Justified or not, Apple’s AirPods have turn out to be the default selection for many iPhone homeowners available in the market for brand new wireless earbuds. In case you’re searching for an Android cellphone, nevertheless, the choices aren’t so apparent. That’s the place we can assist: We’ve examined dozens of wi-fi earbuds through the years, so we’ve damaged down our high suggestions for Android customers beneath. Whether or not you need highly effective noise cancellation, a pair that’ll survive within the health club or simply one thing that works significantly effectively with a Galaxy or Pixel cellphone, listed here are our favourite AirPods alternate options for Android.
Desk of contents
Greatest Android earbuds for 2025
What to search for in wi-fi earbuds for Android units
For essentially 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 cushty match and enough battery life are nonetheless the foundations. Satisfactory water resistance is nice 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 outdoors noise with out turning off your music) and multipoint connectivity (the power to pair with a number of units concurrently) ought to be anticipated.
For Android units particularly, there are a number of extras to contemplate. A devoted app that makes it simple to modify sound modes, customise the audio profile, find your earbuds in the event that they ever get misplaced or regulate different settings is strongly most popular. Options like Google Fast Pair or NFC-based pairing, which can assist you keep away from having to dig via your Bluetooth menu to attach your earbuds for the primary time, are additionally good perks. Some Android units may also make the most of higher-quality Bluetooth codecs equivalent to aptX Adaptive or Sony’s LDAC — these aren’t practically as necessary to audio high quality because the precise structure of your earbuds, however they can assist wring out slightly extra element if the buds are succesful sufficient and also you’re streaming lossless information. AptX Adaptive may also assist scale back latency, which is nice for streaming video or gaming.
Range is Android’s best power, but it surely additionally implies that some wi-fi earbuds play nicer with sure units, usually these made by the identical firm. Latest Samsung earbuds, as an illustration, include a number of perks which are solely accessible if you happen to use a Galaxy cellphone. We have now a few suggestions associated to this concept above.
How we check Android earbuds
One of the simplest ways 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 occasions often power us to complete our assessment course of a bit quicker. We hearken 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 examine for consistency within the tuning. We shouldn’t have entry to a dummy head to take extra goal measurements, however we’ll generally look to websites like Rtings, SoundGuys and others that do exactly to make sure our impressions aren’t wildly off-base. If a mannequin helps customized EQ, we’ll tinker with that and use the accessible EQ presets to see if one sounds dramatically higher than the others — although usually we base most of our impressions on the inventory tuning every pair makes use of by default.
To evaluate microphone high quality, we document our personal audio samples and take a number of calls with a accomplice each indoors and out of doors. For battery life, we play our check playlist on a loop with the amount round 75 p.c and measure how lengthy it takes for every set to empty. The place relevant, we do an intensive assessment of a pair’s companion app and check every accessible characteristic. Whereas consolation is finally subjective, we pay attention to 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 capability to keep up 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 policy impacts the pricing and inventory of our suggestions (and the patron tech trade as an entire). All of our picks are nonetheless accessible of their regular value ranges right now, however we’ll replace this information if that adjustments.
February 2025: The Noble FoKus Rex5 is our new “finest for sound high quality” choose, changing the Sennheiser Momentum True Wi-fi 4. Our different suggestions stay unchanged.
December 2024: We’ve frivolously edited this information for readability and ensured that our present picks are nonetheless correct.
This text initially appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/headphones/best-earbuds-for-android-devices-120015765.html?src=rss
Trending Merchandise
