Best wireless earbuds 2020: budget and premium

[What Hi-Fi?]

Wireless earbuds deliver convenience, and they can sound pretty great too. We've rounded-up the best you can buy on one handy page.

Best wireless earbuds 2020: budget and premium : Read more

 

[Willhiro]

More and more I notice that the "Reasons to Avoid" are not the same for all earbuds. For example many fo them do not have AptX support, but it is only listed as "Reasons to Avoid " in only some of them. The same goes with volume. Should you guys use a list of features for all of them and clearly annotate whether the device has the features or not?

 

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More and more I notice that the "Reasons to Avoid" are not the same for all earbuds. For example many of them do not have AptX support, but it is only listed as "Reasons to Avoid " in only some of them. The same goes with volume. Should you guys use a list of features for all of them and clearly annotate whether the device has the features or not?

Trouble is they increasingly are commercialised - promoted reviews etc. etc. Sounds sensible to me but doubt they will employ that.

 

[nikolasch]

I bought the Sony WF-1000XM3 after reading your article. I asked the employee of the Sony store if they connect to a Samsung TV and he said no problem. Turns out they keep losing the connection between them and the one earbud keeps turning off and on on its own. Worse earbuds ever. Bought Jbl for a quarter of the price and they work perfectly.

 

[Bdoro]

Hello guys, have you forgotten the Jabra's? Usually you have good opinion but sometimes I wonder if you are correct in your choises based on biased contenders....

 

[Tootles]

I own the Sony buds and yes they do sound very good but they are horrible to the point of unusable for phone calls. Nobody can ever hear me. Truly awful in that respect and in no way should they be viewed as a five star product. Hugely flawed.

 

[gwarner]

I ordered the Sony WF-1000XM3 earphones, partly because off reviews like this, partly becoame I have their over ear headpones and they give a great sound.

I was very happy with the sound on the earphones, but they have gone back. Why? Mainly because I found the touch control unusable. Repeatedly, I got the two-tap-skip-a-track result when I tapped once to pause/restart. Sometimes, I got the normal beep, but nothing else happened at all, unitl I stopped them and rerstarted. Moreover, while I really liked the feature that pauses playback when an earphone is removed, I found that sopmetimes it worked, but quite often it didn't. So I would end up with no way either to pause or to undo a false skip-forward, exept by getting the phone out.

I tried them with three different devices, a Redmi Not 8T phone, and iPad and a Samsung Tab A6 tablet. Problams with all, so it was tthe phones, not the devices.

I really tried to overcome this, because the sound and noise cancellation itself was great. I tried varing the force of my taps, tapping with different parts fingertips or flat of the finger/ I have never had any problem using multi-tap touch controls on any other device. I systematically experimented to see if I could make them work consistently. The performance seemed to vary while I was counting outcomes. Sometimes I got only one rogue skip in ten taps. At others, any tap, however light or careful, skipped tracks, or less frequently, did nothing burt cause a beep.

And I returned the phones and got a second pair through my supplier, in case I had a faulty pair. No good - the touch controls were still too unreliable to use.

This gives me no satisfaction. I really wanted these phones. The saound and noise cancellation impressed me. But they were just unusable in practice. What a shame.

 

[razorjack]

This comparison looks like a joke, you have many different models, all of them are described as 'excelent quality, best sound etc.', only few of them have AptX, nothing about ergonomics and available controls...
WTF IS THAT ?

 

[Jmck]

Samsung conspicuous by its absence. Not only do they not make the top 20, but "key rivals sound better" than Apple Airpods. Just say Samsung.

 

[AgrusKosy]

Creative Labs got some mean buds last year. Sad not to see it on this list

 

[sensable]

Akg N400nc? Still best sounding wireless iem out now.

 

[Maxxwell]

Wireless earbuds deliver convenience, and they can sound pretty great too. We've rounded-up the best you can buy on one handy page.

Best wireless earbuds 2020: budget and premium : Read more

hey, where are the Bang & Olufsen EX?

I have seen reviews online and rankings and in some youtube channels they are ranked as the best, but here you guys haven't even reviewed them? and how about an updated review of the Cambridge Melomania Touch?, now that they seem to have fixed previous issues with new firmware, it would be interesting to see your take on them

 

[Joe Cox]

Any new wireless earbuds contenders you think we should check out?

 

[Moree Spingato]

Hackneyed list. The better ones in this kind would be Technics AZ-80.. or Denon's offering.

 

[Wales1]

The Sony are outstanding.

 

[Rodolfo]

Any new wireless earbuds contenders you think we should check out?

There is nothing new about them: you have neglected to include/note Anker Soundcore's Space A40s in your evaluations. They are superior to most of your candidates, stand out for the value they bring and their compact design, along with their quite-competitive-at-least features and performance. I suggest and refer members and readers to PCMagazine's Editor's Choice review, inter alia. Heads up, WHF, sir.