Best true wireless earbuds: Free yourself from the tyranny of cords

Earbud makers have been busy doing away with wires—a good thing whether or not your phone still has a headset jack. You no longer have to deal with cords if you don't want to. True wireless earbuds connect to one another and your audio source via Bluetooth.

No wires mean no inline microphones or controls, but truly wireless earbuds sound just as good as traditional Bluetooth counterparts (for better or worse). They also boast all of the features we've come to expect from earbuds designed to work with your smartphone, tablet, or PC.

Since Apple’s AirPods became a runaway hit, an endless stream of companies have rolled out their own true wireless earbuds and earphones. As you might expect, not all of them are worth your time or money—so we've got your back with buying suggestions to meet a wide variety of needs.

Latest update (7/10/2018): We have a new pick for best true wireless earbuds—Jabra's Elite 65t. Read below for our summary, or check out our full review here.)

The $169.99 Jabra Elite 65t are priced close to our former Best True Wireless Earbud pick, the Jaybird Run, and only cost a few bucks more than a pair of AirPods. With their customizable sound, comfortable fit, light weight and excellent battery life, we feel the Elite 65t are better than either of these truly wireless earbud options, and worthy of top honors. (Read our review here.)

There are very few downsides to owning the Elite 65t. Sure, they feel a little cheap to the touch, but their build quality is actually great. And while their bass response may not please all music lovers (even after making EQ adjustments via Jabra’s free Sound+ app), they still sound great. When looking at the 65t as a total package, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better set of truly wireless earbuds for the money.

To be honest, this category doesn't really exist. Truly wireless earbuds are a luxury item and their price reflects this.

However, given the current field of true wireless earbuds, Apple AirPods do the best at offering good value for a (relatively) reasonable price. (Read our review here.) A pair costs $20 less than the Jaybird Run, and if you have ears that will work with the one-size-fits-all design, they can sound great under the right circumstance. And for iPhone and iPad users, you can't find an better set of earbuds for ease of pairing.

You should know, however, AirPods aren’t as easy to use as other true wireless earbuds for controlling your music. It also has terrible passive sound cancelation, so you’ll hear a lot of the world around you when using it.

Bose’s $250 SoundSport Free is water- and sweat-resistant, can go five hours between charging, and is insanely comfortable to wear. (Read our review here.) What’s more, the design of these earbuds' silicon tips makes them almost impossible to shake out of your head—but you still keep a good deal of situational awareness, making the SoundSport Free a good choice for joggers or cyclists.

The only knock against the SoundSport Free is its size: The earbuds are considerably larger than its competition, making them a less than fashionable choice for style conscious individuals.

B&O’s Beoplay E8 true wireless earbuds cost $300, but if high-fidelity sound quality is important to you, they're worth every penny. (Our review here.)

Though you can't expect a set of earbuds to match the sound you'd find in a wired set of cans, the E8s provided the most pleasurable listening experience out of all the true wireless earbuds we've tested so far. As icing on the cake, you can further modify your audio experience using the free Beoplay app.

The Beoplay B8 is incredibly easy to use, too—touch panels make changing the volume of what you’re listening to or tinkering with audio tracks no big deal.

Sounding good is a set of earbuds' raison d’être. When you invest in a new pair of true wireless earbuds, it’s fair to assume that they should make everything sound its best.

We start each sound test by listening to a playlist of five songs that spans different genres and features strong, layered performances: that we know very very well: Feel Right (Mark Ronson, featuring Mystikal); Up & Rise (Hazmat Modine); Shake Your Hips (The Legendary Shack Shakers); Déjà Loin (Yann Tiersen); and I’m a Little Mixed up (Diana Krall).

We play this set of songs for an hour, paying attention to low, mid, and high-frequency performance, and whether they provide a broad, rich soundstage. We also listen for any sign of distortion at low or high volumes. Afterward, we use the earbuds in our daily lives for a minimum of three hours a day over the course of a week, making sure to take in at least one TV show or movie. (This allows us to verify that the audio keeps in sync with the video we see.) Finally, we pay attention to incoming and outgoing call quality, to make sure that you won't get annoyed during a chat.

A set of earbuds or earphones may sound amazing, but no one will know it if they don’t fit well—a good seal keeps environmental noise out and your audio channeled into your ears, where it belongs. Because no two pairs of ears are identical, we note if a set of true wireless earbuds comes with different ear pieces.

We also pay attention to the tightness of a seal, as a snug fit provides passive noise cancellation (aka the hush that falls over your life when you jam a pair of earphones or earplugs into your skull). If you're in a noisy airport, tuning out your environment is a plus—but it's less than ideal if you're out running, for safety reasons. We take this into consideration when evaluating earbuds designed for working out.

They might fit and sound great, but if your new true wireless cans hurt your ears, you won’t wear them. We wear the earbuds for at least three hours a day for a week and note if a particular set becomes uncomfortable after a few hours of use.

True wireless headphones use Bluetooth to connect to each other and to your audio device. We pay attention to connectivity issues stemming from signal interruptions between the earbuds and their audio source, and also note if audio drops from the left or right side during playback.

At minimum, a good pair of true wireless earbuds should be able to accept calls as well as play and pause music. If a pair offers additional features beyond the basics, those functions should work well and be easy to use.

It almost goes without saying that if you pay a premium for earbuds, they should sound spectacular. If a pair of headphones sound great and don’t cost much? Even better!

Click on the links below to read the full reviews of all the products we tested. We'll continue to update this article as we put more true wireless earbuds and earphones through their paces, so keep checking for our latest opinions.