Best wireless earbuds 2025

What does a pair of wireless earbuds need to do to be considered for our list? Our team assesses multiple factors when deciding which models make the final cut, including (among others) comfort, ease of use, call quality and battery life. Ultimately, though, sound quality and value for money are top of our list.

One thing you will need to bear in mind is that everyone’s ears are different, which means that whether or not a pair of earbuds are comfortable tends to come down to personal preference. We can give a bit of guidance on comfort once we’ve tested them, but there’s no substitute for sliding them into your own ears. If you’ve got ears on the shallow side, for example, we’d go for a physically smaller or flatter earbud that won’t stick out much.

After comfort, you’ll want to think about when and where you’re going to use them. Do they need to be water-resistant, sport-friendly earbuds or do they just need to pair to your smartphone and survive your daily commute?

Tied to this, of course, are other factors such as battery life. The best wireless earphones all have enough battery life for the average listening session but some do last longer than others. Most pairs will have a combined earbud and case battery life of 18 hours or more, though, so you shouldn’t be caught out during long-haul flights, though some people might care for a longer earbud battery life for continuous listening without having to pop them into the case to charge.

It’s also worth noting the number of hours you get can vary depending on what other features you have enabled and, to a certain degree the volume you listen at and the quality of the files you listen to. Don’t forget that wireless earbuds come with charging cases to keep them topped up between outings.

Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) can increase battery drain, but we think it can come in very handy if you want a more private listening experience, and some of the top pairs we’ve reviewed boast excellent noise-cancelling (just bear in mind that it won’t be as good as the ANC you get from a good pair of over-ear headphones). Similarly, some sound processing modes can take a little bit extra out of your battery, but these can usually be turned off.

The flip side of ANC is what a lot of brands refer to as a ‘transparency mode‘. This does completely the opposite and allows outside noise in, so you can hear your surroundings. We find this mode allows you to hear announcements better if you’re on a train or plane, for example. Different earbuds allow for different levels of transparency so you can fine-tune for different listening situations.

We think other features you might want to consider include touch controls, which can come in handy if you want to skip tunes or change volume without having to take your phone out of your pocket. Many modern pairs also offer voice control via personal assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri.