time from dead to full seems a bit slow, given its approximate 700mAh capacity (around one sixth of your mobile phone's battery).

Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen) review: Verdict

While the 2nd Gen version of Bose's QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds don't add a huge amount over the original model, that doesn't detract from what are the best active noise-cancelling (ANC) earbuds on the market.

The marginal improvements – namely wireless charging and software tweaks to the ANC's operation – only further the user experience for the better. If you're an avid wireless charging fan, then the former feature makes a strong case to spend a little extra over the still-on-sale original.

With stellar sound, an abundance of bass, ANC that almost defies belief in its ability to blot out ambient sound, and improved customisation options within the app, the Bose QC Ultra Earbuds 2 are untouchable. Don't let the large size fool you either, as these are as comfortable as they are great-sounding.

Also Consider

If you don't care for wireless charging and can find a good deal on the original QC Ultra Earbuds, then you'll get a similar audio and ANC experience – with those savings perhaps an even better case for you.

Otherwise, it's Sony's WF-1000XM6 that arguably deliver an even more refined audio experience, along with very good ANC. They might cost you a little more at the moment, though, giving Bose the edge.

If having super-strong ANC isn't the absolute in your wants, however, then Technics' AZ100 are our go-to pick for audio quality to take on the best of them. Design-wise they might appeal to those who baulk at the Bose's larger scale, too.

We Are Rewind has truly captured the spirit of the 80s with its WE-001 Walkman-style cassette players and the GB-001 Blaster. Now it's adding a new product to the range, and it perfect matches both.

The brand has announced its first standalone pair of headphones and they continue the retro vibe. The We Are Rewind Freddie headphones (EQ-002) are similar in style to the the EQ-001 pair you can get bundled with a cassette player, but now feature Bluetooth 6 connectivity.

Styled around the classic Walkman headphones of the early 80s, the EQ-001 on-ears include interchangeable ear cushions in three colours – orange, yellow and black. They are wireless, but you also get a 2.5mm to 3.5mm cable in the box if you want to be like Cliff Richard and be "wired for sound".

There's a 36mm dynamic driver in each ear cup, while charging is performed over USB-C.

The 200mAh battery gives you approximately 14 hours of playback, and you can charge from flat to full in around three hours.

There's a built-in microphone, and on device controls can access music and incoming calls.

The headphones weigh just 66g and are made of stainless steel, plastic and foam.

While they are perfectly matched to one of We Are Rewind's cassette players, you can also use the Freddie pair with any other Bluetooth device – including an iPhone or Android phone.

Being able to skateboard and look cool is entirely optional.

The We Are Rewind Freedie EQ-002 headphones are available now priced at £43 / $59 / €49 a pair. I think they'll go particularly well a new Anbernic RG Rotate retro games console, which doesn't come with a 3.5mm headphone jack, but does support Bluetooth.

I might give that a go myself.

As part of Shokz's product catalogue diversification, the company has just revealed the OpenDots 2 air-conduction 'buds – adding much-requested improved ingress protection (now IP57).

But there's another product that's launched in tandem – helping the brand go more mainstream in its offerings – called the OpenDots Air.

This all-new air-conduction offering, while altogether similar to the OpenDots 2, goes a little lighter on some features – and, as a result, the price you'll pay is lower.

I've used the Shokz OpenDots 2 for a couple of weeks and have been exploring the OpenDots Air in person, too. So which should you buy and why?

Price

The Shokz OpenDots 2 is the more expensive product, priced at £179 in the UK and $199.95 in the USA. Australian pricing is TBC at this time.

That's a like-for-like price compared to the original OpenDots product, but the new feature set is broader and more advanced – which I'll get to – so the value remains competitive.

The Shokz OpenDots Air, meanwhile, retail for £129 in the UK and $129.95 in the USA. Again, Australian pricing is TBC for the time being.

Design & Fit

Above are the two earbuds wrapped around my finger. They're different in appearance – but only marginally – with the OpenDots 2's more recessed JointArc band fitting more securely.

The OpenDots 2 has a nicer finish, too, with more of the soft silicone used at a larger number of touch-points. The OpenDots Air, by comparison, has a more plasticky feel in majority places – excluding the JointArc structure.

The weight is negligible between the two, with the OpenDots 2 at 6.4g per 'bud, while the OpenDots Air are 6.3g per 'bud – something you can't humanly detect.

Colourways are Pearl White, Grey and Black (pictured) for the OpenDots 2, while the OpenDots Air offer Daybreak Purple or Black (pictured) finishes.

Weather-sealing

The OpenDots 2 also upgrade the original OpenDots with an IP57 rating. That means they're dust-resistant (the '5' part) and water-resistant to a depth of 1-metre for 30-minutes (the '7' part of the equation).

The OpenDots Air offer some protection, but it's not quite as good, at IP55. That's the same dust-resistance, but it can't officially withstand submersion – the secondary '5' meaning it can sustain low-pressure water jets.

The OpenDots 2's case is also IP54 protected – so "splash resistant" – whereas the Air's case offers no official ingress protection whatsoever.

Battery Life

The OpenDots 2 also offer slightly better battery life. The quoted time is 10 hours per charge, with up to 40 hours total from the case.

The OpenDots Air, meanwhile, quote 9 hours per charge, with up to 40 hours total from its case.

The OpenDots 2 also offer wireless charging via the case, whereas the Air does not. The former also charges faster – with 5-minutes said to deliver 2-hours of playback (it's 10-minutes for the same from the Air).

Sound Quality & Calls

While both products have dual air-conduction microphones for calls, it's only the OpenDots 2 that adds an additional bone-conduction microphone – making call clarity improved, even in more difficult conditions (and better for those with hearing impairment, too, of course).

In terms of sound quality, the OpenDots 2 offer the better solution of the two – although I've worn both and the differences aren't so gigantic to make this the biggest reason to buy one or other. It's the other parts of the feature set that'll define your decision.

However, the OpenDots 2 Shokz's Bassphere 2.0 technology for deeper bass, and have a Dolby Audio setting within the app (not that I care for the latter – I think personal EQ is the way to go). The OpenDots Air, meanwhile, have the first-gen Bassphere and lack the Dolby addition.

Conclusion

While you might assume the biggest difference is sound quality, I'd say that's the mildest difference between these two headphones.

The reason to pick the OpenDots 2 is simple: there's better water-resistance, making it the obvious choice for runners and, well, anyone wanting them for active adventures.

The OpenDots Air are obviously appealing for their far lower asking price, however, which is around 28% lower for UK customers and 35% less for US-based buyers.

Also don't forget the OpenDots 2 offer the better finish and longer battery life, too, further adding to the list of reasons to buy them.

But, ultimately, if money is your key factor – and you want something that's cheaper than Huawei or another maker – then Shokz is covering all bases with these two open-ear products.

When you think of the best earbuds, your mind may venture to those you see en masse in public – whether that be AirPods or one of many other brands – but there are also specialist market players that have fought for their place too.

One such brand is Shokz, well known for its bone-conduction earbuds and, more recently, air-conduction solutions – which hold great success with many in the running community, as one example demographic.

But as the whole 'open-ear' market explodes – with Bose joining the party last year – Shokz is doubling down, releasing its OpenDots 2, and, in a rare presentation with questions to a small group of journalists last month at Shokz's HQ, Ken Chen, one of the co-founders of the company, told his story – from the struggles to success.

Chen, who trained as a mechanical engineer, is now a successful businessman – but that's not always been the reality. He's a humble character and a surprisingly open and honest presenter – delving into the company's development from AfterShokz LLC to today's Shokz, while contemplating what the future holds.

From producer to innovator

“Inspiration is easy, innovation is really hard," began Chen, who co-founded then-AfterShokz back in 2011. But the work had begun well before that date, of course.

“At the beginning, we were a two-way radio earpiece manufacturer. We were a factory. We produced a lot for international brands.”

Applying his expertise – and that of his colleagues – to products for other companies wasn't where Chen's mind was though. There was ambition, spurred by inspiration.

“If it is something new that really makes a difference in our society, then that is innovation.

“When I first tried bone-conduction, I was thinking ‘wow, there are so many things that we [AfterShokz] can do with that.’”

That was the catalyst; the spark. With his established engineering background, he could see practical options to create a consumer brand – and not just produce for other companies.

Trials and trepidations

“But there was lots and lots of hard work down the road. We tried a lot of new stuff because we were engineers triggered by education [of bone-conduction's existence] – but none of them were successful with our customers.

“Certainly, if we wanted to become a consumer brand, it seemed an impossible challenge. Whatever you create is not popular – at the beginning, at least.

“We thought that we could do more with the technology – and we had passion. So we founded AfterShokz LLC in Syracuse, New York. At the Consumer Electronics Show in 2011 [or CES for short], we had a little booth – the smallest possible – and we were showcasing our headphones.

"But nobody understood what we were doing. Nobody knew anything about bone-conduction technology. Nobody paid any attention to what we were trying to say.

“But you know, not everything was bad. If that were true then we wouldn't have made any further investment. So we saw the silver lining in our failures ... and we needed to seek out sales and marketing. Engineers don't know anything about that."

Upward trajectory

“After the launch of AfterShokz, we participated again at CES in 2012 – and this time we made a little bit of a bigger investment. We had twice the size of the smallest unit – the booth was modest, as it was just $500 – and it was shipped [to Las Vegas, Nevada] in twenty-three boxes.

“Our PR was sick because the work was overwhelming; she made a lot of effort and noise at that CES. But it worked. The Wall Street Journal gave us one of the ‘top gadgets of CES’ [that year].

"Then the booth was so crazy. Groups of people arrived – they brought their friends and their colleagues, and the word spread about bone-conduction.

“So we were really encouraged. We rocked CES. So we went on to make more investment.

“After that show, we spent the entire year building Bluez – the world’s first Bluetooth bone-conduction headphones.

"Bluez was so complicated for our company at that time. But we were doing something new, so the media reported about us."

Got the Bluez

“However, Bluez was a difficult product – and it was not a great product. But we still had to go to market with the goods.

"The expectation [in retail] was [to sell] one piece per store per week. Higher than that and you get a bigger space.

“So when the first report came back it was eighteen sales – that from one thousand stores. Eighteen in total. That's was horrible.

“Between 2012 and 2015, business development became a kind of guerrilla war. We were in Best Buy, then out. In Apple Stores globally, then out again. We entered Fnac and MediaMarkt – and were later rejected. We moved from one distributor to another, from one sports store to another. We simply couldn’t find stability.

“However, people didn’t reject the idea of open-ear audio, they rejected our execution of product at that time.”

A long Trekz

"So instead of giving up, we went back to the fundamentals – we focused on our technology and our product.

"We realised that we needed to improve the underlying technology first. The bone-conduction solution needed to be louder, we needed to reduce sound leakage, to reduce vibration.

"So we worked on that. We invented these layers to reduce the leakage. We invented and re-invented the premium pitch to make the sound more balanced. And we also mastered the titanium frame and flexible fit.

“Eventually, we created this product, Trekz. Trekz actually changed the business type and changed people's opinion about bone-conduction technology.

“For the first time, consumers felt like ‘this actually works!’. That moment changed our business.”

On a viral run

“In the old days, some of my friends would give good suggestions and kind words of encouragement. When Trekz came out, they just asked for Trekz samples.

"And it's very interesting that when you create these good things, they naturally become viral. Good things should be viral. That's how you grow a brand – it's that chain reaction.

“We were really proud of what we did with Trekz. But we were still struggling on the business side. If we couldn't sell it, we thought: 'how about we let them try?'

“So, half a year before Trekz was released, we were working on these demonstrations so that people could try [out Trekz in person in store – first in South Korea].

“If you are innovative, it's also your responsibility to educate the market about your innovation.

“But we have to beg these stores to give us space. We said: ‘If you give us space, we will train your staff even better, and give them Trekz [to understand the product].

“Brookstone was eventually one of the early adopter stores in North America. At the peak, one third of their revenue came from Trekz. We were selling tremendous volumes of product.

“Finally, our bone-conduction headphones had great value to their owners.”

Long-distance marathon

"We found spaces in the running stores in the UK. We succeeded among runners and became more successful.

“As we went grassroots, we touched early adopters – and they turned around and championed us. They recommend us to their family and friends – and the word of mouth effect is huge.

“We became a meaningful statistical number in an industry report. And that's when the MediaMarkt, the JB Hi-Fi and so forth took us in.

"But it's all the grassroots and underlying work where the value was created.

“The early days were a struggle, but the determination and the work ethic was always to tackle the problem.

“For quite some time, I would not allow us to release new product unless they showed significant improvement on the technology.”

To the future

Shokz has released plenty of innovative products since those mid-to-late 2010s, too, from the OpenRun Pro and beyond – with air-conduction products released later.

Queried about Shokz's future, Chen was ponderous: "Bone-conduction is, of course, a fantastic technology. But the market is relatively limited. As we continue to go more mainstream, open-ear audio allows us to serve a much border audience."

The latest release, in the form of OpenDots 2, reinforces that. This product release is more about refinement; about mainstream desires – adding IP57 ingress and water protection to add sports and mass appeal.

Chen is clearly confident in the technology: "I always feel very proud. When we produce a product, it would have to be good enough for us first."

And what about beyond the next 5 years? "As we grow, inevitably we have to cater to a broader consumer base. But we still emphasise technological development.

"Our mission has not changed: we still want to build the most wearable headphones ever. That means staying focused on the fundamentals, being true to ourselves and to keep creating value.

"But, of course, the future is always going to be challenging – and we're not kidding ourselves about that".

If you've been pondering buying a pair of the best earbuds, but hate that 'pressurised' feeling of something in your ear canal, or dislike the inevitable heightened lack of awareness, then Shokz is here to solve your issues.

The long-established brand's latest open-ear flagship, the OpenDots 2, are air-conduction headphones designed to deliver earbud-like sound quality – but without blocking your ear canals, thus ensuring you maintain awareness of your surroundings.

It's this design fundamental that's made the brand a mainstay for runners – initially with its bone-conduction headphones, which function in an altogether different way – but after wearing the OpenDots 2 for the past two weeks for this review, I think there's much wider cross-over appeal here beyond just sports and exercise enthusiasts.

Other brands have clearly noticed increased interest, too, with more lifestyle-oriented brands such as Bose recently entering the space, or Huawei establishing a more budget take to attract interest. While both of those deliver value in their own right, neither is anywhere nearly as comfortable as Shokz's latest – which is what makes the OpenDots 2 the 5-star option.

Price & Availability

The Shokz OpenDots 2 are on sale right now, priced at £179 in the UK and $199.95 in the USA (I'm currently awaiting Australian pricing – the 4 June on-sale date may slip in that region).

That's the same price equivalent at the original OpenDots product, so there's no year-on-year increase of concern – although the originals are now reduced in price (as you can see in the shopping widget above).

What's New?

So why buy the newer OpenDots 2 over the original product? I think it's worth spending that bit extra for the increased protection alone – it's now IP57 (up from IP54), that '7' meaning full submersion in a metre of water for half an hour is no bother.

Note, of course, that the OpenDots 2 aren't designed for swimming (there's the OpenSwim Pro for that). Simply that they'll be able to take all manner of sweat-dunking use from you, safe in the knowledge that they'll be protected and ready to roll for your next workout or general listening session.

Furthermore, the OpenDots 2 adds a bone-conduction microphone for use with calls, adding greater clarity – a feature that was lacking on the original product. This isn't for music playback, mind, so don't confuse these open-ears' core functionality.

The other key upgrade comes in sound quality, with the latest 'Bassphere 2.0 technology' designed to deliver even deeper low-end with minimal distortion. As these are open-ears, the low-end floor isn't as far down the frequency range as many earbuds – but Shokz has taken on feedback and recognised the importance of bass.

Design & Fit

The fundamental design point of the Shokz OpenDots 2 is that the open-ear nature means there's no actual earbud to wedge into your ear canal. Instead, the air-conduction output sits suspended in front of your ear.

To make this feasible, the earbud has to 'clip' onto your ear. Which is where things get really interesting. Having worn the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds extensively, the Shokz knock those out of the park in terms of comfort – by and large thanks to a patented silicone (Ultra-Soft Silicone™ 2.0) that's incredibly soft.

It's not only this factor, however, it's the beautifully judged pressure – or more the complete lack thereof – that Shokz has elected to use in the OpenDots 2. The (also patented) JointArc is made of a flexible nickel titanium plate, so it's super-light yet flexible – as a result, given the absence of any 'pinch' sensation, I largely forgot I was wearing these open-ears in little time.

People's ears do differ vastly, of course, so your mileage may vary – but Shokz has measured a wide demographic of users to generate a best-case for the majority in this product. How you wear them is another clear area Shokz is keen to highlight, with the associated app keenly telling you all the wrong ways not to put them onto your ears.

The app also educates you on the touch controls available. Pinching the battery 'barrel' that sits behind your ear can raise/lower the volume, while a tap will play/pause. There's also wear detection for auto-off when removing the open-ears from your lobes. The pinch control works very well, the tap control can be hit-and-miss given the flexible nature of one's ears.

Sporting Use

A massive appeal of the OpenDots 2 is that they don't block out ambient sound around you, so using them when running, cycling, or any other multitude of outdoor exercise makes them a good bet if you don't want to lose sense of your surroundings.

Impressively, despite the light touch of the fit, these open-ears stay in place when you're bouncing around on foot, too. They can marginally move, which can affect the sound profile, but will then settle into a natural position and not move unduly.

While Shokz does make other products specifically aimed at runners, the OpenDots 2 are perfectly suited to the task too. And that IP57 rating is particularly important for environmental factors, such as rain, sweat, mud – you name it.

However, while the open-ear nature is a key benefit of this product, it also presents an unavoidable natural ceiling. I've used the OpenDots 2 when cycling and the high speed of travel means an inevitable wind factor – which creates such a rush of sound of its own accord that hearing music from these open-ears becomes limited.

That said, I personally can't stand the 'passthrough' nature of active noise-cancelling earbuds, as it sounds too fake and processed. Besides, I wouldn't wear in-ear earbuds when cycling for safety reasons. That the OpenDots 2 present any kind of option is a step above – and could be ideal for spoken word podcasts and suchlike.

Sound Quality

Just to spell it out clearly: if you're looking for a pair of earbuds that isolate you from the world and offer active noise-cancelling (ANC) then you're very much in the wrong place – and the OpenDots 2 will not be for you.

However, if you're seeking an open-ear experience, where your external surroundings are always audible, then the OpenDots 2 are precisely what you seek. And while you might assume this 'open' nature means sound leakage and poor sound delivery, Shokz proves itself very capable of solid sound indeed.

Now, I'm not pretending that the quality of audio will rival the best earbuds. But in the context of this open-ear market, the OpenDots 2 are as good as it gets – it's only the OpenFit Pro able to offer more sound isolation (plus a higher price, larger and more obtrusive fit, and cold-feel metal that's less comfortable in my experience).

The low-end floor of the OpenDots 2 is 100Hz, so nowhere near the sub levels that you'll find in some other product types. But the Bassphere 2.0 tech does give an emphasis of bass with real throng – more than I'd expected, especially when surrounding ambient sound is minimal.

There are a variety of equalisation (EQ) settings within the app, including the option to personalise, or you can bypass for Dolby Audio at the flick of a switch (which bypasses your EQ selection). Personally I don't care for the Dolby option, I think it over-exerts the mid-section to give an overly 'metallic' presentation.

As said previously, the position of the OpenDots 2 in your ears is integral to how it'll sound, so subtle shifts can change the soundstage considerably. When this happens, the high-end might sound a bit too 'sparkly', for example, such is the nature of this product design.

Overall, I think the OpenDots 2 present a solid sound delivery that's actually exceeded my expectations. There are notable trade-offs with any open-ear design, but the ability to offset some of these with capable volume levels and an emphasis on bass impresses.

Battery life, meanwhile, is much the same as the original product – at 10 hours per charge. That's no surprise, given the space limitations and lightweight nature of this design (each bud is a mere 6.4g).

However, the provided case can charge a further three times, so you can net 40 hours in total. And the case is even Qi wireless charging compatible for easy top-ups. Using the USB-C is quicker, mind, noting that only the charging cable is included (not the wall plug).

Shokz OpenDots 2 review: Verdict

The Shokz OpenDots 2 certainly aren't going to be for everyone. But for the specific user base that these open-ears are aimed at, they're a total knockout.

Active people and runners in particular will no doubt appreciate the design's open nature, allowing you to remain aware of your surroundings at all times, plus the IP57 rating for assurance of wear and tear.

But the sheer degree of comfort in this fit means earbud-despisers may also prefer this option for everyday use, too. The overall sound quality also exceeded my expectations.

No, it's not going to rival an active noise-cancelling earbud. But that's not the point. In the context of this product category, the Shokz deliver solid sound – including a surprising amount of bass – that doesn't feel like a universal compromise.

As someone who dislikes the passthrough option of active noise-cancelling, the OpenDots 2 are a versatile alternative. So whether you're looking for less conventional active earbuds for running, or an earbud-adjacent option to wear all day, every day, Shokz's latest is a 5-star sensation.

Also Consider

If you want nothing in your ear canals at all, then the OpenRun Pro 2 bone-conduction headphones steer clear for even better audio. The fit is with a headband design for rigid placement – making these less versatile than the OpenDots 2.

It's worth mentioning the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds, too, as their more 'lifestyle' design might be initially appealing – but the higher price and less comfortable fit are marks against this option.

Huawei's FreeClips 2 are a near-priced option too. However, their material finish isn't as comfortable, though, so you may instead want to consider Shokz's also-new OpenDots Air – which offer much of the OpenDots 2 with reductions in the build, battery life and IP rating.

If Beats wanted people talking about its next pair of headphones, mission accomplished.

The Apple-owned audio brand appears to have kicked off the marketing campaign for a new set of over-ear headphones by putting them in the hands of a high-profile athlete and letting the internet do the rest.

This time, the athlete in question is football superstar Lamine Yamal, who shared a carousel of images on social media ahead of Spain's latest training camp.

While the post itself wasn't about headphones, eagle-eyed fans quickly noticed a pair of bright pink Beats over-ears appearing prominently throughout the photos.

The headphones are either hanging from Yamal's bag or draped around his neck, making them impossible to miss.

The appearance comes just days after a mystery pair of Bluetooth over-ear headphones surfaced in filings with the US Federal Communications Commission under model number A3577.

At the time, it wasn't clear if the device belonged to Apple or Beats, but Yamal's Instagram post appears to answer that question.

A familiar Beats playbook

This isn't the first time Beats has used athletes and celebrities to tease upcoming products before launch.

The brand has built much of its marketing identity around high-profile ambassadors, often allowing unreleased products to appear in public long before an official announcement arrives.

Yamal is certainly getting the word out. The post featuring the upcoming cans currently has 2.7 million likes and nearly 11,000 comments.

In several shots, the headphones are positioned front and centre, hanging from a designer bag, giving photographers and social media users a clear view of the distinctive pink finish.

The headphones themselves look markedly different from the current Beats Studio Pro, which launched in 2023.

The new model appears to feature flatter earcups and a redesigned headband with slimmer support arms that bear more than a passing resemblance to the Apple AirPods Max 2.

Several observers have also noted that the overall shape does not resemble any current Beats product.

More than a new colourway

The current Beats Studio Pro arrived with custom Beats silicon rather than Apple's H-series chip, a decision that improved Android compatibility but left the headphones without some of the ecosystem features found on AirPods.

Since then, Beats has used Apple's chips in newer products, including the Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 and the Beats Powerbeats Fit, which led to speculation that these mystery headphones could follow the same path.

For now, Beats isn't saying anything publicly, but if history is any guide, seeing a mystery product hanging from the shoulder of a Beats ambassador is rarely an accident.

[via Macrumors]

Apple may have upgraded its AirPods Max headphones of late – and Sony its WH-1000 series with the WH-1000XX – but there's one pair of wireless ANC over-ears that sit proudly at the top of my list for pure audio performance.

The Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 headphones are the crème de la crème of closed-back, Bluetooth 'phones for me, with audiophile-standard sound and beautiful design. They rightly scored the full five stars in our review last autumn and I take my Warm Stone coloured pair everywhere.

However, a 2026 update is making me think again.

Bowers & Wilkins has recently added another couple of colours to the lineup – Midnight Blue and Pearl Blue – and it's the latter has wowed me once more.

Having now seen and tested the Px8 S2 in Pearl Blue, I think I've been swayed by the new colour. The audio performance is identical and continues to be class-leading, but with a softer, more subtle aesthetic.

What wins it for me is the lighter, silver-like die-cast aluminium elements – the Warm Sand version has a darker metallic shade. This offsets the pastel blue superbly and makes them look quite unlike any other premium headphones on the market today.

AirPods Max 2 do have some interesting colour options, but these look classier.

And that's not all.

Even better-looking than the Pearl Blue PX8 S2 are the new Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 variants in Vintage Maroon. Also scoring five stars in our review last year, the Px7 S3 are almost as perfect in performance as their flagship siblings.

They swap the soft Nappa leather earcups for vegan leather alternatives, and the 40mm drivers are bio cellulose rather than carbon, but the build quality continues to be of a very high standard.

And that is exemplified by the new maroon finish. They remind me of old school Fred Perry twin-tipped shirts of the 80s and 90s – especially when matched with the gold B&W logo. Burgundy and gold have always looked stylish together, and these ooze mod swagger.

Needless to say, I've mainly been listening to The Who, Kinks and The Jam on them.

Both pairs are available now with the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 in Pearl Blue (and Midnight Blue) available for £629 / €729 / $799, while the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 in Vintage Maroon will set you back £399 / €429 / $479.

They each offer 30 hours of battery life and USB-C charging, plus aptX Lossless Bluetooth support. And they are available from Bowers & Wilkins directly or via multiple other retailers.

It's been an interesting few weeks. Despite obtaining Sony's all-new and most luxurious ever headphones, the 1000X 'The Collexion' (see my full review here), I've had to be very discreet about my possession of these over-ear cans.

That's because I've been using these new headphones wherever possible, with the caveat that they've been under embargo and therefore not for public display. Nonetheless, with other creators and celebrities donning them in the wild, I've been able to test them in a variety of environments too.

Which I've felt has been an important real-world-testing factor for these headphones. After all, The Collexion – the 'X' not being a typo, but a numeral-esque representation of Sony's decade-long endeavour in this space – is positioned above the brand's WH-1000XM6, in a semi-adjacent space to Apple's AirPods Max 2 or Bowers & Wilkins' PX8 S2.

What's interesting, however, is that Sony isn't positioning The Collexion as an XM6 alternative, per se. These are a grade above, offering a brand new 30mm driver, new processor, different active noise-cancelling (ANC) that's designed less for those on the go – and more with the focus being self-indulgent "me time" at home.

It's been a rollercoaster journey with these headphones, therefore, in trying to absorb precisely what they're all about but, crucially, who they're actually aimed at. Has Sony hit a home run in unsettling Apple and Bowers, or is the 1000X The Collexion dubiously aligned with its best intentions?

Pricing

First thing's first: the price. There's no messing around here, as The Collexion, available in either Black or Platinum finishes, will cost you £550 (US and Australia pricing is unavailable to me at the time of writing).

For context, Apple's AirPods Max are £499 / $529 / AU$999, while Bowers & Wilkins' PX8 S2 will set you back £629 / $799 / AU$1,299. The Japanese tech giant has therefore opted to sit somewhere in the middle – which is a message of confidence.

A potential 'hiccup', if I can call it that, is that the brand's WH-1000XM6 headphones cost £399 / $449 / AU$699. As both products have "1000X" firmly in their names, it makes them somewhat more comparable – I'm sure that's how many consumers will see it anyway. Which makes me wonder who's going to see that near-40% jump as the best purchase decision.

Sound Quality

Well, herein lies the argument for that extra spend. The 1000X The Collexion aren't just WH-1000XM6 in disguise, jazzed up to look prettier. They have an all-new driver and have been produced with entirely different consideration.

To cut to the chase: I really enjoy the sound these new headphones produce. Some purists might find them a little too bassy, but the 30mm drivers deployed here have new carbon materials to make for a tauter and therefore tighter bass response.

I'm pleased that's the case in general, as Sony's seeming disarray when making its Ult Wear (read: insanely loose, over-bassy headphones) really made me query what the heck the brand was up to. The Collexion, however, corrects that misstep and puts the brand back on a more sensible path.

There are caveats to the sound, as I'll get to, but much of that is processing-related. In terms of raw audio, including playing nice with Hi-Res Audio sources, The Collexion do a fine job of being very fine headphones indeed. So that's the biggest job succeeded.

Pleasingly, there's a detailed graphic equaliser option within the app. You can select from pre-sets or adjust a 10-band EQ (to +/-6dB per band) to create your ideal sound. Two 'Custom' options can be saved, too, should you have a specific EQ rigour that you'd prefer to apply to specific genres or sources. I love using this.

Upmixing & Adaptive Control

I did say there are caveats, though. Sony seems really proud of its work in using the HD Noise Cancelling Processor QN3 – which was an introduction in the XM6 headphones – in tandem with an all-new Integrated Processor V3 is added for "360 upmixes".

"What are 360 upmixes?", I hear you cry. You might suspect head-motion spatial audio, much like Bose has with the QuietComfort Ultra Headphones. But it's not that. Instead, this feature – available as part of the Sound Connect app (available for iOS and Android) – offers "listening modes" to ape various environments.

There's 'Background Music', 'Game', 'Cinema' and 'Music'. There's also the fact that each and every one is terrible in its attempt at adding movie-soundtrack-esque filtering that's just not needed for a product like this.

Let the music be as it's mixed, not some replica "played out the back of your local cafe" in style. This is the feature I dislike the most about these headphones, because I just can't make sense of it. Even the 'Music' setting will add edginess and crunch that I can't see anyone really appreciating.

Active Noise-Cancelling

Fortunately you needn't care about the listening mode, as it's off by default – and you should just leave it that way. Do so and you've then got the choice of active noise-cancelling (ANC) being on or off, or set to Ambient (many would call this 'passthrough' for hearing people speak).

I must say, Sony has gone pretty light on those options, and I've been a firm user of 'on' at all times. Good job, then, that the 1000X The Collexion are well-equipped for delivering ANC, with 12 microphones – eight on the exterior, four within the earcups for feedback – utilising the same base system as the WH-1000XM6's setup.

However, the XM6 and The Collexion are not the same in their ANC delivery. How you feel about this will either make it more of a 'like' or more of a 'dislike' take – whereas I'm sitting on the fence somewhat. That's because the XM6 have 'stronger' ANC; The Collexion, meanwhile, has a more generous passthrough for higher-end frequencies in general.

Now, that creates a more natural and less 'stuck in a vacuum' experience for listening – ideal when at home. It's more delicate, more Bowers & Wilkins-esque in style.

But when out and about – as I have discreetly been testing on trains and planes – these newer headphones can't deliver the Bose or even Sony's step-down XM6 degree of total cancellation.

The Collexion delivers good ANC, for sure, but it's intentionally different – and that's a key factor you'll need to weigh up in your purchase decision.

Adaptive Control

It's not entirely smooth sailing, however, with another software-induced system presenting further issues. There's a 'Scene' option within the app, whereby the headphones will adjust depending on your actions.

I get and like the idea of it – changing the profile for your gym session, when you're walking or commuting, and so forth – but it's much too abrupt in its adjustment and can't really appreciate that I never want Ambient to be on for my uses.

This also highlights the 1000X The Collexion's lack of minutiae adjustment levels. There's no ANC 'grades', no subtle levels of adjustment. To me it feels too crude an adjustment when chopping between its assumed activity changes. It's feels like an AI feature that lacks the human touch.

Comfort

Those minor foibles voiced, however, and I can't shy away from the fact that these headphones are supremely comfortable to wear. Sony has really dialled in on the design front and delivered an exquisitely light product, created with great materials.

That, to some degree, helps explain the price. Because you can feel the quality in the wearing of these headphones. They don't pinch. They don't get too warm (I've slept in them on a plane already, so would know). They don't feel like a weight upon one's head. It's all very nicely judged.

There are distinguished steps in the design which are very intentional, too. There are no visible screws. The single-piece coverings have no visible seams. The sand-blasted Sony logo that sits apart from the metal part of the headband. There's no paint to be seen here, it's all just raw and treated materials. I totally respect that – Sony has levelled up.

Battery

The last part is both a positive and negative, too. The Collexion has been wise in splitting its battery into two cells, meaning a more balanced weight on the head. But neither of these two cells is especially large in capacity.

I wouldn't say the 1000X The Collexion is lowly in output time per charge, as such, more that other brands are well beyond this level. I've been seeing, roughly speaking, 2.5-to-3 hours per 20% depletion. And circa 14 hours of delivery on one charge is no bad show.

It's just that Sony's claim of "max 24 hours" (with ANC on; it's 16 for calls) seems far away from my reality in weeks of use. And other brands are in the dozens of hours per charge. Some are knocking on triple digits.

Yes, the Collexion is a distance off that. But I'd not want more battery capacity meaning more weight and therefore a less balanced product design, so it's swings and roundabouts. Ultimately, I can understand Sony's decision here.

In Conclusion

Overall, then, I have really loved using Sony’s 1000X The Collexion headphones – and will continue to do so. The fundamentals are absolutely on point: product design, usability, materials, comfort, sound quality.

Despite this, however, I am still left wondering precisely who these headphones are for. With active noise-cancelling (ANC) that's less strong than the brand's XM6 over-ears, the fact the '1000X' name has stuck might be confusing to prospective buyers.

I also can't quite get over the name in and of itself, which sounds like the marketing department asked AI "what the cool kids might say". I get the "X" inclusion for its representation, but I just don't see that marketing as an attractive point for buyers of headphones at this level.

The fact is that this market is also very competitive. Apple heads are going to continue loving their AirPods Max. I would personally pay the bit extra for Bowers & Wilkins' PX8 S2 for the real leather and even higher-end design. And if I didn't have that sort of money then, well, Sony's WH-1000XM6 are among the best travel headphone picks you could ever choose.

So, after more than a fortnight of use, I'm as enamoured by Sony's 1000X The Collexion as I am confused by some of the aspects. These are exceptional headphones, which will be 5-star winners for some, but clearly won't be for everyone – and I think a batch of the app's 'upmix' and 'scene' software features need a drastic rethink too.

The situation surrounding Sennheiser at the moment is certainly peculiar. At the end of March, the brand's parent company – Sonova – discontinued its operations and placed it up for sale.

Many feared for the future of one of the audio industries' most significant names. But now – to add even more confusion to the situation – the brand is back with a new model announced.

That's right – today, we've seen the launch of the Sennheiser Momentum 5 headphones. That's the natural successor to the Momentum 4, which earned a five-star review when we tested them back in 2022.

Those employ the same 42mm transducer which the previous generation utilised, and has been tuned for full-bodied sound and dynamic bass in the vein of the HD 600 series headphones. However, this model is pushed forward with Hi-Res Audio, Snapdragon Sound and aptX Lossless, all enabling the user to listen to higher quality content.

There are also a Smart Control Plus companion app, which opens up an 8-band EQ, sound personalisation options and presets, to ensure you've always got the perfect sound for your mood.

Elsewhere, you'll find Spatial Audio, complete with head-tracking capabilities and Dolby Atmos with head tracking where that's supported. That's handy, and should offer another kind of user exactly what is needed for top notch listening.

The model comes with a 700 mAh battery, which is designed to be user replaceable. That should be good for up to 57 hours of playback with the ANC engaged.

Despite all of that, the case itself is around 20% smaller than before, which should make it easy to wear. Plus – while the cans ship with Bluetooth 5.4 compatibility, an upgrade to Bluetooth 6.0 will be possible with a future firmware update.

Those looking to snag a pair will pay £329.90 / €399.90 / US$399.99 / AU$749. However, I can see a lot of trepidation around the launch while things play out. That's a totally fair response, so hopefully things can be sorted out sooner rather than later.

Anker has announced new earbuds under its popular Soundcore brand, that are loaded with AI skills, promising to offer an elevated listening and calling experience – with a host of features packed in.

The Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro series is comprised of the Pro and Pro Max, with both offering the exact same earbuds, but different cases.

While both models have a display on the case, the Pro Max is larger at 1.78-inches, and allows for AI notetaking. The case can record meeting notes for you, using AI to transcribe and identify the speakers, producing a summary and action items – without having to put your phone out on the boardroom table.

While the recording functions of the Liberty 5 Pro Max might make these £199.99 / $229.99 earbuds appeal, the regular Pro buds offer exactly the same sound quality and are cheaper at £149.99 / $169.99, available now from Amazon.

Both benefit from Anker's new THUS chip, which powers a range of AI enhanced audio functions, which is where a Guinness World Record comes in. According to Anker, the Liberty 5 Pro set a world record for call clarity.

That's thanks to the THUS chip doing its work, using data from 10 sensors – including bone conduction – to ensure optimal performance. This separates the speaker's voice from environmental noise to make sure that calls come across clearly.

There's also new active noise cancellation, which Anker says is "2x deeper" than the previous Liberty 4 Pro. It's adaptive, constantly monitoring the environment to make sure that noise is eliminated.

The Liberty 5 Pro series will also create a personalised EQ for listeners, while the AI can replace data lost through Bluetooth compression to restore audio quality. Anker says this will bring back 65% of the quality that's lost, which sounds great, but it's not really clear how that might be measured.

There's support for Sony's LDAC codec for enhanced sound quality and they support multipoint connections.

The IP55 protection means they can withstand a splash of rain, while the battery life comes in a 6.5 hours with ANC, extended to 28 hours with the charging case.

That makes for a fully-loaded set of earbuds, with skills that others can only dream of – however, it's likely to be the display on the case that draws people in.

When it comes to the best headphones, Sony has long been at the top of its game. Indeed, it's been a decade since the brand launched its first 1000X headphones – and that's precisely why 'The ColleXion', on test here, has a numeral central in its name.

However, the 1000X The Collexion isn't just the brand's WH-1000XM6 noise-cancelling champs with a facelift. Far from it. These headphones are all-new, designed from the ground up, with a focus on luxury – and a keen eye on key competitors, from Apple's AirPods Max 2 to Bowers & Wilkins' Px8 S2.

An elevated price point positions these over-ears in a new market space for the Japanese tech giant, though, while the design and feature set is adjacent to what's become typical of 1000X products over the years. The WH-1000XX – as the product is officially coded on Sony's site – is as new as the audience Sony seeks.

I've been using these headphones for three weeks for this review – here are my initial thoughts, highlighting 3 things I like and 3 I don't – putting them through their paces at home, in the office, on long-haul flights, and during train commutes.

So what's the conclusion? Has Sony broken the mould with the WH-1000X The Collexion, delivering unrivalled performance that succeeds in standing apart from the XM6? Or does this new luxury venture bring as many questions as those it answers?

Price & Availability

After its 19 May 2026 reveal, The Collexion is now on sale, priced at £549 in the UK, $649 in the USA and A$999 in Australia. You can choose from Black or Platinum.

That's confident pricing, especially when you consider the AirPods Max 2 is priced at £499 / $529 / AU$999, and the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 sit at £629 / $799 / AU$1,299.

While Sony won't want comparisons between The Collexion and WH-1000XM6, the naming convention alone makes that hard to ignore. As does the price difference, given the latter's £399 / $449 / AU$699 launch price.

What's New? Design details

It might be easier to ask 'what isn't new?', such is the nature of the WH-1000XX. Despite being part of the 1000X family, The Collexion has a unique design, using distinctive materials and processes to achieve its aesthetic.

The outer frame is all metal, with the Sony logo sandblasted to create a subtle contrast. There's no paint used anywhere. There are no screws or seams visible. Even the faux leather used was tweaked in development over a two-year period before achieving its production status.

The earcups are larger than you'll find on the 1000XM6, meaning there's more room inside for your ears. Despite this, however, the profile of the WH-1000XX is actually less prominent – sitting at 40.1mm on a flat surface, versus 45.4mm – to optimise portability.

That said, The Collexion isn't a folding pair of headphones. The headband's arms are fixed – with silky-smooth and silent sliding adjustment for sizing – so won't collapse, as you'll find with the XM6.

The 1000XX's included carry case – which is a material-clad hard shell – is a work of art in and of itself, though, and I love how it opens and closes with a single latch to the base. So often headphones fail to consider their transport vessel, but Sony's not taken its eye off the prize here.

On the left earcup, The Collexion feature a 3.5mm slot, should you wish to forego the Bluetooth 6.0 norm and wire up for listening (and there's a cable included in the case). There's also an ANC mode adjustment button to toggle between on/off/Ambient, and an on/off/pairing button.

The right earcup houses an open USB-C port for charging – which can't be used for audio, bizarrely – but foregoes any physical buttons. That's to its benefit, though, as there are touch-based controls, which I found to work very well.

Slide a finger up the exterior and the volume will rise, just as sliding one down will perform the reverse function. Press for voice interaction with Google Gemini, if you wish, while auto-pause/play when removing the headphones proves effective – no buttons required.

Sound Quality & ANC

Again, The Collexion isn't the XM6 with a luxe facelift. These new headphones feature an all-new driver, which is 30mm in diameter and features more carbon fibre in its structure. That makes it even more solid to its centre, which is better high-frequency response, while a soft edging allows for extended bass control.

A key component of the 1000XX's sound signature is the active noise-cancellation (ANC), which is binary in its selection of 'on' or 'Ambient' – the latter used for passthrough so you can hear conversational sounds around you with ease. You can also turn it off entirely, should you wish.

Personally, I'm staunchly of the 'always-on' take when it comes to ANC – it affects the sound signature to such a significant degree in giving bass that 'locked in' sensation and greater clarity and width, without distractions from around you. The 1000XX just sound more complete with it activated.

Interestingly, despite the WH-1000XX using the same base ANC model as in the XM6, the result is not the same. Sony has taken the approach that these new headphones are ideal for at-home listening, where ANC needn't be as firm in its delivery.

As such, some higher-frequency sounds pass through to some degree, meaning those looking fundamentally for the best noise-cancelling will find more from the XM6. It's an intentional difference and another consideration for your typical use cases.

I'm still impressed by the ANC overall, though, which has done a decent job in blocking out the majority of sounds in an office space, and dumbing down the roars of London Tube travel or that mid-to-upper 'hiss' frequency on a long-haul flight. It's more comparable to Bowers & Wilkins' 'softer' approach, if you like, which is no bad thing at all – if that's what you seek.

Software

The sound profile is adjustable in myriad ways, too, with Sony's Sound Connect app a great portal for dialling into the product's various settings. My particular favourite is the 10-band graphic equaliser (EQ), which allows you to create personalised Custom saves in addition to the variety of pre-set options. Morphing the 1000XX's sound to your ideal preference is therefore a breeze.

That said, there are areas where I find Sony's software goes off-piste. The addition of a new Integrated Processor V3 – complementing the Sony HD Noise Cancelling Processor QN3 – is said to bring the brains for delivering '360 upmixes', a newly expanded feature within the app.

It's here, however, that I can't fathom Sony's thinking. The '360 Upmix' options of Music, Cinema, Game and Background music all 'squeeze' the sound profile, making for a more metallic, grainy and poorly AI-separated mix with a sense of spatial enhancement. It's a strong 'no' from me – and throughout a variety of genre selections I haven't found it to be of benefit.

Furthermore, the Adaptive Sound Control feature, while a concept that I like in principle, I just don't think works in reality. This auto-switches the ANC to Ambient, depending on what you're doing – with static, walking/running and riding in transport catered for. It's too abrupt in its delivery, I find, marking another software feature that's always off for my use.

Battery Life

One point I didn't make in the design section is that Sony has split the battery of the WH-1000XX into two cells, each 375mAh, for a balanced feel when wearing. I really can't complain on the fit, comfort or weight (320g) of these headphones – which I've worn for many hours at a time to the point I've half forgotten they're even on.

However, the battery life's output, which is quoted at up to 24 hours per charge, doesn't live up to that in my use – and the WH-1000XM6 actually lasts longer, which many prospective buyers may find perplexing.

Just how much use am I talking about? I've been seeing roughly 2.5-to-3 hours per 20% depletion. So it's circa 15 hours of delivery on one charge with ANC activated – which is long enough for even the longest of long-haul flights. Turn the volume down and you'll see more, I'm sure.

The question is how much this will matter to your use. Some other brands can deliver dozens of hours per charge, with some headphone products even pushing into triple digits. For me, however, I wouldn't want more battery capacity to result in more weight and therefore a less balanced product design and diminished comfort.

Sony The Collexion review: Verdict

Sony's all-new luxury headphones are a bold statement that largely pays off. The Collexion is delightfully crafted and delivers an enjoyable sound signature that competes with the key competition – even at this price point.

I think the naming convention is ill-considered, though, irrelevant of the decade celebrations, marking out the 1000XX as too comparable to the lower-priced 1000XM6 – the latter offering better battery life and 'stronger' ANC delivery.

All of which leaves me wondering precisely who these new headphones are for. Especially with some of the software features – 360 Upmix and Adaptive Sound, plus no USB-C audio – seeming averse to luxury and audiophile aspirations.

Nonetheless, after these three weeks of use, I can't call out Sony's 1000X The Collexion in terms of comfort or sound quality. These are exceptional headphones that I'll be using for a long time coming, which will be 5-star winners for some – just not everyone.

Also Consider

If you're going to spend this much cash, then just a bit extra will net you the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 with real leather and, for me, a more intricate and higher-end design.

But if it's active noise-cancelling excellence that you most seek, then saving a bit of cash and jumping on Sony's WH-1000XM6 will net you the best travel headphones instead. Bose's QC Ultra Headphones are a similar alternative.

Other considerations? Apple's AirPods Max 2 look mighty similar in style terms – and those wanting the ecosystem advantages with iPhone and Mac integration may find this of greater appeal.

The Apple AirPods Pro 3 arrived last year with a handful of meaningful upgrades, including improved sound, longer battery life and built-in heart rate tracking. Apple has also redesigned the earbuds, although the changes won’t work for everyone.

After my initial tests, I wasn't 100% happy with the buds' design, and, if I'm 100% honest, I still prefer the AirPods Pro 2 to their successors for long-term wear. However, it's undeniable that the new model is better in almost every conceivable way, from sound to ANC and beyond.

I've been testing the AirPods Pro 3 on and off since its launch, and even though I can't say I'm just as impressed with them as I was with their predecessors, I can certainly see their appeal. Sure, you might often find me sporting my purple Apple AirPods Max 2, but when I need something more subtle, the AirPods Pro 3 will do.

As you've probably already guessed, the AirPods Pro 3 might not be the best of the best noise-cancelling headphones, but I'm confident many people will find what they are looking for in them. Should you upgrade? Let's find out.

Apple AirPods Pro 3 review

Price and availability

The AirPods Pro 3 were launched in September 2025 and are available to purchase now directly from Apple UK, Apple US, and Apple AU, with prices starting at £219/ $249/ €249/ A$429.

They are cheaper than the AirPods Pro 2 were when they launched in the UK. The AirPods Pro 2 originally sold for £249, and the USB-C version knocked that down to £229. In other regions, the price remained the same, at $249/€249/A$429.

Design and build quality

At first glance, the Apple AirPods Pro 3 don’t look radically different from their predecessor, but Apple has made several subtle tweaks to the shape and fit.

Apple says the AirPods Pro 3 redesign was intended to improve fit, comfort and stability through changes such as a deeper nozzle angle, new foam-infused ear tips and revised acoustic architecture.

According to the company’s official launch materials, the new shape was specifically created to improve fit, stability and passive noise isolation. Apple claims the redesign was informed by “over 10,000 ear scans” and “more than 100,000 hours of user research.”

The brand also explained that the internal architecture was “completely re-engineered” to make each earbud smaller internally, while changing the external geometry and ear tip alignment to increase stability during activities like running and HIIT workouts.

In practice, and unlike the AirPods Pro 2, which sat neatly and almost flush inside my ears, the new model protrudes more noticeably and feels bulkier.

As a result, I struggled to achieve the same secure fit as before, especially during movement, with the earbuds feeling less “locked in” than the previous generation.

Swapping to the largest ear tips improves passive isolation and helps the ANC perform better, but introduces discomfort during longer listening sessions.

Build quality, however, remains predictably excellent. The earbuds still feel premium, lightweight and durable, with the same polished Apple finish and pocketable charging case people expect from the brand.

Features

Thanks to the new H3 chip, for the first time on a pair of AirPods, the AirPods Pro 3 lets you record workout heart rate data directly from the earbuds without needing to wear an Apple Watch, immediately making the buds feel more connected to Apple’s wider health and fitness ecosystem.

In practice, the feature worked surprisingly well during runs and gym sessions. I wouldn’t replace a dedicated chest strap or sports watch with it, but for casual fitness tracking and general workout data, it felt accurate enough to be genuinely useful.

Apple also introduced a new Live Translation feature, which is... fine, I guess, but nothing revolutionary. Not yet, anyway! If you think you can pop the buds in and chat with a Spanish-speaking friend on a busy street, you will be bitterly disappointed.

The AirPods Pro 3 hasn't ushered in the Babel Fish moment, but it certainly shows in which direction the technology is headed. Once companies like Apple can reduce response time (e.g., real-time translation) and isolate the voice of the person speaking to you, things will be different.

Apart from this, the ecosystem integration remains as seamless as ever. Pairing is instant, device switching is effortless, and all the small Apple conveniences people expect are present and working flawlessly. If you already use Apple hardware daily, the AirPods Pro 3 slot into that ecosystem almost invisibly.

Audio performance

Apple makes some huge claims about the audio performance of the Apple AirPods Pro 3, saying the earbuds deliver “the world’s best in-ear Active Noise Cancellation” and up to twice the noise reduction of the previous generation thanks to the new acoustic architecture, updated microphones and computational audio enhancements.

In some areas, I can absolutely see where those claims are coming from. Sound quality is excellent here, with the AirPods Pro 3 producing a clean, balanced and detailed sound signature that works brilliantly across different genres.

Apple says the redesigned internal airflow system and next-generation Adaptive EQ improve bass response and instrument separation, and, in practice, the earbuds do sound more spacious and refined overall.

Apple’s Adaptive Audio system dynamically blends ANC and transparency depending on your surroundings, and the effect feels remarkably natural in day-to-day use. External sounds come through with almost eerie realism at times, to the point where I repeatedly forgot I was even wearing earbuds.

Where things became more complicated for me was active noise cancellation. Despite Apple’s confidence about the upgraded ANC performance, I actually found the AirPods Pro 2 more effective in real-world environments.

The new earbuds never formed quite the same seal in my ears, which meant external noise crept in more noticeably during commuting and in busy indoor settings.

I suspect part of that comes down to the redesigned fit rather than the ANC system itself. Apple says the updated shape and new foam-infused ear tips improve passive isolation and stability, but, in my case, the opposite happened. The largest ear tips improved isolation somewhat, but also became uncomfortable during longer listening sessions.

So while the underlying audio tech here is clearly impressive, and the sound quality itself is arguably the best Apple has delivered in a pair of earbuds so far, the overall listening experience felt slightly compromised by the new fit.

Battery life and charging

Apple claims the Apple AirPods Pro 3 offer up to eight hours of listening time on a single charge with ANC enabled, alongside up to 36 hours in total when using the charging case, a noticeable improvement over the previous generation and one of the more meaningful everyday upgrades introduced by the new H3 chip.

During testing, the battery performance largely lived up to those claims. I found myself charging the earbuds less frequently than the AirPods Pro 2, especially during long workdays and extended listening sessions.

The efficiency improvements aren’t dramatic enough to completely change how you use the earbuds, but they do make the overall experience feel less interrupted.

The case supports USB-C charging alongside wireless charging options, and it integrates seamlessly into Apple’s broader accessory ecosystem. Fast charging is still impressively convenient too, with short top-ups delivering enough battery life for several hours of playback.

Verdict

The Apple AirPods Pro 3 are a slightly frustrating product because, in many ways, they’re objectively better than their predecessor.

The new H3 chip delivers excellent sound quality, battery life is noticeably stronger, and features such as heart rate tracking help the earbuds feel more tightly integrated into Apple’s growing health ecosystem. Transparency Mode also remains astonishingly good and continues to set the benchmark for the category.

At the same time, the redesigned fit simply didn’t work as well for me as the AirPods Pro 2. The earbuds never felt quite as secure or comfortable, and that had a direct impact on ANC performance in real-world use. Apple clearly had good intentions with the redesign, but, in my experience, the changes created as many compromises as improvements.

If you’re upgrading from older AirPods, these are excellent earbuds. If you already own the AirPods Pro 2, especially the USB-C version, the decision feels much less straightforward.

Also consider

The Sony WF-1000XM6 are probably the closest non-Apple equivalent to the AirPods Pro 3. They combine excellent audio quality with class-leading noise cancellation, strong battery life and broad Android/iOS compatibility. Unlike Apple’s earbuds, though, you don’t need to be fully invested in one ecosystem to unlock their best features.

If you want premium ANC and a more universally comfortable fit without paying AirPods Pro 3 money, Bose QuietComfort Earbuds 2 are a strong option. They don’t lock you into an ecosystem, work brilliantly across iOS and Android, and deliver a warmer, more immersive sound signature than Apple’s earbuds.

Can you believe it? It was 10 years ago that Sony launched the 1000X – and in the decade since, the brand has gone from strength to strength in delivering some of the best noise-cancelling over-ears available, most recently with the WH-1000XM6.

Now, however, Sony is taking this 10th birthday as an opportunity to widen the 1000X range, diversifying its output and target audience with the new, luxury 1000X 'The Collexion' model (and no, that's not a typo – the 'X' numeral is very much part of the name).

If, at first glance, you're getting an air of Apple AirPods Max 2 about the latest Sony's aesthetic, then you won't be the only one. Long-rumoured and repeatedly leaked ahead of this official reveal, The Collexion more realistically aims to fill a space between Apple's top-tier cans and the Bowers & Wilkins' Px8 S2.

At a pre-briefing for the headphones ahead of the official reveal, I was told that The Collexion represents "a collection of all of our [Sony's] knowledge and experience to create something really special," adding that it's "not the 'M7', as this [The Collexion] is a different focus entirely."

'Luxury' is the word that Sony really wants to resonate about these headphones. They're lightweight and made of quality materials. The outer frame is hand-polished, then sandblasted to provide the Sony logo a matte relief. Faux leather covers the earpads, cup housings and much of the headband – with no visible seams or screws.

The design isn't just an evolution of the 1000XM6 either: The Collexion features larger earcups, with a bespoke 30mm driver within each, made of a carbon-layered composite for the dome section of the diaphragm. This enhances the rigidity, said to deliver "natural yet delicate" high-frequency expression.

Despite these advances, the whole profile of the headphones is slimmer compared to the XM6. There's more room for your ears in the earcups, greater breathability, yet a more delicate profile. The design doesn't fold, though, so that's something to keep in mind.

The Collexion also builds upon Sony's active noise-cancelling (ANC) expertise by utilising the same base system as found in the XM6 – the Sony HD Noise Cancelling Processor QN3 – but adds a new integrated third-gen processor that enables 360-degree upmixes to audio.

The ANC is intentionally less 'strong' than you'll find on the XM6 – despite using 12 microphones total (eight externally, four internally) – with simple on/off or passthrough options available, but also optional auto-adjustment based on your actions in the Adaptive Sound Control settings.

In terms of quality, there's support for LDAC (Hi-Res Audio Wireless), while DSEE (Digital Sound Enhancement Engine) will upsample compressed audio to 96kHz/24-bit. So whatever the source, you can expect the utmost Sony 1000X quality.

With all this in mind, however, how much will the Sony 1000X The Collexion cost? With a £550 asking price (other regions are TBC) for the launch date later this month, you can pick a pair up in Black or Platinum (white, really). That puts Sony's latest close to Apple's top-tier cans – and will further shake up this increasingly growing luxury headphones market segment.

Marshall just unveiled its newest pair of headphones, and it's taken what's either a surprising approach or a very logical one, depending on how much you know about its market share. While the brand is a pretty iconic one in audio circles, it's not the biggest name in the headphones world, and its fancier headphones, the Monitor III ANC, aren't the biggest sellers in its lineup.

That honour goes to the Major, its latest version being the Major V, which sells in droves thanks to a way more approachable price point and punky stylings that make it perfect for younger folks. So, Marshall's chosen to build on the Major by upgrading it in some important ways and creating the Milton ANC, its newest launch.

These headphones are, crucially, still on-ear – meaning they sit on your ear rather than encapsulating it like a bigger earcup would. Compared to the Major, though, they have softer and deeper cushioning to theoretically make them more comfortable to wear for longer periods.

They also, as the name suggests, bring ANC to the table, a big upgrade. In a first for Marshall, the "A" stands for adaptive, rather than just active noise-cancelling, meaning the amount of cancelling will vary according to the ambient noise around you at any given time.

The Milton ANC have a slightly sturdier design overall, too, with the folding arms that attach the earcups to the headband being made out of more solid metal rather than a frame.

They actually have slightly less battery life than the Major V, likely because of the inclusion of ANC: you'll get around 50 hours with it activated, but 80 hours if you turn it off. The headphones also bring LDAC and hi-res certification when you're listening using the USB-C to 3.5mm cable.

That cable's needed because the headphones only have a single port, and it's a USB-C one for combined charging or audio. Beyond that, the only controls are a customisable black Marshall button and then the stunningly superb brassy control knob that has graced so many of Marshall's headphones so far.

The all-important question, of course, is what the Milton ANC costs. It comes in at £179.99 in the UK, $229.99 in the US and €199 in the EU, which makes for a pretty interesting price – premium enough to be a little more off-putting to some, but also one of the few higher-end on-ear options out there right now.

The headphones should be available to order directly from Marshall today, and they'll hit other retailers a bit later, on 27 May.

Marshall isn't all that secretive about which of its headphone range does the biggest numbers – it's happy to admit that the Major is its biggest seller by far. These dinky on-ear headphones have been fairly iconic for years now, instantly recognisable in a way that few smaller brands can match, but they also have some drawbacks.

Even the most recent Major V couldn't reinvent the wheel, so they're still on-ears with a simple set of features that keep the price down while still sounding punchy. Now, though, Marshall's making a play – it's adding a step-up option above the Major V.

The new Milton ANC looks pretty similar, but offers some important upgrades – with adaptive noise cancelling (ANC) being key. I've had a pair for a few weeks for review purposes, and it's been interesting running the rule over them.

Price and Availability

The Milton ANC is on sale now, and should be available in a whole host of regions and through a bunch of retailers. They're priced at £179.99 in the UK and $229.99 in the US, which makes them around £50 or $80 more than the cost of the Major V at its launch.

As I'll get to, you do get some pretty major upgrades for that money, but the pricing confirms that Marshall wanted a mid-range option for its headphones offering. It already has the Monitor III ANC up at the £300 mark for a more premium option, so this does fill a gap.

I'm still pretty confident that Marshall will bring out a more mid-range on-ear headphone at some point, but for now the Milton ANC is what we get.

Design and Features

If you hadn't seen the Major V in a while, you'd be forgiven for taking a glance at the Milton ANC and thinking it was the Major VI – its silhouette is extremely similar, with some small changes that you can't unsee once they're pointed out to you.

For one thing, the Milton's earcups are slightly bigger and more rounded, and they have far plusher cushioning. For another, its headband is more solidly constructed, too, with its folding mechanism made of solid metal rather than prongs. This all makes the Milton feel much more substantial, based on my testing.

The cushioning on the headband itself is also plusher, and all of this serves one main aim – making the Milton ANC more comfortable to wear for longer periods than the Major V. The older headphones look great, and plenty of people swear by them, but I'm in the camp that finds the on-ear experience sub-par, since it inevitably leads to a cramped feeling on your ear.

True to expectations, the Milton ANC is way more comfortable. The amount of clamping force has clearly been tuned down slightly in the first place, so the headphones don't feel as tight on your head. That cushioning, meanwhile, makes the biggest difference, since it feels a lot softer and nicer on the ears.

That said, though, after a couple of hours at a time with the Milton ANC on my head, I tended to be ready for them to come off, and my ears always felt relieved when I did so. That's basically my way of saying that if you haven't previously felt great with on-ear headphones, there's nothing here that will radically change your mind or your experience.

Still, the rest of the design touches on the Milton ANC are great, if not that new. For one thing, the headphones fold up nice and small, to make it easy to stow them in the included carrying bag. You also get Marshall's best-in-class brassy control knob, for one, which acts as a power button, volume control and track-skipping button all in one. I'm confident that rival headphone-makers must be jealous of what remains one of the best pieces of intuitive design on the market.

That's added to by a flush Marshall button on the other earcup, which can be customised as a shortcut key. Finally, there's a USB-C port for charging and audio using the included 3.5mm-to-USB-C cable. There's no 3.5mm port on the headphones this time, but given the included cable that's no great loss.

The other big features to note are under the hood. For one thing, the Milton ANC offers 50 hours of battery life with ANC on, and around 80 hours with it off. That's actually a little worse either way than the 100-hour battery of the Major V, and the Milton ANC also ditches wireless charging. Marshall told me that it found very few people actually used the feature, which isn't much of a surprise to me.

Of course, ANC can't be skipped over. This is adaptive noise-cancelling, not just active – that means it automatically adjusts to the noise levels around you, and it's something of a big deal for Marshall since all of its previous ANC offerings have been simply active. This means the Milton ANC has visible microphones on its exterior and interior, and I'll discuss its performance further down. You can toggle between ANC and a transparency mode using the Marshall button by default.

One note on the build quality side is that Marshall continues to swerve IP ratings, preferring to leave things a little more ambiguous. It claims the Milton ANC should hold up well in regular use, but doesn't have any specific stats for water resistance, for example. This means that while you should be safe enough using it in drizzle, you don't have any firm guarantees about its level of proofing.

Sound and Performance

So, if the comfort and design of the Milton ANC feels relatively obvious (more comfortable and able than the Major, but less than the Monitor), how does it actually sound? Well, I've been really enjoying its poppy sound signature over a few weeks of testing.

Marshall loves to use the word "loud" in its marketing and branding, and I can see why – the trademark Marshall sound comes from its ear-rending amp towers and therefore does have a powerful edge that lends itself really well to rock music. Pairing the Milton ANC with Queens of the Stone Age's Songs for the Dead produces obviously stirring results, as does some older material from Guns N'Roses.

The sound here is punchy, for sure, but it also has to be – the lack of isolation that you get when using on-ear headphones is striking when you're used to earbuds or over-ears, so you should be prepared for plenty of leakage in both directions.

Of course, that will most likely prompt you to turn on the Milton's ANC, and it is indeed pretty transformative. I've never used on-ears with ANC before, something that I previously would have called a little contradictory, but I've been surprised and impressed with how it performs in the Milton.

Piping in sound to counteract the noise around you, you'll get clearer audio and more of a sense of quiet around you with ANC on, but it can't hold a candle to the best ANC headphones out there, or even "fine" ANC on over-ears. It's also interesting to appraise the "adaptive" part of things.

I found that Marshall's first crack at adaptive noise-cancelling performed solidly most of the time, but over many hours of use, I did notice moments where it seemed to deactivate briefly before popping back on – only ever for a few seconds, but enough times that I noted it. This suggests the system isn't 100% fine-tuned to perfection yet, although firmware updates will doubtless tweak it over time.

Battery life lived up to Marshall's billing in my experience, and pairing was also entirely painless over Bluetooth. Controlling the headphones in the Marshall Bluetooth app was also easy, with a few different tweaks to be made and some equalisation (EQ) options for those who want them.

Marshall Milton ANC review: Verdict

The Milton ANC will be a perfect upgrade for a dedicated slice of Marshall lovers who've stuck with their Major headphones for years. If you want the Major experience but with better sound and comfort, it's a no-brainer of a new option, and it'll be fascinating to see how common a sight it becomes on trendy young things' heads.

For those of us who can't quite settle for on-ears, almost entirely because of their comfort compromises and sound leakage, though, it's not a piece of hardware to force a radical conversion. I've been impressed with the Milton ANC, but that doesn't mean I want on-ears with ANC, nor that I think they'll catch on as a major new product category.

Also Consider

The obvious other option for those looking to pick up the Milton ANC is to just stick with the Major V, which can now be found for substantially less money and offers a very similar style of headphone. It doesn't sound as great or feel as soft, but if you want something affordable with a unique design, it's a great pick.

Alternatively, if you want very decent ANC, excellent comfort levels and a more bubbling sound experience, consider the recently-launched Soundcore Space 2 from Anker. It's great value and ticks more everyday boxes than the Milton ANC, in my opinion.