Justified or not, Apple’s AirPods have change into the default selection for most iPhone house owners in the market for new wi-fi earbuds. In the event you’re purchasing for an Android cellphone, nonetheless, the choices aren’t so apparent. That’s the place we may help: We’ve examined dozens of wi-fi earbuds through the years, so we’ve damaged down our high suggestions for Android customers under. Whether or not you need highly effective noise cancellation, a pair that’ll survive in the health club or simply one thing that works significantly nicely with a Galaxy or Pixel cellphone, listed below are our favourite AirPods alternate options for Android.
Desk of contents
Best Android earbuds for 2025
What to look for in wi-fi earbuds for Android devices
For probably the most half, the options you need from a set of “Android earbuds” are the identical as what you need from any headphones. Pleasing sound high quality, a snug match and enough battery life are nonetheless the foundations. Ample water resistance is sweet for exercises, and no person desires a crummy mic for making calls. When you strategy the $100 vary, options like lively noise cancellation (ANC), wi-fi charging, an ambient sound mode (which helps you to higher hear exterior noise with out turning off your music) and multipoint connectivity (the flexibility to pair with a number of devices concurrently) must be anticipated.
For Android devices particularly, there are a couple of extras to think about. A devoted app that makes it straightforward to modify sound modes, customise the audio profile, find your earbuds in the event that they ever get misplaced or alter different settings is strongly most popular. Options like Google Fast Pair or NFC-based pairing, which may help you keep away from having to dig by your Bluetooth menu to attach your earbuds for the primary time, are additionally good perks. Some Android devices may also make the most of higher-quality Bluetooth codecs equivalent to aptX Adaptive or Sony’s LDAC — these aren’t almost as essential to audio high quality because the precise structure of your earbuds, however they may help wring out a little bit extra element if the buds are succesful sufficient and also you’re streaming lossless recordsdata. AptX Adaptive may also assist scale back latency, which is sweet for streaming video or gaming.
Range is Android’s biggest energy, however it additionally implies that some wi-fi earbuds play nicer with sure devices, usually these made by the identical firm. Latest Samsung earbuds, for occasion, include a couple of perks which are solely out there if you happen to use a Galaxy cellphone. We have now a few suggestions associated to this concept above.
How we check Android earbuds
The best option to check earbuds is solely to put on them as a lot as potential, in order that’s what we do. We usually do that over a one- to two-week interval, although embargo instances often power us to complete our evaluation course of a bit sooner. We take heed to a check playlist that features a number of musical genres and podcasts, paying shut consideration to how every pair approaches the bass, mid and treble frequencies to get an correct sense of its sound profile. We additionally check at excessive and low volumes to verify for consistency in the tuning. We shouldn’t have entry to a dummy head to take extra goal measurements, however we’ll typically look to websites like Rtings, SoundGuys and others that do exactly to make sure our impressions are usually not wildly off-base. If a mannequin helps customized EQ, we’ll tinker with that and use the out there EQ presets to see if one sounds dramatically higher than the others — although in basic we base most of our impressions on the inventory tuning every pair makes use of by default.
To evaluate microphone high quality, we file our personal audio samples and take a number of calls with a companion each indoors and out of doors. For battery life, we play our check playlist on a loop with the quantity round 75 % and measure how lengthy it takes for every set to empty. The place relevant, we do a radical evaluation of a pair’s companion app and check every out there characteristic. Whereas consolation is finally subjective, we be aware of how safe every pair feels whereas we’re on the transfer. We additionally use sure pairs in particularly crowded public areas to get a greater sense of their passive and lively noise cancellation, in addition to their means to take care of a constant Bluetooth connection.
Latest updates
April 2025: We’ve checked this information to make sure our high picks nonetheless stand and famous a pair alternate options to the Noble Fokus Rex5, since that pair has had inventory problems with late. We’re additionally maintaining a tally of how the Trump administration’s tariff coverage impacts the pricing and inventory of our suggestions (and the buyer tech business as a complete). All of our picks are nonetheless out there in their regular worth ranges as we speak, however we’ll replace this information if that adjustments.
February 2025: The Noble FoKus Rex5 is our new “best for sound high quality” decide, changing the Sennheiser Momentum True Wi-fi 4. Our different suggestions stay unchanged.
December 2024: We’ve calmly edited this information for readability and ensured that our present picks are nonetheless correct.
This text initially appeared on Engadget at
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