Best Headphones for Connectivity (2024)

The soundstage is wider and airier.

The P100s do sound radically different from the AirPods Max.

The overall midrange frequencies are slightly recessed.

The highs extend quite well and don't feel too fatiguing.

The ear pads are also quite soft, meaning that even if you wear glasses, they shouldn't cause too much discomfort.

The overall clamping force is quite strong.

The top headband actually sank into my head a little bit.

These headphones do a tremendous job of blocking out exterior noise.

The only caveat is that with ANC enabled, the overall audio performance is slightly degraded.

The Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 offers up to 60 hours of battery life with noise-cancelling.

You also have the ability to give them a quick 5-minute charge, which will provide you with roughly 2 hours of playback.

The Sony WH-1000XM5 has moved away from that, taking a step towards a more mature, balanced, and tasteful sound than before.

If you love having tons of bass and want to feel it pumping larger than life, becoming one with the deep bass, then the alt wear is for you.

The alt wear is not for you if you honestly can't tell or don't care about the difference in sound quality between an audio file played through high-quality headphones and a pair of headphones given to you on an airplane.

The ear cups on the Alware are as comfortable as those on the XM5 and have just a touch more depth.

The headphones do not fold, which can be inconvenient for travel.

The Quiet Comfort Ultra feels just a touch tighter compared to the XM5.

The last Sonys did have world-class noise cancellation, but these are even better.

The software continues to use the Legacy V1 chip processor, which is used in the XM4 lineup.

It is less transparent and natural than what you would find on Apple or Bose products.

The battery life is 30 hours with ANC on and 50 hours with it off.

A 10-minute charge gives you 5 hours of playback, allowing you to quickly get enough power for most flights with a short charge.

The Mark IV once again sounds incredible—super clean, bright, and full—with all the same noise cancellation controls available in the Sony app.

The overall quality, though not as crisp as some headphones, is very balanced.

It's not overly impressive, but it's still of high enough quality that you know you can justify the price.

They feel really great on the head, and there are no hot spots where the headphones start to feel uncomfortable.

I found that I can sit and wear them for a long, long time, and these ear cups are incredibly soft.

In terms of clamping force, I would say they're tight, but they're not uncomfortable.

Secondly, they also improved the noise cancellation compared to the Mark III's.

The bottom line here is that you're not going to find a better pair of noise-cancellation headphones in terms of pure isolation.

Noise canceling is top of its class.

The battery life is advertised as 30 hours with the noise cancelling on.

With a 10-minute charge, you can get five hours of playback.

If you leave them to sit for a while, I left them to sit for months, and they still had plenty of battery.

The clarity is phenomenal, especially when listening to high-resolution audio from Tidal.

The sound stage feels open and airy, which is something you don't always get with earbuds.

These are now the best-sounding pair of earbuds I've ever heard.

The five-band EQ that Bowers and Wilkins have provided on the app really reveals how powerful these are.

Comfort was an area they really focused on with these earbuds.

They have done an excellent job when it comes to comfort and fit.

These are incredibly comfortable for me.

The silicone tips sit quite deep in the ear canal, which helps lock them in nicely.

The noise cancelling is okay; it gets the job done.

They perform really well against the competition.

They do a really great job of blocking out the lower frequencies.

These kinds of cut off at the right point, so you don't experience any cabin pressure.

You get 6.5 hours of playback with ANC on in the earbuds.

A 15-minute quick charge in the case can provide up to 2 hours of playback.

They do support Qi wireless charging.

They have fantastic sound, active noise cancellation, and a really incredible design.

The bass enhancement is a feature I showed you before that can definitely rattle your head if you're looking for a lot of bass.

I definitely see what you mean about the bass heaviness. Though it's a lot, it's kind of beatsy with decent clarity, especially compared to some of the early beat stuff.

They have impressive codecs here, including LDAC, for high-resolution audio.

These are very comfortable for me, although some people did complain that there wasn't a sufficient assortment of ear tip sizes.

I certainly found that both the Nothing Earbuds and the Nothing Ear Earbuds are super comfortable to wear in your ears, even for hours at a time.

As far as fit and comfort go, I think these are incredibly comfortable, with really nice soft silicone tips.

The active noise cancellation has been described as pretty darn good, although not on par with the AirPods Pros.

So, there's the noise cancelling as well, and the smarts appear to be identical on the Nothing Air as well as the Nothing AA.

For noise cancellation, we offer multiple levels: high, medium, low, and adaptive.

Both of them run for about 40 hours if you include the batteries in the case and you don't have it enabled.

The earbuds provide 5 and 1/2 hours of battery life, and 24 and a half hours when you include the case, with active noise cancellation.

Charging these for 10 minutes gives you 10 hours of listening, which is a lot.

Once you get a nice seal in your ear, they aren't too shrill or tinny.

The noise cancellation feature does a great job of eliminating white noise.

The Pixel Buds app doesn't have an EQ.

These also have a slightly lower overall volume than any other buds I've tested recently.

The Pixel Buds Pro have a new shape.

These no longer have the wing tips.

The pros, on the other hand, are quite bulbous in comparison and rely almost entirely on the ear tip to stay in your ear.

I could feel the pros slowly slipping out, and it became a concern for me that they might just fall out.

The noise cancellation feature does a great job of eliminating white noise.

In my experience, Google's approach to ANC is actually quite nice.

The Pixel Buds Pro excel in reducing that plugged-ear cabin pressure.

The transparency mode is actually not that bad in terms of how things sound around you, but it is not as good and clear as the AirPods Pro.

You're going to get seven hours of actual listening time with active noise cancellation on.

11 hours of battery life with ANC off.

The Pixel Buds Pro offer an impressive 11 hours of use on a single charge and a total of 31 hours when recharged with the case.

The fact that they're a pair of planar magnetic driver headphones means that they also have planar characteristics.

This is not an overly bass-heavy pair of headphones.

The mids on these sound absolutely fantastic.

It is really good across all genres.

The ear pads are extremely soft.

Planers can be somewhat heavy, and the headband does a better job of distributing that weight.

There is no active noise cancellation, which makes the recommendation a little more specific.

A good closed-back can bring a decent amount of passive noise reduction.

The battery life on these is extremely impressive; on a full charge, you can get about 80 hours.

A 15-minute charge is going to give you 13 hours of use.

The AirPods Max sound really good. They have these big 40-millimeter drivers behind the earcups, and they sound excellent, super clear at all volumes.

The sound quality is fantastic for this.

These don't support lossless, which is a huge shame, even if you buy the $25 cable that is a Lightning to 3.5 mm.

These are probably among the best wireless headphones I've ever used.

These are heavy headphones.

The mesh ear cups with memory foam are nice, soft, and very comfortable.

For me, I can keep these on for about eight hours a day. It's really no problem; they are super comfortable.

The mesh headband is also an innovative feature that I don't think I've seen in any other headphones.

The noise cancellation is also excellent.

These nine microphones do a fantastic job with white noise, producing a surprisingly natural sound.

This is the best transparency mode I've ever heard.

In my opinion, the noise cancellation on the AirPods Max is just too good to wear in public.

The battery life on these headphones is fine. They do reach the advertised 16 to 20 hours, even with noise cancellation on.

If you leave these out for an extended period of time, such as longer than a day or even a couple of hours, without putting them in the smart case, they will sometimes disconnect from all of your devices.

I wish we had USB-C on the AirPods Max; these still have a Lightning connector.

The ultra seems slightly cleaner-sounding and more revealing, with a deeper but well-defined bass.

Using the immersive audio feature does widen the sound stage a bit, creating the illusion that your audio is more outside your head.

I was slightly disappointed that the headphones don't feature USB-C audio.

The headphones feel durable and are surprisingly lightweight at 254 grams.

Bose representatives told me that the QC Ultras are designed to fit a wider range of head types.

They did clamp slightly more than the Sony's, but I was able to wear them for a couple of hours straight without a problem.

Bose mentions that both this over-ear Ultra model and its new QC Ultra earbuds feature world-class noise cancellation.

The headphones really muffled everything around me, including people's voices.

The voice calling performance is also excellent.

The headphones are rated for up to 24 hours of battery life at moderate volume levels with noise canceling on.

The number dips to 18 hours when immersive audio is engaged.

If you set your headphones down somewhere and forget to turn them off, they'll go into sleep mode to conserve battery life.

There is also very little distortion at high volumes, and the whole sound profile is very responsive and crisp.

Listening to them side by side with different genres of music in a quiet room, I could not detect any significant difference in sound when I used them at the same volume with the same settings.

We do know that the new AirPods Pro 2 with USB-C can deliver uncompressed lossless audio wirelessly.

There is also a new, extra-small ear tip.

One thing to note is that this is IP54 rated, so they've added not only water and splash resistance but also dust resistance.

I'm putting them on the same level as the Sony Mark 4 earbuds.

Adaptive noise control blends noise canceling with transparency mode.

The moment I speak, the transparency mode kicks in, and I can hear myself.

These now have a 33% longer battery life.

So, it now lasts six hours on a single charge with noise cancellation on.