How to Choose the Best Earbuds for Travelers
There is a lot of noise (pun intended) out there regarding the wireless earbud market. There are easily over a thousand different wireless earbud models with new versions coming out daily.
Whether traveling on a plane, working with another person in the room, playing music during a work out, or taking a walk listening to a favorite podcast, earbuds have become a part of my daily life.
But with so many options, how do you choose the best earbuds for travel?
The answer: it depends on you.
Here’s how we found our favorite pair of earbuds for travel – and spoiler alert, we each have different brands….
Table of Contents
Our Wireless Earbuds Test
Tester #1: Jedd
- Small-Medium size ears
- Cares a lot about comfort and sounds quality
- Wants good value (not too expensive, but willing to pay more for quality)
- Cares more about noise cancelling and transparency features vs. call quality
- Uses earbuds mostly to listen to music
- Cares about ease of use but not necessarily customization
- Uses earbuds with iPhone, iPad, and Macbook
Tester #2: Michelle
- Very small ear canals
- Cares mostly about comfort and ease of use
- Wants good value (not too expensive, but willing to pay more for quality)
- Uses earbuds mostly to listen to podcasts and cancel noise disruptions when working
- Uses earbuds with iPhone and Macbook
How to Choose the Best Wireless Earbuds for Travel?
Step 1: Know Thyself
When you read product reviews, often the reviewer gives suggestions on what to use or purchase based on their personal experience. This is somewhat helpful, but every person has unique user experiences, needs, and preferences.
That’s why I believe everyone should purchase a product that best matches the individual.
Here are questions to consider when you think about using wireless earbuds (in no specific order):
How much money do I want to spend for wireless earbuds? I have spent between $50 and $200 for earbuds. You can get earbuds for less and for a lot more than this range.
What activities will I use wireless earbuds the most? On planes? Working out? Work settings?
If you answered working out, you may want to consider earbuds that have a bulkier design, meant to stay in your ears with physical activity and that have better water resistance than other models.
What features do I care about most? Sound quality? Battery life? The latest in waterproofing? The best in noise cancelling and best transparency mode? Call quality?
What is your ear shape like? Smaller or bigger? Does it hurt when you use standard size ear plugs? You’ll want to consider wireless earbuds with a more compact design.
Do you have larger ears? Chances are you’ll have a better time finding buds that fit with different ear tips than those with smaller ears.
Taking some time to think about and rank your own priorities and preferences will help you find a good match, one that will meet most – if not all – of your needs.
No one knows your listening preferences and your ears better than you do.
Step 2: What to Look for in Wireless Earbuds
Now that you have your own personal preferences, apply them to the hundreds of wireless earbuds on the market.
Here is a more detailed look at the things to consider when checking out different earbud models…
Wireless Earbuds General Considerations
Sound Quality: Do you care whether or not you can pick out and hear every instrument in a song? Do you like hearing the reverberations in a singer’s voice? Do you want to feel the bass in your core?
Sound quality also refers to the clarity in a speaker’s voice. If you’re listening to a podcast, it can be the different between understanding what a speakers is saying vs. audio that is muddled and distorted.
Ear Comfort: What? Not all ears are the same? The most comfortable earbuds will be the ones tailored made for your ear (and if you have tons of money you can get those).
But most companies make a one-size-fits-as-many-people model and then provide a couple of different sized ear bud tips that are supposed to help you find a comfortable fit. Of course, what works for some folks will not for others.
On long flights I can easily have my earbuds on for more than 5 hours straight. If you have a pair that gives you pain after 10 minutes, you should consider a different product.
I once tried on wireless earbuds (Creative Aurvana Ace 2) that sounded amazing – better than most earbuds that are way more expensive, but I felt something bothersome in both ears after 5 minutes and couldn’t live with it.
Ear Fit and Seal: This is related to both items above. A good fit will improve sound quality AND provide a more comfortable experience.
The best fitting earbuds usually create a pretty good seal so you’re not leaking sound in any gaps or letting in outside noise.
Value: I have tried many wireless earbuds over the years and have been more than satisfied with buds that have cost between $50 – $200. This has been a good range for me.
Even $200 is a little on the high range. I often search for deals or refurbished items to get that price down.
Is there a difference in quality and features in this range? Yes, but nuanced enough that you can find a good match and be satisfied overall.
Over $200, you’ll have bigger expectations and probably can’t justify the extra costs.
Additionally, I hate losing an earbud even if it’s $50. I can’t imagine how disappointed I would be if I lost an expensive one.
Features: All the brands will use special marketing terms to make you think they have the latest and greatest technology that makes their earbuds the best.
Here are the most important features I consider when buying wireless earbuds:
– Noise Cancellation: Ability for your earbuds to use their on board mics to detect certain sounds and nullify them to create a quieter listening experience for you. For example, it can reduce airplane noise, people talking in a cafe, background music, etc…
– Transparency Mode: Ability to hear what’s going on around you while having your earbuds on, which gives you the feeling that you’re not wearing earbuds.
Some earbud mics and processing is so advanced that it can pick out certain sounds while lowering the volume of other distracting sounds, almost mimicking hearing aids.
– Battery Life: As technology advances, so does battery life. Remember that, similar to all rechargeable gear, your max battery life decreases over time. So you’ll want to start with a pair of earbuds that have the best battery life to begin with.
These days, don’t settle for anything less than 5 hours of play time with the ability to recharge multiple times in it’s own case.
– Connectivity: Technology continues to evolve to try and make using earbuds more practical. One such way is increasing the number of devices you are connected to for easy switching.
Older earbud technology only allowed you to pair earbuds with one device at a time. You would need to disconnect and reconnect to another device to use them.
Newer earbud models have multi-device connection which allows you to listen to one device and go to another without needing to go through the setup process each time.
Some earbud models even let you listen to audio from two different sources at the same time (in case you need that for some reason).
– Controls: Can you play, pause, go to the next track, turn the volume on, and switch between noise cancellation and transparency modes touching the earbuds without using another device? This feature can be really convenient.
– Device Tracking: Earbuds come in a small package and can easily be misplaced. More expensive models will have built-in tracking.
Take for example the Airpods Pro. Once added to someone’s Apple account, the earbuds can be tracked by any device that is also on the same account. This means I could track my Airpods Pro from iPhone, iPad, or Macbook if needed.
Go through this list and start to rank the things that matter to you the most. Combined with your personal preferences for how you’d like to use your earbuds, you’re ready for the next step.
Step 3: Research The Options – Pick 3
Now that you have your own personal preferences, apply them to your search.
Start Big: Go With a Web Search
There are tons of articles on wireless earbuds. Look for trends. What earbuds are mentioned the most with consistent good reviews?
Use keywords and phrases for different results:
“Best earbuds of 2024”
“Best earbuds under $200”
“The best noise cancelling earbuds”
“Best earbuds for working out”
Again, look for patterns. What earbuds are constantly being talked about? Try to narrow it down to about 3 wireless earbuds that are coming up again and again in your research.
Based on our personal preferences, we found the following 3 models that we wanted to look into more:
We chose these models because they were under $200. They all had great reviews for their sound quality, noise cancellation, and transparency modes.
Read Reviews of these Models
Now that we identified three earbuds, we started doing more research on just these three.
The first stop is Amazon. Whether you like the retailer or not, they have lots of data in the form of reviews to help you better determine if a product is good or not.
It’s not a perfect system, as not all reviews are verified purchases. But there’s enough reviewers to help you get a better overall sense of the product.
Here are some tips on how to consider reviews when helping you decide on a product:
How many review does a product have? Sheer volume is helpful to determine the popularity of a product. Will I choose a product that has 10,000+ reviews with 4 stars vs. a product that 5 reviews and 5 stars? Yes! Especially if these products have been around for awhile.
What’s the overall rating in contrast to the lowest ratings? Generally, people that write reviews either love or hate the product.
Too many highly rated reviews with little or nothing to say is not helpful. On the flip side, look at how many poor reviews there are. Does the contrast between the favorable and poor reviews tell you anything?
Longer, more in-depth reviews are better than shorter reviews: Regardless if it’s a positive or negative review, more often than not, a longer review is often more helpful than a shorter one.
Generally, longer reviews indicates that the person is taking time to provide important details. They actually care about what they are writing. One thing you’ll often see in longer reviews are mentions of other models that are being compared that you may not have heard of before.
Search for keywords: Amazon has a search feature built into their reviews. You can search for keywords like battery life, sound quality, fit, etc… and find reviews that specifically mention these things.
If you’re using another website that doesn’t have this feature, use the word search function in your browser. You can usually pull it up with a ctrl/function+F.
Check recent reviews: It can be helpful to know if people are still purchasing product even if it’s been out for awhile.
Bad reviews can be more helpful than good reviews: What are some trends you’re seeing from bad reviews? Maybe there’s a known issue to be aware of.
But bad reviews can also just be bad: You know when you see one. For example, someone giving a 1 star review for wireless earbuds because the color wasn’t exactly the same in person as the online photo is not helpful.
Reading reviews should help confirm and strengthen your selection of 3 models to try, or determine if you should switch one of them out for a different product. Try to get to a point where you feel you’ve narrowed it down to 3 solid options that you now want to test.
Step 4: Try Out Each Earbud (if possible)
If you’re able to, consider purchasing the 3 wireless earbud models you’re looking at, as long as there’s a clear return policy.
I try not to do this too often, thinking about the extra packaging and shipping involved. But for something like wireless earbuds, you really don’t know what they will be like until you wear them and test them out. (I feel the same way about shoes.)
If you plan to try wireless earbuds, make sure to purchase them from a store with a great return/refund policy.
I’ve purchased earbuds from online resellers like Amazon and also directly from the manufacturing companies and have not had issues testing and returning earbuds that I didn’t like.
Every company is different. Some will charge “open box” or return shipping fees, some don’t. So verify before purchasing.
How We Tested Our Wireless Earbuds
Test the fit!
After unboxing each of them, this is the first thing you should do. See how comfortable are they in the ear.
Can you tell by looking at the image above which earbuds felt the most comfortable in my ear? It’s hard, right?
This is why you shouldn’t judge how comfortable wireless earbuds are unless you try them on your own.
Try to insert them with the earbud tips they come with first. If it feels loose, consider changing out the tips to a larger size.
If it’s too painful, go with the smaller size.
If they are still too loose or painful by sizing up or down, then those earbuds are just not a good fit in general.
The best earbud fit are those that you don’t even notice when they’re in your ear. They should feel light and comfortable. A good fit will also create a good seal so that the there is no sound leakage coming in or out.
The comfort winner for me of the 3 we tested was the Jabra Elite 10, using the tips it came with right out of the box.
I couldn’t believe how light and comfortable they seemed. I barely noticed I had them on.
The Sony WF-100xm5 came in second because I noticed the fit and seal wasn’t as tight as I’d like.
The AirPods Pro 2 ranked the last for me, as it didn’t feel secure in my ear no matter what tips I tried them with. I felt like they were going to fall out to easily.
Test the sound!
I’m a geek like this but I’ve made my own playlist to test earbuds. It’s a random mix of different kinds of music I love to listen to with headphones. Because music taste is subjective, you should consider making your own playlist to see how the music will sound during your testing.
I’m no audiophile, but when I when I’m testing earbuds I’m looking for a full depth of sound.
I love feeling the bass hit low (not too low or distorted). But I also appreciate clarity. I want to hear each individual instrument and voice if possible.
Remember, sound quality is also affected by the fit of the earbuds so this is a good opportunity to see which earbuds and which size tips create the best listening experience.
For our testing, the Sony WF-100xm5 sounded the best of the three. There was a sparkle and depth to whatever I listened to that wasn’t there on the Jabra Elite 10 or Apple AirPods Pro 2.
That being said, I care A LOT more about music than most people do and so I can get into the weeds with this. But it doesn’t mean the other two options sounded bad. In fact the other two sounded really good, and I would have been happy with them.
Test the features! (and controls)
Each wireless earbuds (at least the good ones) have their own dedicated app or onscreen controls.
This is the best way to customize your listening experience and test features like noise cancellation and transparency modes. This is also where you can usually tailor your controls and find other settings.
Though the apps have similar features and designs, they are also different from each other. You may have to do some digging to find what you’re looking for. And yes, some are better than others in terms of the user experience.
The biggest thing I test for is the noise cancelling and transparency features.
Use your favorite play list of songs and turn these features on and off. Go between the different ear buds if there’s a noticeable difference.
Bonus: Two often underrated tests are to see what it’s like to switch between multiple devices and how well the touch controls work on the earbuds themselves. In other words, are they easy to use or are they frustrating?
Final Step: Choose the One That’s Best for You
Now you might think this is the hardest part, but it should now be the easiest.
If you’ve done the initial research, you should have three pretty good options to begin with.
Choose the wireless earbuds that you liked the most from your testing. It’s probably the one that ranked the highest overall in your mind combining all the things you were looking for.
For me, I ended up with the following ranking for the 3 wireless earbuds we tested:
The Jabra was the MOST comfortable. I really loved it’s fit, but I couldn’t get over how I loved the sound coming out of the Sony-WF1000XM5 more and their comfort was pretty good.
Though I liked the ease of use of the Apple AirPods Pro 2 and the sound was pretty good, I didn’t like the fit in my ear. I never felt I had a good seal.
If it had been down to price, I probably would have picked up the Jabra Elite 10 but I found a refurbished deal for the Sony’s, making them the best overall value.
For Michelle, the choice was different based on her own preferences:
As I mentioned before, everyone has different priorities. For Michelle, ease of use, fit, and overall cost mattered the most.
In that regard, the Apple AirPods Pro 2 was a great fit for Michelle. It fit her small ears well and works seamlessly with her Macbook computer and iPhone.
We also found the AirPods to be the most inexpensive of the three (there are always deals for these earbuds).
Does This Sound Right to You?
Picking wireless earbuds is similar to trying on clothing. It’s a personal experience that only you can determine what’s a good fit or not. We hope this guide was helpful and we’d love to hear if you’ve found a pair of wireless earbuds you love.
Don’t forget there will always be new models coming down the pipeline but the process on how to choose the best ones for you should remain the same.
