Best Ear buds To Buy In 2025
Sony WF-1000XM5
When Sony set out to design its WF-1000XM5 flagship noise-canceling earbuds, it was looking to address some gripes folks had with their predecessor, the WF-1000XM4 earbuds that came out in 2021. Not only are the XM5s smaller, but they also offer improved performance pretty much across the board, with better noise canceling, sound quality and voice calling performance. Overall they’re impressive — easily among the top earbuds on the market. Equipped with 8.2mm speaker driver units and two new proprietary Sony chipsets (V2 Integrated and QN2e Noise-Canceling processors), the earbuds deliver rich sound with nice detail, clear mids and punchy, well-defined bass.
2. Apple AirPods Pro 2 (USB-C)
I still find AirPods Pro 2 hard to beat, especially for Apple users who get seamless audio switching with all their Apple devices that are on their iCloud account. They’re lightweight and comfortable to wear, have strong performance across the board, including very good sound and top-tier noise-canceling along with top-notch voice-calling performance and spatial audio with head-tracking. Powered by Apple’s H2 chip, they also have a robust feature set (Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness and Hearing Aid features) and are powered by Apple’s H2 chip. The charging case, equipped with Apple’s U1 chip and a built-in speaker, has the most advanced version of Apple’s FindMy feature with precision finding.
In 2023, Apple made some updates to the AirPods Pro 2, shifting from Lightning to USB-C charging and offering some other small upgrades, including additional dust resistance and a new acoustic architecture that allows for Lossless Audio with the company’s pricey Vision Pro headset. But the buds are otherwise identical to their Lightning predecessor.
3. Skullcandy Method 360 ANC
In a surprise move, Skullcandy has joined forces with Bose to create a budget version of Bose’s 408 CAD QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds. With “Sound by Bose,” not only do the Method 360 ANC buds sound better than most earbuds in this price class (they sound very similar to Bose’s 232 CAD QuietComfort Earbuds), they also fit comfortably and securely thanks to Bose’s Fit Kit system that features stability bands to lock the buds in your ears. While they share many traits of Bose’s flagship QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds, they’re lighter and lack the more premium finish of those pricey buds. Also, their noise canceling isn’t up to the QC Ultra’s best-in-class ANC standard. But it’s still effective and better than the noise canceling I experienced with previous Skullcandy earbuds I’ve tested. Read the Skullcandy Method 360 ANC review.
4. Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds
While Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds are a little bigger than many true-wireless earbuds, they’ve always fit my ears comfortably and securely thanks to their “interlocking fit” system with Fit Kit eartips and stabilizers (the Ultras feature a new notch to keep the stabilizers in place). Not only do the Ultras feature very good sound, but they deliver exceptional noise canceling — possibly the best available — and a pretty natural transparency mode. I also liked Bose’s new Immersive Audio spatial audio technology with head-tracking, which helps open up the soundstage and improves the sound a bit (it does use extra battery life). These buds also have good voice-calling performance, though it’s not quite as good as what you get with the AirPods Pro 2. Multipoint Bluetooth pairing was added in July 2024.
5. Earfun Air Pro 4
Earfun is one of our go-to brands for budget earbuds and its Air Pro 4 buds are one of the better earbuds values out there, which is why I awarded them an CNET Editors’ Choice in 2024. While they aren’t a major upgrade over the earlier Air Pro 3s, they do have a few enhancements that make them slightly better earbuds. Read my Earfun Air Pro 4 review.
Earfun has moved from Qualcomm’s QCC3071 to the newer QCC3091 that supports aptX Lossless Audio for a select few Android devices. The buds also support Sony’s LDAC audio codec, which is available with more Android smartphones, and the AAC and SBC codecs.
Like their predecessor, the Air 4 Pro are lightweight and comfortable to wear — I got a good seal with the largest ear tip size — and they feature slightly improved noise canceling and sound quality along with better battery life (up to 11 hours with noise canceling off and 7.5 hours with it on, according to Earfun). While the default sound leans slightly warm with a touch of bass push, you can tweak the sound in Earfun’s companion app for iOS and Android, and I did think the sound measures up well to earbuds that cost twice as much.