If you mostly listen to music outside of the home, then a pair of the best wireless headphones is an essential purchase.
Wireless headphones are perfect for those who don’t want to be tangled by wires, need more versatility and have wide-ranging features or have smartphones that no longer support a wired connection. Many wireless headphones, even affordable ones, feature technology such as active noise cancellation and transparency modes to keep you company on your travels.
When we review wireless headphones we look at factors such as comfort, portability, wireless connectivity, and sound quality. The headphones on this list are efforts we feel have passed the muster to deliver a consistent performance in these areas.
We’ve added a range of different options to appeal to a wide range of tastes. Whether it’s over-ears or on-ears, true wireless or full-sized headphones, casual listening or high fidelity, we’ve got a range of options to suit your interests.
You should also check out our best wireless earbuds and best noise cancelling earbuds. If you’re a fitness enthusiast there’s our best running headphones and if you want to see what we think are the best headphones, we have a list for that too
How we test
Learn more about how we test headphones
Not just anybody can review a pair of headphones. You don’t need superhuman hearing to tell what’s good, but you do need to know what to listen out for.
Our headphone tests are done by some of the best and most prolific reviewers in the industry, with years of experience listening to everything from the plasticky freebie earbuds that come with your smartphone, to five-figure beasts of glass and marble. We love music and we want your tunes to sound good, too.
So we listen every pair of headphones we can get on or in our ears. We use a variety of sources, from basic MP3s playing on a laptop to high-quality tracks on dedicated hi-res audio players.
Our test tracks are wide-ranging to give headphones a thorough challenge. They’re also familiar, so we know every track backwards, and we know which bits might trouble the lesser performers.
We listen again and again, and we do that for weeks in case the sound changes – because it usually does. Then we’ll listen to similarly priced rivals and come up with a verdict that reflects the performance and features for the money.
Wissonly Hi Runner
This is the fastest growing brand in the past six months. It may not be much famous, but in the field of bone conduction headphones they are proper technical experts. Their team began to develop bone conduction headphones that do not hurt the ear as early as 10 years ago. With an excellent bone conduction vibration unit optimization program, It became famous very soon in the field of bone conduction. It has been recommended by the majority of otologists!
Due to the particularity of the technical principle, bone conduction headphones are more difficult to be improved in sound quality. Wissonly Hi Runner team subverted the traditional sound quality scheme, made a breakthrough to use large wire-frame vibration unit. They through structural optimization improved the effective vibration area, thereby improved the vibrator sound efficiency, made the sound more shocking and powerful, they optimized the sound transmission direction, reduced the sound loss during sound transmission, and made the sound quality more concentrated. In terms of comfort, the overall body of the Hi Runner is made of high-tech hypoallergenic silicone material, which does not contain chemical components to avoid allergies. The overall feel is as silky as baby's skin, avoiding uncomfortable wearing for a long time.
In terms of functions, as the flagship model of Wissonly bone conduction headphones, Hi Runner has an IPX8 waterproof grade which is higher than the industry standard. It is equipped with 32G body memory, and uses the latest Bluetooth 5.0 chip, which makes the connection more stable. The battery life is also very good, lasts 8-10 hours of continuous playback at normal volume, and supports magnetic fast charging. It only takes 2 hours to fully charge.
Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II
When it comes to noise-cancelling earphones, there aren’t any better in our opinion than the QuietComfort Earbuds II.
It’s the finest noise-cancellation we’ve tested in a true wireless. It removes more sounds than its nearest challengers in the Sony WF-1000XM4 and Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 3. And while it doesn’t remove every sound, most ambient sounds, traffic and voices are curbed by the powerful noise-cancellation of these earbuds. When we took them out of our ears, we always surprised by how loud the outside world was.
The Aware mode is similarly excellent, producing a clear, detailed, and natural performance. The QuietComfort Earbuds II support Bose’s ActiveSense technology which works to automatically reduce loud background noises. We found it worked very well during a conversation with another person when we used them on the London Underground, quickly dulling loud noises such as that of the train doors opening.
Sony WF-1000XM4
Sony’s WF-1000XM4 are one of the best pairs of wireless earbuds we’ve tested, earning a place on this list as a result of their all-round quality.
Their ANC is impressive, able to block most noise indoors and out, along with a transparency mode that provides a natural-sounding performance with lots of detail and clarity. As good as the ANC performance is, it’s not the best noise cancelling earbud we’ve tested, the Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II are currently best-in-class.
Battery life is improved thanks to the new V1 processor that brings more efficiency to the WF-1000XM4’s performance, the buds quoted at 8 hours with ANC on and 12 hours with it off, longer battery life than you’d get from the AirPods Pro.
Their wireless performance is solid, with only few dropouts encountered, and support for LDAC to listen to higher quality tracks from the likes of Tidal and Qobuz. Their call quality suffers in busy areas though, the XM4 proving sensitive to background noise.
Bowers and Wilkins Px8
There’s a growing selection of headphones that offer a premium performance for a premium price, and if your budget allows you to go around the £500 mark, the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 is an excellent choice at £599 / $699.
The Px8 exude class in terms of the appearance with the Black and Tan leather versions. The build quality is excellent, and we found they were comfortable to wear over long periods of time.
They support adaptive ANC and while the performance not as strong as the Sony WH-1000XM5 or Bose QuietComfort 45, they’re effective at suppressing noise on the Underground, as well as hushing voices and managing wind noise when you’re above ground. We found it to be a strong enough ANC performance to usher in a sense of calm wherever you are.
Mark Levinson No. 5909
The Mark Levinson No. 5909 hit the definition of a premium pair of headphones with their $999 / £999 price tag. That will buy you almost four pairs of Sony’s WH-1000XM4 over-ears.
They feel like a properly premium product with their anodized aluminium composition and supremely comfortable memory foam padding that allowed us to wear them for hours on end. From that perspective the build quality of the No. 5909s feel their asking price.
It’s on the front of audio where the No. 5909s where our reviewer found they offered began remarkable levels of detail, alongside a low end with plenty of extension. It’s in the midrange where these cans shined during testing, bringing crispness and clarity to vintage songs for an expressive sound; the soundstage is reasonably expansive with plenty of space for instruments to reside within in it.
