• Soundpeats announces UU2 clip buds
• Successors to 4-star Clip1
• Sound leakage avoidance, physical buttons, long battery life

Of all the cuff-style earbuds I've tested, the Soundpeats Clip1 are my favorite that cost under $100 / £100 / AU$100 — probably my flatmate's too, given how keen he was to 'inherit' them — and now, a follow-up has been announced.

These are the Soundpeats UU2, which have been on sale in Japan for a few months, but are now available in the US, UK, Australia and several European countries. No, I don't understand the name either, perhaps Soundpeats' execs come from a place where the buds have no name… (But to clarify no, as far as we know, there is absolutely no link with Bono et al).

You can buy the earbuds now for $49.99 / £59.99 (around AU$70) which is a small saving too, when you consider the $69.99 / £74.99 / AU$79.99 asking price of the original Clip1.

However these new buds make a place for our best open-ear buds list with a few premium features, likely inspired by higher-end models on the market.

Who's Gonna Ride Those Wild Earbuds

The Soundpeats UU2 get a 10-hour battery life, and 42-hour case life, both of those being longer than on the Clip1. I don't imagine anyone will be disappointed by that change.

More impressive is the introduction of a sound leak reduction mode, solving a common open-earbud problem in that people around you can hear what you're listening for.

Some earbuds have solutions: the Shokz OpenDots Air have an EQ mode to reduce it, and the Xiaomi OpenWear Stereo Pro had an entire driver to eliminate sound leaking, and I imagine Soundpeat's solution will fall into one of those two categories.

Another pain of clip-style buds is that their touch controls can be pretty sensitive, so the UU2 have physical buttons to control the issue. Budget buds often go for haptic controls, with actual clicky buttons saved for premium models, so I'm somewhat surprised to see the Soundpeats rock them.

A seemingly-unchanged spec from the Clip1 is the driver: 12mm here, so I don't expect a sonic overhaul. The call clarity is said to have seen an increase, though.

We've yet to thoroughly test the Soundpeats UU2, but we've got our hands on them, so we'll soon see if they can outshine the Clip1 — and the ever-growing number of budget cuff-buds out there right now.

Budget earbuds don't get much better than this: both in terms of quality and value for money. That's what makes it so easy to recommend the Sony WF-C510 Earbuds at Amazon for £34.99 (was £54.99).

You'd usually expect to make a handful of serious compromises when buying such a cheap pair of earbuds, but the Sony WF-C510 offer a surprising amount for such a low price. Audio is punchy, the fit is comfy, and the battery life impresses. For £35, you can't really ask for more.

Yes, there are a couple of features that it's a shame to miss out on, especially active noise cancellation, but that's to be expected when dealing with budget buds. Premium features like this aren't always necessary if you want a quality pair of affordable earbuds to listen to music or enjoy streaming videos — and that's where the Sony WF-C510 excel.

Buy the Sony WF-C510 at Amazon

Our 4.5-star review of the Sony WF-510 goes into more detail on what makes them such a good pair of budget-friendly earbuds. In fact, we were so impressed with them that we'd even recommend them over the much pricier Apple AirPods.

These are cheap earbuds that still offer a bold and vibrant sound. Of course, the bass won't be as strong as that of more premium options or over-ear alternatives, but you still get solid overall quality for the price.

If there's anything against them, it's that regular commuters or those who like to focus up when working in a noisy office might miss the active noise cancellation. If that's not going to be an issue for you, though, then the Sony WF-510 are easily some of the best cheap earbuds you can buy while they're down to this super-low sale price.

Think our tech is getting a little too smart for its own good? You're not alone.

In the past few weeks, TechRadar brought you three key updates on the invasion of your privacy without consent, owing to the AI learning models nestled in our gadgets and appliances.

In case you missed the latest missives, new LG TVs can record you in the background and will ask you to notify anyone who comes into your home, to comply with "wiretapping" laws. Next up, Nothing's new earbuds offer a 'squeeze the stems to record calls' feature being called Audio Snapshot, which is tantamount to phone-hacking in cute packaging. And finally, there's the continued backlash over Meta's AI glasses. Despite the social media giant implementing a feature that stops recordings if a wearer tampers with the front-firing light, hatred of these and other smart shades (oft-renamed 'pervert glasses' by the general public) has led to people calling for camera-less glasses.

So, in a world where our glasses can watch, our earbuds can hear, our speakers can speak and our TVs are a little too closely invested in our lives for comfort, how much more will we allow our tech to intrude before enough is enough — and what can we do to regain some privacy?

Your tech will see you now

Lauren Hendry Parsons is a seasoned advocate for digital rights and a gifted speaker in making these complex issues accessible. She is a director within the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, helping to make the organization's push for a "technology future that serves and is shaped by the people who use it" a message that resonates on a global scale.

Luckily, she has agreed to talk to me on the growing concern over surveillance tech's prevalence in our lives.

Parsons states that in order to zoom in on these issues, we need first to zoom out. "I see this as part of a bigger pattern," she begins, "that is a push by technology and other forces to normalize consumer surveillance — surveillance of people by other people — and that's something that we're seeing cropping up a lot."

So what's changed — after all, recording devices have existed for some time? The answer is the growing number of places where such surveillance is becoming normal.

"It's something that started in the Internet of Things home devices," she says. "You might talk to a smart speaker, or talk actively to another product that is doing your bidding — but it was usually tied to a place.

"Now, we're seeing the normalization of surveillance-chic behaviors, where fashion influencers are sharing their own Ring doorbells to show off their outfit of the day.

"That moves surveillance from something fixed inside a home, where people can at least see the object and talk about it, to something that's constantly moving through every space and every conversation."

And it's being packaged in pink earbuds, chic sunglasses or fun doorbells? Parsons agrees: "The chicification of surveillance to me is deeply concerning."

Who counts as the user — and should they really have control?

I want to talk about Meta's AI glasses and the involvement of Kylie Jenner in the ad campaign, especially when women's safety (regarding non-consensual surveillance and distribution of such footage) has been listed as a key concern.

I mention the fact that when speaking to several male colleagues about the benefits of such glasses (rather than the concerns), not one of them mentioned what I suspect all women thought: that wearing such glasses might mean filming your potential attacker, and that would be a very good thing.

"There are absolutely situations where people might want the convenience these products provide," Parsons agree. "Being able to translate something on the go or take a quick snapshot without getting your phone out. For people with disabilities or limited capacity, these tools could be genuinely useful.

"But I don't see the trade-offs being clearly explained. I don't see meaningful ways to opt out. Even if these companies have perfect data handling processes and perfect privacy records, the risk is being transferred to the consumer instead of being held by the tech company."

Parsons mentions one of the core issues at Mozilla Foundation: privacy by design. "Privacy by design, which is what we recommend as best practice, means products should be private by default," she says. "And that has to include bystanders.

"Technology companies talk about giving the user control, but who's counting as the user?

"With smart glasses, televisions, and recording earbuds, the purchaser isn't the only person affected. Just as children are affected by smart speakers or passengers by dashcams in cars, the person across the table or on the other end of the call is also a data subject, even though they have no access to the controls and no real way to opt out.

"True privacy by design must protect both the person operating the device and the people involuntarily brought into its data collection environment.

"When something (with surveillance tech built in) is fixed in your home or office, you can at least choose not to go there. You can suggest meeting somewhere else. That's difficult and has social consequences, but it's possible.

"If it's something someone is unobtrusively wearing in their ear or on their glasses, or something you don't even know they have, opting out becomes almost impossible."

I ask how we might regain some agency here, or at least get a handle on our privacy regarding AI glasses, call-recording earbuds and all-seeing TVs. Parsons points to the work she does.

"Mozilla's privacy principles are useful here," she says. "They're about no surprises, genuine user control, limited data collection, sensible settings, and multiple layers of protection. These examples show what happens when products fall short of those principles."

Another thing Parsons is keen to impress upon TechRadar is central to her work: understanding the trade-offs. "I don't see how everyone on the phone can understand those trade-offs and give informed consent," she says.

"The only way that could happen is if this (the recording of everything we do) became such a standard operating procedure that everyone expects it, because everyone has it. At that point, we would have completely accepted constant surveillance as the norm.

"I don't think the answer is necessarily to prohibit recording technology. It's to stop presenting recording as an ordinary, consequence-free convenience."

She mentions translation in AI glasses as an example: "Companies could show translations without collecting or storing the underlying data, but we know that's not what's happening."

Another watch-word in Parsons' work is 'friction', and how disproportionately easy it has become to monitor, film and record secretly and without consent.

"Features with serious privacy implications should involve equal and proportionate friction," she says. "The more sensitive the activity, the stronger the consent mechanism should be."

I mention that when testing a set of earbuds recently, a simple beep to signify that recording has begun is the only notification the caller on the other end of the line receives. Parsons believes concern there is valid.

"Notification is not consent," she says. "We've become used to surveillance in places like train stations and public spaces because it's framed as being for safety. But I'd hate to see that extended to person-to-person interactions."

I ask if perhaps people should simply get OK with omnipresent filming or data collection by individuals and wider companies, since it seems so hard to avoid? Parsons' answer is emphatic: "That's deeply problematic."

"We're seeing the expectation that people should be comfortable being filmed all the time. Even terms and conditions often state that by attending, you agree to being photographed or filmed for marketing purposes. The default is that your data is collected unless you make the effort to opt out or avoid the event entirely. Again, that's deeply problematic.

"The diminishment of privacy is cumulative. It's one thing to have a fixed camera in a train station. It's another to be filmed by multiple people in different places without your consent, or to have your audio collected."

'The burden of this issue is not distributed equally'

Parsons reads me a quote from one of her own features, and it cuts to the core of the agency, consent and privacy debate better than anything I could ever try to surmise.

"The burden of this issue is not distributed equally, and the risk of ambient recording will fall disproportionately on people who already have less control in a situation," she says. "That includes workers, children, parents, patients, tenants, domestic abuse survivors, and protesters. This makes vulnerable populations more vulnerable."

Turning the cameras around

Parsons mentions a novel but initially counter-intuitive solution suggested by some prominent female content creators. Instead of shunning Meta's glasses (or playing Disney songs if you realize you're being filmed, because Disney's music is better protected than women's lives), the idea is that women do wear them, specifically to film men when they start to behave in an inappropriate or predatory manner, then upload the footage everywhere. The thinking is that these products might then get regulated very quickly.

"If women collectively used them in that way — in a kind of, let's call it a neo-Me Too movement — I'd put money on consent issues being addressed much more quickly," Parsons says.

"The issue isn't simply that these products can record. It's that the examples you gave (the earbuds, the glasses, the TV that records in the background) all prioritize effortless capture over meaningful consent, when there are other ways to do it.

"The person operating the product gets all the convenience and control, while everyone else gets a light, a beep, or a legal disclaimer. That's an unacceptable imbalance.

"Recording has many legitimate and valuable purposes, but companies should be asking how to build consent into the infrastructure, minimize what's captured, and protect bystanders as rigorously as they protect the user.

"The false dilemma is, 'Do you just not want this technology?' But we shouldn't have to choose between useful technology and privacy.

"Preserving both means companies need to treat consent as a product requirement, not something buried in their terms and conditions."

Facial recognition (and how to make it disappear)

I ask Parsons about Mozilla Foundation's stance on digital facial recognition, a highly controversial feature that our phones and smart glasses are technically capable of. Although the big brands have so far disabled or restricted the software on glasses, there are strong suggestions that hackers have managed to scoot around it.

She mentions the rise of anti-surveillance fashion; garments that make their wearer invisible to the algorithm and thus can thwart the surveillance tech stuffed into our handsets and wearables.

"Looking ahead, we have two things happening simultaneously," Parsons says. "We have vastly increased computing power and data analytics capabilities that allow us to store and analyze more information than ever before, and we have recording devices embedded everywhere in increasingly unobtrusive ways. That combination is worrying.

"One of the brands we spoke to, Capable Design, explained it well: 'The problem with surveillance technology is citizens don't have a possibility in the physical world to opt out. In the digital space, we can say yes or no to cookies. In the physical world, we don't have this option. We wanted to create physical protection that would allow citizens to give their consent or not.'

"It feels as though we're being forced to pick sides: either you're comfortable with surveillance or you're actively trying to avoid it. Again, it comes back to the false choice between privacy and convenience because technology developers aren't prepared to give us both.

"I think these efforts are people trying to take back some agency. There's a feeling that all of this is inevitable.

"Particularly in the UK, where social norms and politeness are strong (this interview is taking place in the UK), I worry we're going to politely accept our way into a surveillance state because people feel uncomfortable challenging others or assume this is an inevitable progression."

Our time together is nearly up, but Parsons wants to talk just a little more about the future. "I want to say this loudly because it's a core Mozilla Foundation belief: the future of technology is not inevitable," she says.

"These are choices being made by people within companies. They could choose a different path.

"That's why Mozilla Foundation funds projects and people who challenge the status quo. We're investing in positive alternatives because opting out as a consumer can feel almost impossible.

"We need companies making better choices, regulators setting stronger requirements, and a greater appreciation that friction isn't always a bad thing. A little friction can protect people, encourage creativity, and ensure meaningful consent.

"That's what I hope for the future: that we don't accept inevitability, that we invest in better technology choices, and that responsibility isn't pushed entirely onto the individual consumer at the point of use."

AI another way

So, are there people within companies — even AI companies focused on "autonomous agents, edge intelligence, computer vision, and robotics" — looking to make different choices? Actually, yes.

Div Garg — CEO and Co-Founder of AGI (an AI on-device 'personal assistant' company) — is perhaps most famous for turning down a big gig at OpenAI in order to work on a "Siri that actually works" within his own startup. Fortunately, he's prepared to talk to me about the concerns surrounding the scraping (and in-cloud storage) of our personal data for AI learning.

"The debate around whether AI wearables that record our everyday lives are an invasion of privacy overlooks the fact that this technology doesn’t need the cloud whatsoever," he had said, prior to our meeting today. "It’s cheaper and easier for manufacturers, but it isn’t a necessity. Put the model on the device, and no data ever has to go beyond it."

Now, I ask him to expand. "My company hasn't cared about audience growth," he says. "We believe all AI agents and assistants should be running on-device, so the user should own the model and the data.

"What's happening now is people are typing their data into services, and companies use that data to show you ads. I think all of this can be misused to sell you more things, and we don't want that.

"AI is great, but it's only great if it's neutral and genuinely beneficial. It shouldn't become a source of revenue for corporations through people's data. That's what we're trying to change. We believe this kind of edge AI is the future, and we want to build something that's fully privacy-safe and that people can truly trust.

"We don't want people giving away their data without knowing more about it. We need the opposite approach, and I don't think enough people are thinking about this."

Garg pauses. "Maybe Apple should have been the company doing this," he adds, "but they've been lagging behind when it comes to AI".

I agree, and ask him why that might be? "No one has really taken the initiative to solve these privacy concerns. We've been holding a lot of events recently; for example, the founder of Edward AI, who built Edward before it was acquired by Google, joined us as an advisor. He believes in building the next personal operating system."

Trust issues

Can AGI build something that's truly personal, where people trust it, and where everything lives on-device? Garg believes so but, interestingly, he doesn't see trust as the deal-breaker.

"A big thing we're proposing is almost a zero-trust approach," he says. "You don't actually have to trust the provider. If the AI model itself is guaranteed to be running on the device, then no data leaves the device. You don't have to trust that a company is telling the truth — you know because of the way it's built. That's where I think the world should be moving."

The idea that brands are prioritizing AI in a product, because they know it's a buzzword, but with a more watchful eye on profit margins rather than the privacy of a user's data (and consent to capture that data) doesn't sit well — with either of us.

So why might companies try to not keep AI on-device, aside from cost issues? Does it drain your battery? Does it make a device heat up? Does it use a lot of RAM?

"I'd say you have to think outside the box," Garg says. "It requires a lot of innovation. You have to figure out how to make these models small enough to run locally.

"Modern phones (because this is where Garg sees AI, as the chief controller of your other devices) now have GPUs and processors called NPUs that can run AI models. I think the world is moving towards deploying more of these models on phones, but it's still very new.

"For example, we have a collaboration with Qualcomm. We're talking with their R&D and machine-learning teams about how our models can be highly optimized for phones. We want to make sure they don't drain your battery, cause overheating, or create other issues.

"This is a new frontier in technology, and you have to be innovative to make it work."

I ask Garg what he would say to anyone wary of adding a personalized AI model to their lives? "It depends a lot on who's making the decisions," he says.

"We want consent. We want to make sure people aren't being recorded without permission — I'm pretty sure there will be lawsuits around some of these issues in the future.

"My belief is that AI should be consensual. Even if you download a new AI app, it should ask, 'Are you OK with us collecting your data?' If someone gives consent, that's OK. But if someone says no, they shouldn't be forced into it."

On-device only

Garg is obviously only interested in an on-device AI future, but I worry that affordable convenience often wins out and that people may not understand the true benefits of such precautions.

I mention a set of headphones I tried, that offer real-time cognitive strain detection. My issue was that these cans (which were $200 cheaper than the inaugural 12-channel EEG sensor over-ears) use cloud processing in combination with on-device processing for some of the new metrics. The company didn’t reveal exactly what data was being sent to the cloud, but it had the potential to change my mind pretty drastically about using the product. What if the publishing house I work for was able to access and monitor how hard I'd been focusing throughout the work day?

Garg laughs, but only for a second.

"I think it's definitely possible, but it comes down to the developer," he concedes. "If a developer is doing something with your data or trying to collect it, that's hard to detect unless you're the operating system itself or the phone manufacturer.

"The phone company can probably detect it and tell you, but a lot of this comes down to how much you trust the people building the software. That's one reason we're so focused on the operating system.

"Right now, if you use something like Claude, you have one place where you do everything, and it connects to different services. We believe in a world where you have a single personal AI assistant connected to different devices, like the neuro-headphones you mentioned. Then you can see for yourself where the data is going because everything is connected through your own personal assistant rather than being scattered across different services."

Are we ready for unique personal AI assistants?

I mention Pete Steinberger's OpenClaw and the early adopters who tried to create their own personal AI assistant over a weekend. Does Garg think people are ready for that?

"We definitely want to make it easier," he says. "Even if you're using something like OpenClaw, you need to buy hardware, set up API keys, and do a lot of technical work. Most people don't have the patience for that, especially if they're not developers.

"We want this to work out of the box. You download an app, and it starts learning your routines. It can make proactive suggestions like, 'Would you like me to order your favorite coffee?' It's learning your habits.

"If it's all happening on-device, that solves the privacy problem because you can have personalization and all these useful features without your data leaving the device.

"Over time, your phone becomes more intelligent. It gets to know you better and becomes better at helping with the things you like to do.

"We also think this works well with smart glasses and other wearables. Your phone becomes the control center, just like an Apple Watch connects to an iPhone. The other devices become satellites connected to your phone, and the AI model lives on the phone itself."

Despite my continued reservations, it's a compelling argument. I can absolutely see a world in which a personal, on-device AI might be helpful in simplifying our lives.

I have one more question, since Garg is the visionary developer here. Is AI still essentially a loop (meaning something that is not intelligent in itself or autonomous — just very persistent at completing tasks) and does he ultimately see it moving beyond that? Or will humans always have the agency and autonomy, with AI just working in the background?

"A combination of both," he responds in an instant. "You want it to feel like collaborating with a co-worker. Depending on how much you trust it, it could manage your calendar or your emails automatically.

"It could say: 'I know you have a meeting tonight. Would you like me to help you find a restaurant? Would you like me to call a cab?' You want a system that's learning about you, but you also need trust. You need to know you're not being exploited by giving it access to your data, and that it's genuinely beneficial.

"That's the missing piece. If you use ChatGPT or Claude today, they're serving the same thing to billions of users. Everyone has the same assistant.

"In the future, people will want their own completely personal assistant. Maybe you'll even give it a name! It'll be unique to you. You can give access to your own data because it's running on-device. You trust it, and no one else has the same AI."

Of course, myriad users already trust AI chatbots with their innermost thoughts, and even as romantic partners, so perhaps by continuing to give the tech a wide berth I'm in the minority.

Then again, it's actually not the technology I fear. It's the technology in the hands of people who seek to misuse it.

Thoughts? There's a comment section below, dearest gentle reader — and my human eyes are ready to read your human thoughts.

Bose just announced its second-generation version of the iconic QuietComfort Headphones, and as if to celebrate, it's just discounted the majority of its existing headphones and earbuds. Are these deals any good, or should you just go with the new model? Let's dig in and find out.

• Browse all Bose deals at Amazon

The closest point of comparison we have to the new model is the previous version, and you can now pick up the original Bose QuietComfort Headphones at Amazon for $229 (was $359). This is the standard sale price outside of a major event, and is a considerable $50 more than the previous record-low price that I spotted during Prime Day in June.

However, this is considerably cheaper than the Bose QuietComfort Headphones (2nd Gen), which have a launch price of $359. A good but not great saving, then, and definitely one that's going to be bested during Black Friday in November, if you're willing to wait that long.

Elsewhere, the five-star-rated Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds are down to $249 (was $299). That's a return to the lowest price this year, so a good chance to pick them up for less if you've missed previous offers. Again, these have been $50 cheaper during last year's Black Friday, so I'd expect a similar offer to return in a few months, but such a big discount like that is rare for these buds.

So, it's a mixed bag of offers. I'm not surprised that many of the record-low prices aren't making an appearance in this current Bose sale, but there are still some strong savings on several of the manufacturer's top headphones and earbuds that I'd snap up if you don't have the patience to wait until November.

Today's 5 best Bose deals at Amazon

The Apple AirPods Pro 3 have just received a surprise price cut at Amazon, bringing the excellent premium earbuds down to just $189 (was $249) at the retailer.

That's the lowest price since the retailer's annual Prime Day mega-sale back in June, and likely the best deal we'll see for a while. Ever since Prime Day, these buds have stubbornly held at $199, which is the usual 'sales price' for Apple's premium buds.

Even though the record low is officially $169, the AirPods Pro 3 only hit that on one occasion over Prime Day, so today's price cut is definitely worth considering. Even at $189, the AirPods Pro 3 are an excellent buy for anyone looking for some high-end buds. Not only do they feature excellent noise cancellation, but they're packed with new features like heart rate monitoring and Live Translation.

The AirPods Pro 3 are cheaper today at Amazon

• See more: check out all of today's deals at Amazon

Are the latest AirPods Pro 3 worth it?

We awarded the buds an impressive four and a half stars out of five in our AirPods Pro 3 review, calling them 'near-perfect noise-cancelling earbuds' at the time. While not exactly cheap, they offer excellent noise cancellation and sound quality.

If we had to draw any criticisms, we'd mention that the AirPods Pro 3 don't have class-leading battery life (around 5.5 hours in our testing). You'll also need one of the latest iPhones to really take advantage of their full suite of features like Live Translation and personalized fitness insights. They're still great with older devices, but iPhone 15 and newer devices support Apple Intelligence, which is required for the newest bells and whistles.

• Nothing's cheaper CMF arm just launched CMF Clip Pro, its first clip-on buds
• LDAC, new '3-point Clip Design', 10.8mm driver and just 5.9g per bud
• £79 / $99 / AU$179 with no flagship 'Audio Snapshot' or call recording — and I'm glad

Loved Nothing until recently, but now you’re not so sure? If you looked at my recent Nothing Ear (3a) review and thought "Wait, they record calls? Why?" you're not alone.

Thankfully, the firm’s cheaper CMF arm just launched its first-ever clip-style open earbuds with LDAC and the basics — ie., no in-call recording — and they're delightfully chic and affordable. I predict a return to form.

CMF says the Clip Pro (for that is their name) are designed to deliver a listening experience that "feels as natural as it sounds" and that the buds are built for "people who move through busy cities, long workdays and active lifestyles".

Open earbuds of this type are growing rapidly in number, but achieving comfort, the ability to hear your surroundings (to be clear: the 10.8mm driver in each earpiece rests in the well of your outer ear, like an ear cuff), and decent sound quality is one of this category's biggest challenges. With Clip Pro, CMF says it set out to solve these issues.

How? First, it starts with a new 3-point Clip Design, which the company describes as a "carefully balanced three-point support system that distributes pressure naturally across the ear instead of concentrating it in a single area". Lovely stuff.

CMF Clip Pro: what you need to know

The design features an "elastic titanium wire core" with a "slim C-bridge" to fit your shell-like, and at 5.9g per earpiece, a barely-there wearing experience is the goal.

In terms of audio chops, the 10.8 mm dual-magnet dynamic driver in each earbud is aided by CMF's own Ultra Bass Technology, which the company says "intelligently enhances low frequencies while simultaneously reducing treble distortion" for a more engaging experience through those tricky-to-nail-in-this-design lower frequencies.

Clip Pro supports LDAC, for higher-quality wireless streaming. It's not the first time we've seen the better-quality codec supported in Nothing's affordable earbuds, but it's welcome at this entry-level price if you own a Samsung or Sony phone.

Think they'll be a bit hit-and-miss for calls? CMF thought of that too. Clip Pro combines what the company calls its "flagship VPU-powered Clear Voice Technology and a four HD mic system" to separate the wearer's voice from surrounding noise in real time.

For users who value privacy (and I'd say that's all of us), CMF says its Sound Seal system should reduce sound leakage by intelligently managing mid and high frequencies. The goal? Making conversations and music less audible to people nearby.

All of this can be customized in the Nothing X app (a companion app I like very much, having tested most of Nothing's output to date), with dedicated settings for calls or both calls and audio playback.

Oh, and Clip Pro also totes CMF's signature smart dial, as seen in the CMF Buds Pro 2. It's a tactile rotating control built into the charging case for adjusting volume, managing playback, answering calls and pairing devices without needing to unlock your phone. We were wary of the implementation previously, summarising in our review of those July 2024-issue buds: "The dial is prone to accidental turns or presses in your pocket, the notification sound to tell you that a function has been triggered is startlingly loud, and there’s a significant delay between using the dial and hearing its result", so it'll be interesting to see if CMF has tweaked its efficacy here.

You also get on-ear physical controls (which the company says will work even if the user is wearing gloves) as well as a low-latency mode for gaming, dual device connectivity and Nothing's 'find my' solution, which makes your lost earbud emit a rattlesnake-like sound to help you find it under the couch, say.

Your color options here are Dark Grey, Light Grey, and Coral. In case I haven't stressed this enough, you should not wear all three hues like the model in the main image of this missive. The buds are also IP54 rated for water and dust ingress.

Stamina? Of course: Clip Pro's battery claim is up to 10 hours of continuous playback on a single charge and up to 32.5 hours of total playback with the charging case.

Let's talk money: £79 / $99 / AU$179, and they'll hit shelves on August 15, 2026. We can't vouch for them yet, but we'll be working on it…

Whether it's for blocking out noise while travelling or helping you concentrate during focus time, you can't beat a good pair of headphones. One of the top manufacturers right now is Sony, and conveniently, several of its top-rated options are now on sale at Amazon as part of this year's back-to-school sales.

• See all Sony headphone deals at Amazon

I've picked out seven deals that I think are genuinely worth buying if you're on the hunt for a new pair of headphones or earbuds. As well as Sony's flagship over-ear option, I've also found offers on more budget-friendly alternatives, and some of its cheapest in-ear buds.

Let's start with the cream of the crop: the latest Sony WH-1000XM6 on Amazon for $398 (was $459.99). Yep, they cost a lot, but these are some of the best headphones ever made, according to our review. Sony has achieved this by combining all of our favorite features from previous iterations. Namely, that's the fantastic audio quality, comfortable fit, lightweight design, and industry-leading noise-cancellation.

There are a couple of other options I'd like the look of if you don't want to spend quite so much on your next pair of cans. You can pick up the WH-CH520 Headphones for $38 (was $69.99), or the WF-C510 Earbuds for $48 (was $69.99) — both are excellent cheaper options that punch well above their lower price tag.

Do have a browse through my top picks from the full Sony sale at Amazon below for more info on all of the headphones and earbuds that I'd recommend — not only as good back-to-school options, but also for regular use, commuting, or at the gym.

7 best Sony headphones deals at Amazon

When you’re thinking about buying a new pair of headphones, I’d wager that a pair from Sony will undoubtedly come to mind. The tech giant is known for making some of the best headphones we’ve seen heard in the past decade.

In fact, Sony released the uber-premium 1000X The Collexion in May this year to celebrate that decade of being at the top of its audio game, while also giving it an uber-premium price tag to match. Roughly three months since their launch, they’ve received their first discount, bringing them down to a slightly more manageable AU$849 (down from AU$999) for a limited time.

Yes, that’s still a lotta money to throw at a set of headphones, but when Apple’s AirPods Max 2 — the Sony’s main rival — continue to prove popular and cost similar money, then there’s very much a case to be made for a pair from a company that’s been producing top-rated audio kit for over 75 years.

If you’re familiar with Sony’s other headphone exploits, such as the WH-1000XM6 that currently sit atop my guide to the best headphones in Australia, then I must stress that the 1000X Collexion are absolutely not the same pair in a new-look aesthetic.

Sony has gone to great lengths to ensure its latest pair justify their price tag, and that they do more than enough to compete with the AirPods Max 2, with an immediate win for being device-agnostic compared to Apple’s over-ears.

Elsewhere they sport impeccable touch controls, a 10-band custom equaliser and DSEE Ultimate technology for upscaling lower-quality song files up to 96kHz and 32-bit. This technology has previously only been found in Sony’s high-end portable music players, so it’s a big deal that it’s finally made its way into a pair of headphones. Noise cancellation is also excellent, as the Collexion uses the same 12-mic system found in the XM6 over-ears.

No product is perfect, mind you, and as our tester noted in his Sony 1000X The Collexion review that “there are some downsides, such as lower battery life, as well as the underwhelming 360 Upmix modes”.

On those two latter points: battery life is rated at 24 hours, which is down from the 30 hours of the XM6, but still more than the AirPods Max 2’s 20 hours, while the 360 Upmix mode — essentially spatial audio — seemed to have a negative effect on sound quality during our testing.

Listening experience is personal, however and, all things considered, the Collexion are still a fantastic set of headphones that I personally wouldn’t mind spending my own money on if I didn’t already use the Sennheiser Momentum 5 Wireless. I can’t be sure how long this limited-time discount will last, so if you’ve been keen to invest in Sony’s best, don’t let this opportunity pass you by.

Hard to believe, but Beats by Dr. Dre has officially been part of Apple for 12 years now — and the brand itself turns 20 this year. Suffice it to say, it's a brand that has continued to evolve and drastically improve its quality over the years, all while maintaining its cultural relevance.

That second part is the surprising one. When Apple bought Beats in 2014 for around $3 billion, the conventional wisdom was that it had paid a lot of money for a cultural brand, and that the hardware would eventually be folded into Cupertino and quietly retired. Beats Music did get absorbed, becoming Apple Music. Most people assumed the headphones would follow.

Instead, the opposite happened.

We've all been out and about and spotted the iconic "b" logo on headphones and earbuds, but we've also seen it on athletes, musicians and celebrities alike — and never more so than this summer. An unannounced pair of Beats over-ear headphones has quietly spent months appearing on some of the world's most photographed athletes, first on Lamine Yamal, then across the FIFA Club World Cup on Antonee Robinson, Lee Kang-in, Jamal Musiala, Ritsu Doan, Kobbie Mainoo, Antoine Semenyo, and Nico Paz, before surfacing at Wimbledon on Aryna Sabalenka and, most recently, on LeBron James.

By the time Sabalenka stepped onto the grounds at Wimbledon wearing a pair, an FCC filing had already confirmed the existence of a real product with a real model number. What it didn't confirm was anything else — no name, no price, no release date. Months of conversation, generated by a company that, as of this publishing, still hasn't announced the headphones at all.

So with Beats turning 20 and 12 years inside Apple, I spent two days inside the brand's Culver City campus — the first and only journalist granted access to the offices and the engineering labs — to understand how it keeps creating these moments.

I expected to see more of the surface of Beats: the campaigns, the partnerships, the customs. I found something considerably deeper. Beats has quietly become a brand that kept its cultural identity while evolving into one of Apple's most sophisticated hardware organizations.

Apple didn't replace Beats

The location tells part of the story. What began as Beats' independent headquarters is today part of Apple's Southern California campus, with the original building still home to much of the audio brand’s team. Just steps away are other Apple organizations, including the relatively new Apple Music building, creating a campus where music, design, engineering, and culture intersect. It's a fitting setting in the Hayden Tract, a neighborhood whose history spans Hollywood production, aerospace, and some of Southern California's most ambitious creative architecture.

And Beats clearly has a bench of in-house resources for making a product. Design, engineering, tuning, and quality all sit within a short distance of one another, across two buildings — the main offices and a separate engineering facility built specifically for the brand.

Past security, though, it feels like a modern office. A massive video wall cycles through Beats campaigns featuring athletes, musicians, and creators. Product photography fills the hallways. Open workspaces stretch across the building. It feels creative, colorful, and unmistakably Beats.

More striking than the office itself were the people inside it. Many of the employees I met had been with Beats long before Apple acquired the company, and more than a decade later they're still designing products, building custom headphones, and shaping the future of the brand. The teams are surprisingly small, and there's a passion for Beats that still feels closer to a startup than to one of the world's largest companies.

“Twenty years is a long time for any brand to stay relevant, but what makes Beats unique is that the culture never left it — it grew with it,” said Oliver Schusser, Apple VP of Beats, Music and Sports. “The people, the partnerships, the music, the sport — that's not a marketing strategy, that's who this brand has always been. Our job has been to make sure that never changes.”

That continuity is something Matthew Costello, VP of Hardware Engineering at Apple, has watched from the inside. "We were a young company when we got acquired," he said.

"We were very, very small back then." A lot of the core engineering and operations team who were in the building on August 1, 2014 — the day the deal formally closed — are still in it. "What we've managed to do is sort of combine the teams that existed from Beats and sprinkled in some Apple expertise as well on top of that."

My first stop wasn't engineering, though — it was the customs team.

Spread across the desks were Studio Pro and Solo headphones unlike anything consumers can buy. Some existed as a single pair, made specifically for an athlete, musician, or celebrity. Others were produced in runs of only a few hundred. One pair featured a rough, cement-like texture across the ear cups. Another experimented with entirely different materials for the iconic Beats "b." Every design felt like an opportunity to try something new.

It's a remarkably small team, made up of designers and craftspeople whose job is to experiment — people who hold the relationships with talent, work out what matters to them, and hand that to designers who can play with colors and finishes until there's something worth building.

Chris Thorne, Beats' CMO and head of product, says it runs in both directions. "Sometimes we'll surprise them and say, 'Hey, look what we made for you,' and hopefully blow their mind," he told me. "And sometimes they're in the process, and they come to us and say, 'Hey, I have this idea, this thing's really special to me, is there any way I can make a headphone for that?’"

Upstairs, in a lab of sorts, is a wall holding what I'd estimate is only 10 to 20% of every custom Beats has ever made. There was a pair for Lionel Messi with Inter Miami on one ear cup and Argentina on the other. Another celebrated LeBron James and his son. Others had been built for Kim Kardashian's holiday party.

For Schusser, the wall is proof of something deliberate. "Beats sits at the center of culture, sport, fashion and entertainment, but none of that exists without music as the foundation," he said. "That's the thread that runs through all of it."

Then I spotted something familiar: at a previous FIFA tournament, players wearing Beats had to tape over the logo, since FIFA counts another headphone brand among its partners. Rather than treat that as a problem, Beats leaned all the way into it — and there on the wall were customs with Xs printed over the Beats logo, the restriction turned into the artwork.

That's the pattern, and once you see it, you can't stop seeing it. Beats teased the Powerbeats Pro 2 by putting them on Shohei Ohtani. It's doing the same thing right now with the over-ears nobody can buy. Long before consumers ever see a new Beats product, the company has often been putting it into the hands of athletes, musicians and creators, creating conversation months before a launch event is ever scheduled.

It works because of what the brand has come to mean to those people. "Beats transformed headphones from a purely functional accessory into something much bigger," Schusser said. "They became a global status symbol and a cultural icon. You see them embraced by athletes, musicians, and celebrities, and they've become woven into the fabric of hip-hop, sports, and streetwear as an expression of style and identity."

But the customs room is doing something else, too, and it's the part that surprised me most. Many of the colors, finishes, and materials first explored here eventually find their way into products consumers can actually buy. Thorne describes the team as an incubator — an experimentation platform, in his words, that he thinks is genuinely differentiated in the category.

The one-offs are "amazing in process, experimental, with colors and materials, finishes, and all kinds of different ways of looking at a headphone," he said, "that, over time, lead to consumer products that we launch." A texture that starts as a one-off for a single athlete can end up as a retail colorway years later. The room isn't simply preserving Beats' history — it's a research lab, or an experimental playroom, for what the brand sells next.

Walking out of Customs, it would be easy to think of Beats as primarily a marketing operation, but next up I was treated to an inside look at what goes on under the hood.

The other half of the story

The engineering building is a separate space, and it's where Beats cements its status as a hardware company.

Schusser put it plainly. "When I talk to people about Beats, they're sometimes surprised to learn how much of what we do is fundamentally an engineering story," he said. "The investment we've made in the hardware — the testing, the tuning, the science behind the fit and the sound — that's not something you see from the outside. But it's the foundation everything else is built on."

There are labs here dedicated to the study of human ears — the same discipline Apple has talked about for AirPods — and the data feeds designs for in-ears like the Solo Buds and Powerbeats Pro 2 as well as over-ears. There's a quality lab lined with machines that test final units and, notably, customer returns. If something's going wrong out in the world, they want to find out why here with a slew of dedicated machines.

And then there are the anechoic chambers. Beats has five of them. Two are full-size, big enough to walk into. Once the door shuts and you're standing on the suspended floor, it's quiet enough that you can hear your own heartbeat. They're used for everything from audio quality and active noise cancellation to voice pickup, and one of them houses a mannequin rigged with components that headphones get placed on. There are smaller chambers too, better suited to testing a speaker like the Pill.

Down the hall is the listening room and the tuning studio, where every Beats product gets its final voicing.

Costello leads engineering and operations across every Beats product — the earbuds, the over-ears, the cables, the cases, and the Pill. He's been doing it long enough to have watched the brand go from an independent company to an Apple one, and when I asked what had changed and what hadn't, he started with the thing that hasn't.

"We've tried to stay true to the roots of the brand," he told me. "As we've evolved the portfolio, one of the things we really focused on was making the products something that both we as Beats and Apple would also be proud of."

The Beats sound, 20 years in

If you've ever dismissed Beats as bass-first, Costello won't entirely argue with you about the early years.

"In the beginning it was super boomy," he said, "and it's sort of evolved from there." The sound signature has moved steadily toward balance since then, though he's clear that it's a negotiation rather than a correction. "It's always balance," he said. "We hear from our customers what they appreciate."

What's changed most, he told me, is the speed of that loop. "That's actually one thing that's changed a lot over the last 15 years, which is the real-time responsiveness of customers and the feedback we've gotten. We're able to adapt quickly."

He described the development process as running in two directions at once. "We have both a forward-looking process, which is like tech forward from Apple, where we kind of know what technologies are coming," he said. "But then also we take the feedback from the customers. It's kind of a forward-looking, tech-forward process and also like a reverse-engineering process, to make sure we're improving things as well."

'Everyone said it won't work'

Ask Costello what he's proudest of, and he doesn't name a flagship, but rather says the wingtip on the Powerbeats Fit — the flexible tip that holds the earbud in place.

"When we started ideating that, everyone kind of said it won't work," he told me. The worry was that it sat awkwardly between an earbud and an ear hook: not stable enough, not flexible enough. He loves it anyway. "It's just super seamless and easy, and it's great for fitness, it's great for all-day wear."

To land on that final wingtip, the team worked through hundreds of variants — and that pattern came up more than once. Shrinking the Powerbeats case while keeping the buds securely retained inside it was, in his words, "a science project."

Then there's the Beats Studio Buds, which featured a custom chip — a first for the brand. The decision started with an idea that initially confused people internally when the team first pitched it.

"We took this bet that we would be sort of the dual ecosystem play," Costello said. "When we first started socializing that concept, people were like, 'Well, what does that mean?' And we said, 'Google and Apple together.'"

It worked, and it did something no custom colorway can. It "expanded our addressable market," as he put it — and it's the clearest answer I heard all week to why Apple keeps Beats around at all. Costello describes the whole portfolio as deliberately built to complement AirPods, a project dating back to 2016, and calls it one of the secrets of the last decade.

Beats sells to Android users. Beats sells at price points Apple doesn't. Beats makes sporty, wing-tipped, brightly colored products. Apple's own brand can't do any of that without becoming something else.

The Studio Buds line produced one more surprise, and it came out of the workshop rather than the roadmap. I spoke with Costello and Thorne together to ask how it happened.

"It actually kind of happened by accident," Costello said. As part of developing any product from the ground up, the team builds a transparent version so they can see what's going on inside. "Both at Apple and Beats, we take both the external form as well as the internals very seriously. So we do a transparent, and we showed it to this guy here, and he had some thoughts about it."

The guy in question was Thorne, standing next to him.

"We kind of take it upon ourselves to ask for the impossible of these guys, and they figure it out," Thorne said. The transparent Studio Buds + he'd been shown "was never made for production or anything," but marketing wanted it immediately and asked whether they could have it as a real product. "It was a very last-minute, crazy ask, but somehow you guys figured it out."

"We had to dial it in," Costello said. "We had to make sure everything was in the right place, and everything looked like it was supposed to look, to make it production, customer-ready. But we turned that in a very, very short period of time. It was really fun."

It shipped and was well received, but more interestingly, it changed what came after it.

"Consumers loved it so much because it was really special and unique," Thorne said. "We had great other colors, but they really loved the transparent for Studio Buds +. When we set out to build Solo Buds, we started from a place of knowing we wanted that."

The earbuds with a case that does nothing

And that brings us to Solo Buds, priced at $79.99 / £79.99 / AU$129.95, and arguably the best example of how the Beats team thinks. The carrying case has no battery, no charging electronics, and no pairing button — which certainly raised eyebrows, both internally and externally. Solo Buds are ultimately the smallest case that Beats has ever shipped, and that Apple has ever made.

"Everyone was like, 'Why would you do that?'" Costello said. "And it worked. The product is great, and the bud life is really all you need for all-day wear."

What I find genuinely clever is that the decision forces every decision after it.

If the case can't recharge the buds, the buds have to last a full day alone — hence a custom cell rated at 18 hours, better single-charge life than most flagship earbuds. And if the case has no electronics, it can't tell the buds anything, including that it's been opened.

So the solution is a physical switch hidden inside the case, which signals the earbuds to wake, pair, and run their checks the moment you lift the lid. Everything that does the actual work lives on the left and right buds themselves.

What you experience is completely ordinary: open the case near your phone, iPhone or Android, and the pairing card appears. It's also extraordinary because it all happens without any electronics in the case.

What Apple actually gave them

Costello is direct about what the acquisition traded.

Beats kept its identity "from a form factor perspective," he said, while gaining Apple's infrastructure underneath it. Reliability, quality, environmental and wireless performance are now tested exactly as Apple's own products are. "I'm amazed at how far you can walk across a room and still get good, solid Bluetooth performance with our latest today," he told me.

"We've learned so much from the teams up in Cupertino, and leveraged the core technologies, the processes, the discipline," he said.

"We've been able to keep our identity and do things unique for Beats, but at the same time leverage the incredible capabilities of the Apple system," he said. "That's been the unlock over the last — now it's almost 12 years."

It didn't happen immediately. "It took some time to sort of find our rhythm," Costello admitted, before adding that the last several years have been the fun ones.

He's also clear about what keeps the team there. "The beauty of being inside of Apple is that it’s a technology marvel," he said. "All the time we are finding new things that we're either exploring and prototyping, or we're able to productize and bring into products."

And what keeps the engineers interested is being handed genuinely hard problems. "Engineers like to solve tough problems," Costello said. "They don't want to do the same thing day after year after year. So we try to find those things that are really landmarks or milestones from an achievement perspective, and then we work backwards from that."

‘Widening the aperture’

The part that seems to energize him most is how far the brand's remit has stretched.

"The advantage we have at Beats is that we can go really wide with different types of explorations," he said. "It makes it a lot of fun to think through different new product categories, new types of products, new products within the category itself. We've got all kinds of crazy ideas."

He put it more simply a moment later: "We've kind of widened the aperture of where the brand can go."

Thorne is more blunt about the appeal of it. "I love to be unexpected, to give something to people, to consumers, that they didn't see coming," he said, pointing to the move into iPhone cases — "I don't think anybody saw that coming, and I love that."

The logic, he said, starts with what people tell them. "Whenever we can make a great product that we think is differentiated from something that's in the market, we talk to consumers about it, we look at insights and data, we hear from them in social — what products are they interested in, what do they feel is missing out there. And when we see that opportunity, we like to experiment there."

He's also clear that none of it has to be audio at all. The brand can move into other areas, he told me, as long as it goes "always through the lens of Beats style, design, and color.”

Beats’ USB-C and Lightning cables trickle down the durability and speed of Apple's own, in fun colors and more sizes. Maybe most importantly, they brought down the price. These are fairly premium cables, with strong woven outers and rigorous testing against snapping, at reasonable money.

What comes next

Now, as this feature publishes, Beats has not said a single word formally about the forthcoming over-ear headphones that have been spotted on athletes and celebrities. When I pressed, Schusser coyly said, "I can't say too much, but what I will say is — we have the ability to introduce our products in ways that are creative and unexpected, and we're very excited about what's coming."

That's not giving much away, but I have my own thoughts on these very customizable-looking premium cans. Given that the Studio Pro is already on the market, Beats is likely setting its sights on Apple's own AirPods Max, Bose's QuietComfort line, and Sony's WH-1000XM6, among several others. It's a crowded market, but judging by the many styles we've seen — and fingers crossed that a bit of the customs team's work is trickling down to consumers — Beats might be poised to deliver its signature sound in an athlete-approved, hopefully more durable over-ear that can be mixed and matched.

I'd also hope these push Beats' audio quality further, doubling down on active noise cancellation and transparency, and potentially taking a page from competitors by powering them with dual chips inside. Time will tell, but considering the teases have already started, I'd suspect we see them before the end of 2026.

And you can bet they'll support both iPhone and Android. Even though Apple owns and operates Beats, it's clear the company wants the brand to continue growing — whether that means catering to its own users who want fun colors, bold sound and unique looks, or reaching people who want something platform-agnostic.

So now, 20 years on since inception and over a decade within Apple, I think it's clear the Cupertino-based tech giant was right about the acquisition. Apple is letting Beats be a cultural brand as much as an audio company, one that still inspires copycats, but that also knows that while it could rest on its laurels, it's being pushed to go further — whether that's entirely new categories like cases and cables, bringing down the price of its signature sound, re-entering spaces it once exited, or starting something fresh.

Time will tell, but I think Beats will let the beat go on, and on.

• Beyerdynamic announces new DT 275 Pro wired headphones designed for use in "challenging" and noisy environments thanks to passive noise reduction
• The have a frequency range from 5Hz to 24kHz, and weigh under 200g, so they're nice and portable — and their 45-ohm impedance means they're easy for devices to drive
• They launch on July 28th 2026, and are priced at £99 (about $131 / AU$188) — as a user of Beyedynamic's more expensive headphones, I'm intrigued

Beyerdynamic has launched a new pair of on-ear headphones designed for audio and video professionals in "challenging" and noisy environments, such as live music venues, location recording and mobile production. The DT 275 Pro promise to deliver professional audio and noise isolation without a premium price tag: they're just £99 (about $131 / AU$188).

I'm a big fan of Beyerdynamics' studio headphones, so much so that they're my go-to for recording, mixing and mastering music (TechRadar's Audio Editor Becky Scarrott loved the Beyerdynamic DT 72 IE earbuds), but I don't have to do any of my music-making things on location or in noisy environments, and these new closed-back headphones have been designed for exactly that.

Beyerdynamic DT 275 Pro: key features and specs

The Beyerdynamic DT 275 Pro have an impedance of 45 ohms, making them easy to drive, and they have a quoted frequency range of 5Hz to 24kHz.

Maximum sound pressure is 125dB SPL, and they reduce ambient noise by a claimed 22dBA thanks to their closed-back, on-ear design.

Despite the slightly chunky appearance, these headphones come in just under 200g, so they should be comfortable for long shifts, and the supplied cable can be attached to the left or right ear cup and locked into place. The cable is 1.5m (4.9 feet).

The rotatable ear cups are made from sweat-resistant leatherette, which makes sense for mobile working — the velvety material used in many of the firm's studio headphone earcups isn't something you'd want to have on your head in the heat of a venue or club.

And key components such as the cup cushions are replaceable so the headphones should remain hygienic and last for a long time.

These are very much a niche product, so if you don't need the isolation and toughness I'd recommend one of the more indoor DT Pro pairs.

But if you need accurate audio when you're out and about, in a venue or on location these look like they'll be just the job — and for far less than you'd expect to pay for pro headphones that I use.

The Beyerdynamic DT 275 Pro will be available from 28 July 2026 with a list price of £99.99 / €119.00 (about $131 / AU$188).

Nothing Ear (3a): Two-minute review

Sometimes, reviews are written with a heavy heart, and this is exactly that. I've championed Nothing's affordable "(a)" earbuds for well over two years — with the updated pink set for 2026 appearing to be right up my strasse. But all is not as it first appears.

The issues don't concern their cost. Like before, they come in at just under $100 and are therefore a candidate for our best budget earbuds guide.

Bizarrely, for the review star rating, I also have very few bones to pick with audio quality, which is still best pals with LDAC and now with Bluetooth 6.0 for a stronger connection. I recommend you tweak the sound profile from the box, mind — it's overly bassy by default — but that's hardly unheard of for earbuds at this level, and it can be rectified with a little effort.

It would have been lovely if Nothing had allowed its special sonic tests (for personalised EQ profile curation done by Nothing's software, rather than you tweaking sliders or blobs yourself) to be made available here, but the company has clearly decided that its three-minute hearing test is flagship only — although there is a new "Advanced" 8-band EQ tab with "Q factor" (more on this later).

What of the comfort levels and overall build quality? Here you get everything you'd expect of Nothing: rock-solid, colorful, and with just a couple of new flourishes to enjoy. Battery life has taken a knock, but that might possibly be down to having to work a bigger driver.

So what's the main problem? Actually there are two: Call Recording and Audio Snapshot (sometimes referred to as Audio Capture in Nothing's extensive marketing). Nobody asked for these features and, honestly, they're not the USP I wanted — even as a journalist who interviews people regularly.

None of the best noise-cancelling earbuds we recommend come with these features, but that's hardly a problem in itself. Such tech exists in the world, obviously; I point you to the Viaim RecDot, for example. But the Viaim's buds publicise their raison d'etre; there's a visible "record" button on the case, a light for in-person meetings, and a business-class $249.99 / £185 price tag. That's not the case with Nothing's version, where a surreptitious squeeze of the stem kicks off audio capture of your current call (or whatsapp voice note) in a set of buds that otherwise seem to scream "I'm a bit of fun!"

As with the RecDot, Nothing offers tech to transcribe your recordings (and not just on its own phones, either) — to a point. You get three months of its Pro Transcription service for free, with 120 minutes to use each month. And after the trial? Nothing tells me official pricing hasn't yet been finalised, but will be decided in August. If it was hard to recommend such a package before, it's even harder now when one doesn't know how much it will cost.

I can't help but feel that Nothing has taken a wrong turn here. I'd much rather have seen fan-favorite features such as personalised sound profiles and/or wireless charging rather than in-call recording. Some TechRadar team members have suggested I make like Elsa and just Let It Go, but in a year when consumer tech already feels uncomfortably intrusive (Meta, I'm looking at you with those smart glasses), adding call and voice note recording feels like a step too far. It's important to question where these features are taking us.

At $99 / £99, the price is definitely right. I'm just not sure the feature set is…

Nothing Ear (3a) review: Price & release date

• Released on July 7, 2026
• Priced $99 / £99 / around AU$192, same as the 2024 Ear (a)

The Nothing Ear (3a) cost the same as their predecessor, priced at $99 / £99.

Although the name might suggest otherwise, these are the direct successors to the excellent, five-star Nothing Ear (a) from 2024 – there was never a Nothing Ear (1a) or Nothing Ear (2a). They also slot nicely alongside the still-current but more expensive Nothing Ear (3), with the shared 3 denoting that they're part of the same generation.

The Ear (a) are some of the best budget earbuds I've ever had the pleasure of testing, and I'd looked forward to their update ever since word was out that it was coming.

Key rivals to the Nothing Ear (3a) include the Apple AirPods 4, which offer gesture control alongside a few other iPhone-exclusive features, or, for a little less, the five-star Cambridge Audio Melomania A100. If you're tempted by open earbuds instead, the Huawei FreeArc or even clip-style SoundPEATS Clip1 can both be picked up for less than the Nothing Ear (3a) right now, making them excellent-value alternatives.

Nothing Ear (3a) review: Specs

Nothing Ear (3a) review: Features

• Bluetooth 6.0 (15m range) with LDAC support
• Improved ANC (cancellation up to 45 dB, effective to 5 kHz)
• Pinch stems for Call Recording/Audio Snapshot, no Nothing phone required

It would be easy to say, "Look, you don't like the cutesy branding of Nothing's new 'Audio Snapshot' offering? Don't use it — there's still plenty to like for $99!" but let's dig in to see why the take is not so simple.

Firstly, we should get granular on what Audio Snapshot and Call Recording do, and what they cannot do. I mentioned above that as a journalist, I regularly record interviews, often over Zoom, Google Meet or even Microsoft Teams. When set up as an interview, my subjects usually take it as a given that I will be recording — and where I reside in the UK, it is legal to record calls, even without consent from the other party. I still always ask.

In the US, however, the laws on recording phone calls are different, varying from state to state. For calls crossing state lines, the stricter 'two party consent' law (as per the Federal Wiretap Act) applies, where both parties on a call must consent to a recording.

So what is Nothing doing about it? In its reviewers' guide, the company says it "aligns with internationally recognised privacy standards ISO 27001, ISO 27701 and EN 18031". To this end, during setup, the Nothing X app also displays a short tutorial reminding users to obtain permission before recording calls — as shown below.

Interestingly, on a traditional phone call made in the UK, the "prompt" Nothing promises will be played to everyone on the call is a simple beep. On Google Meet, a female voice announces "This call will be recorded in 3, 2, 1", presumably so anyone not OK with that can scream "Oh no you don't!". From smartphone to smartphone, there's no vocal.

Thanks to the Nothing Ear (3a)'s 32MB of onboard storage, you can start recording with just a pinch of the stems, storing up to two hours of audio on the earbuds themselves. You can also record and transcribe voice notes from apps such as Instagram or WhatsApp — and from August, Nothing says it will add summaries of call recordings, speaker identification and the ability to create calendar reminders based on what was discussed.

What these earbuds can't do is record conversations that take place around you, or indeed your own voice. So, thankfully, there's no scope for eavesdropping around the water cooler.

However, my thoughts on this are clear— I'm not wholly OK with it. It puts the onus on buyers to adhere to laws, and opens the door for flouting rules of consent. I tried muting my mics to see whether the beep could be silenced, but it still plays for the person on the other end of the call to signal that recording has begun. Nevertheless, I think I've made my concerns around this feature clear.

Elsewhere, you get Bluetooth v6.0 and LDAC support for hi-res audio (the Sony-developed codec that lets you stream high-resolution audio up to 32-bit/96kHz over Bluetooth at up to 990kbps, if your device supports it and the file is up to scratch). While the predecessor did also include the latter, it remains a valuable inclusion here.

There's also onboard spatial audio, albeit of the "static" variety rather than head-tracked spatial audio that keeps the sound anchored to your source device as you move your head. It adds a little extra depth and height to the presentation, but for me, the effect is decidedly light-touch compared to what you get from pricier earbuds.

Note that you don't get the Ear (3)'s splendid personalized hearing tests, or the useful "walkie-talkie" Super Mic. That said, there's in-ear detection (to pause music when you remove the buds and resume it when they're in), a low-lag toggle for gaming, seamless pairing, multipoint to two devices, an ear-tip fit test and a Find My Earbuds feature, which emits a rattlesnake-style sound from whichever bud you're trying to locate, to help you find it.

Nothing's Transparency mode is decent. It's a little warm, but it still delivers a more three-dimensional presentation than many buds at this level. I could hear the placement of the TV, voices in my home and a dog outside, rather than all of these sounds appearing tinny, omnipresent and seemingly on top of one another.

When deploying ANC (rather than "Transparency" or "Off"), you can once again select from High, Mid, Low, and Adaptive noise-nixing profiles. High is decent: Nothing tells me performance is up to 45dB (effective to 5 kHz), which equates to a 17.1% improvement compared to the Ear (a), thanks to a software upgrade and improved architecture regarding where the mic sits.

The issue in 2026 is the existence of the AirPods Pro 3 and Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (Gen 2). Although it would be unfair to compare like for like, owing to the chasm in pricing, you can get better if you're willing to pay for it. That said, the ANC here is no slouch, giving a fairly clean, largely uninterrupted and issue-free neutral background for my music.

If you have a Nothing Phone, the Nothing X app and the ChatGPT app, then you can once again you can also access ChatGPT access via the Ear (3a)'s stem; simply squeeze and talk.

The new EQ tab is now an eight-band offering (up from three in the older buds), as well as the more basic audio splodge Nothing made its own — and which I rather like since it reminds me of Nura True Pro's visual depictions, rather than a mixing desk. You also get five presets in the Advanced tab, and four in the Simple tab — but you can create your custom EQ using whichever system you prefer.

And I think you'll need to get familiar with these, as I'm about to explain…

• Features score: 4 / 5

Nothing Ear (3a) review: Sound quality

• LDAC support represents value
• Fun, V-shaped sound — if a little quiet
• A little bass-heavy from the box, but you can fix it

As was the case with their siblings, it would be wrong of me to knock Nothing Ear (3a) in the sonic department for this money. The sound quality is easily worthy of the outlay.

That said, there are a few points to bring to your attention.

Those with a Sony or Samsung smartphone (I used a Sony Xperia) will find much to celebrate in LDAC music streaming. In My Chemical Romance's The Ghost of You, guitars snake from my left to right ear in a cohesive mix — with Gerard Way's vocal central, petulant and every bit as emotive as I remember it in the mid-noughties.

Even when I stream Apple Music songs from my iPhone, the Nothing Ear (3a) offer ample width as my playlist continues to Thank You For the Venom and the intro guitars find a spacious home in my left ear. There's room around every stem in the mix to shine, but they're all held properly in check, even in this fast-paced and challenging song.

It's a little bass-heavy at times, though. Fleetwood Mac's The Chain is a good test of a regimented low-end, and alongside the kick-drums, I did lose just a little of Stevie Nicks, Christine McVie, and Lindsey Buckingham in that glorious upper harmony through the chorus. It seems to be Nothing's modus operandi to offer a bassy listen generally, and while I did find that the new Advanced EQ tab helped, I think the enhanced low-end went a little far here.

Nothing offers a "Q Factor" in addition to what you've just tweaked in the 8-band tab, to control the width or sharpness of your adjustment. So, imagine it as a "quality factor" (because that is what it stands for), where the number you select between 0.1 and 10 determines how wide or narrow of a frequency range is boosted or cut — all of this specific to your chosen frequency. Selecting a low Q Factor will generate a wider, more gentle curve to your adjustment, where a high Q Factor will make the change narrower, steeper and more effective around that specific frequency augmentation (or reduction).

I eased off the bass and selected a Q Factor of 3.2, but you must of course play with these things yourself — and sadly, Nothing hasn't included its hearing tests here, to check how perceptive your ears are within this particular tuning.

For dynamics and nuance, the Nothing Ear (3a) are perhaps a shade less engaging and arresting than I'm used to, owing to their volume. Once criticism often levelled at Nothing's budget earbuds is they don't go especially loud, and I frequently found myself listening above 50% volume. Also, since battery life is measured at that volume, it did mean the quoted "4.5-hour battery life with ANC deployed" claims although bang on, were still disappointing.

• Sound quality score: 4 / 5

Nothing Ear (3a) review: Design

• Curvier case
• That 1mm bigger driver is sucks up power
• And the battery life isn't great

Hold the Nothing Ear (3a) earpieces and case next to their older Nothing Ear (a) and you'll certainly struggle in a game of spot the difference. There's the color, obviously — also available in black, white and a slightly different yellow to the hue I love in this older set — and the 50% curvier case. There's also a trio of LEDs on the case that deliver a total of six status indications for battery status, pairing status, charging levels and so on.

For further tweaks, we have to look deeper.

The driver is now 12mm rather than 11mm and features an "aerospace-grade diaphragm". You also get an extra set of ear-tips in the box, four in total, and although the XS will appeal to owners of small ears, the actual earpieces here aren't tiny, despite being lighter in weight than Ear (a), at 4.53g versus 4.8g. The actual design of the tips has been finessed, too: they're a little thicker and more flared across the outer wall. I found the buds very secure, if a little big to accommodate comfortably over my small-ish ears over the course of long listening sessions.

I've said it before now and I'll say it again: I think we've reached a point of diminishing — perhaps even negative — returns when it comes to ever-larger earbud drivers. Every new release seems to tout a bigger driver without adding weight, as if bigger automatically means better. But where does it end? 13mm drivers? 15mm drivers? To my ears, the Ear (3a)'s 1mm larger driver hasn't negatively impacted the sound, but I don wonder if it's contributed to sthe shorter battery life. In my briefing, I was told the buds themselves would last 10 hours — but that turned out not to be the case.

While the battery in each earpiece — along with the larger driver and onboard 16MB flash drive — works hard to power the buds, it's only good for up to 6 hours without ANC, or 4.5 hours with ANC turned on. And remember, I had to pump the volume up higher than 50%, which the level at which those measurements are typically taken. With the case, you'll get up to 25 hours with ANC off, or up to 18 hours with it on.

None of these stats is much to write home about. Take Nothing's own Ear (a), which offered up to 9.5 hours of playback on a single charge with ANC off, and about 5.5 hours with ANC on. Now, consider the very inexpensive Cambridge Melomania A100, which offer 11 hours per charge or up to 39 hours with the case, along with aptX Lossless. I know which I'd rather take on long road-trips…

Again, Nothing's pinch-to-control stems return here, and while volume controls aren't enabled by default, you can assign them in the Nothing X app — provided you're happy to sacrifice another shortcut in the process.

While I'm here, a quick note on call-handling. It's absolutely clear and clean as a whistle, thanks to the 3 MEMS mics per bud.

• Design score: 4 / 5

Nothing Ear (3a) review: Value

• Still very good-looking earbuds
• Decent ANC; not so great for stamina
• LDAC adds value, but call-recording (for me, at least) is a no

Before now, I've always championed Nothing's "(a)" buds — and while the basics in the (3a) are fine, there are a few issues that are hard to ignore.

The Call Recording feature is top of the list here. More than any technical limitation, it's the privacy implications that concern me. Much as seeing someone wearing smart glasses now makes me wonder whether I'm being recorded, these earbuds leave me asking why someone might want to capture our conversations. I appreciate that some readers may see this as an overreaction, but it's a genuine concern for me, informed by my own experiences as a woman and former dancer who had to deal with overly familiar fans.

I think the audio quality here is perfectly acceptable for $99 / £99, but the stamina and feature set can be bettered. Even in the open earbuds market, I'd happily direct you to the cheaper Huawei FreeArc or SoundPEATS Clip1 over these earbuds.

• Value score: 4 / 5

Should I buy the Nothing Ear (3a)?

Nothing Ear (3a) scores

Solid generally, but with battery concerns and a potentially problematic call recording 'feature'

Features

4

Sound Quality

4

Design

4

Battery Life

2.5

Noise Cancellation

4.5

Value

4

Overall

4

012345

Group 1 Data

Product	Features ()	Sound Quality ()	Design ()	Battery Life ()	Noise Cancellation ()	Value ()	Overall ()
Nothing Ear (3a)	4	4	4	2.5	4.5	4	4

Buy them if...

Don't buy them if...

Nothing Ear (3a) review: Also consider

How I tested the Nothing Ear (3a)

• Tested for two weeks, listened against the Ear (a), Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (Gen 2), Technics EAH-AZ100 and AirPods 4
• Listened in the office, walking along a beach, on a train into London, into Central London and at home
• Listened to Tidal Masters, Apple Music Lossless tracks and Spotify on an iPhone 15 Pro, MacBook Pro and Sony Xperia smartphone

The Nothing Ear (3a) became my primary musical companions for well over two weeks — after a 48-hour run-in period.

They accompanied me to work (walking brusquely to our Paddington office and on the London Underground to various press events) and even walking on a beach at sunset.

To assess comfort levels, ANC and battery life claims, I followed TechRadar's meticulous methodology testing and found much of note — including slightly disappointing stamina.

To check the audio quality across the frequencies, I listened for several hours to my own reference playlists on Apple Music and Tidal, alongside TechRadar's reference tracks, plus podcasts and movies. Additionally, I wore them to watch YouTube tutorials from my MacBook Pro.

I’ve been testing audio products for well over seven years, full-time. As a dancer, aerialist and musical theater performer in another life, sound quality, fit, and user experience have always been a priority for me, but having heard how wonderful ANC can be when done well, I know what I'm listening to here, too.

Read more about how we test earbuds at TechRadar

• First reviewed: July 2026

Shokz OpenDots Air: Two-minute review

I've long pointed to the flagship Shokz OpenDots One as the best open earbuds in the clip-style category, so I'll admit that I watched the release of the brand's budget-grade option with trepidation.

All too often, a brand's wallet-friendly earbuds tend to fit poorly, cut too many features, completely miss the mark sonically, or launch at a price point that doesn't make sense. But I'm happy to report that the Shokz OpenDots Air side-step those issues.

In fact, for most buyers, this pair just makes so much more sense than its sibling, the Shokz OpenDots 2. That's despite the set you're here to read about being an inferior model, on paper.

Like the numbered OpenDots, the Air uses dual 11.8mm drivers; you're only going to be able to hear a difference in sound quality if you really need Dolby Atmos or some of the unique Shokz features (which, I'm guessing, most people don't).

The OpenDots Air take a largely similar design too, which means they're just as reliable in your ear on long runs or gym sessions. Now and then, I did find them to pinch a little, which I take to be the fault of a few design tweaks, but it was nothing that stopped me using them.

There's more: the battery life is great, the carry case is nice and small and the connection was reliable. But some carry-overs are a little less desirable: like other OpenDots, the touch controls are finicky to use. And while Shokz offered some of the best-sounding open earbuds last year, the Air (and 2) launch to a much more competitive market.

What sets the OpenDots Air apart from the 2-suffixed set, making them a better buy, is the price; you can get them for roughly 25% less. For most buyers, I'd say that you should save your money and buy the Air... unless any of the other fantastic cuff-style buds (which typically do undercut any of Shokz' options) pique your interest.

After all, the Shokz premium is still in play, even with its more affordable buds.

Shokz OpenDots Air review: Price and release date

• Launched on June 4, 2026
• Sells for $129.95 / £129.99 / AU$219
• Cheaper alternative to OpenDots 2

The Shokz OpenDots Air were released on June 4, 2026, alongside the OpenDots 2. That was about 10 months after the original OpenDots One became available.

You can buy the earbuds for $129.95 / £129.99 / AU$219, so they're markedly cheaper than the $199.95 / £179.99 / AU$339 OpenDots 2. The original OpenDots One also went for that price, though a year on they're easy to find at around $150 / £150 / AU$239 (and even less during sales).

Note also the flagship Shokz OpenFit Pro, (more 'traditional' shell-like open earbuds) which include noise reduction and launched in January 2026, at the significant cost of $249.95 / £219 / AU$399.

I'll continue to refer to the OpenDots Air as affordable cuff-style buds, but that's only in comparison to the OpenDots 2 and the other Shokz options listed above. Remember, Shokz is a class-leader in this category, and you pay for that. You can easily find great alternatives for even cheaper (we've even listed a few at the bottom of this review).

Shokz OpenDots Air review: Specs

Shokz OpenDots Air review: Features

• You'll get 9 hours of listening; 36 with case
• EQ has four presets, 5-band custom mode
• App is pretty light on features

You're getting 9 hours of battery life with the Shokz OpenDots Air; at least, that's the cited listening time, and from my testing, I have no cause to doubt it. That's a hair below the OpenDots One / 2's 10 hours, but the difference is negligible, and it's still a solid battery life.

The case rounds that figure up to 36 hours of listening, including recharges. That's more in line with industry standards.

As with most open earbuds, there's no noise cancellation here. It's a shame, because Shokz is one of the few companies to offer ANC-adjacent tech in open-ears (the OpenFit Pro have 'noise reduction', but we tested it and it's the same thing), and I find it's even more useful in earbuds of the like.

While the OpenDots Air aren't as featured-packed as many other earbuds, downloading the Shokz app lets you play around with what there is.

Possibly the best reason to download the app is the equalizer; there are four presets (standard, vocal enhancement, bass enhancement and an audio leakage reduction mode), as well as a simplistic five-band custom EQ which lets you create your own mix.

The app also lets you turn on Multipoint Pairing, change what the touch controls do, turn on (or off) microphone noise cancellation in calls, and turn on (or off) wear detection.

Admittedly, the list is a little svelte. Beyond review purposes, I only opened the app a single time, and that was to double-check I hadn't accidentally turned gesture controls off (I hadn't, more on that later).

• Features score: 3.5/5

Shokz OpenDots Air review: Design

• Svelte carry case
• Attractive blue marbled design
• Not designed to stick in the ear

They ain’t called clip-on buds for nothing – the OpenDots Air are clip-shaped earbuds with a C-shaped band joining a rounded earbud with an ovoid counterweight. The 'dot' goes in your ear-well, the 'egg' sits just behind it, looping around the lower part of the helix.

The earbuds weigh 6.3g each, with silicone and plastic making up the casework of the earpiece. I tested them at the gym, on cycles and on runs (and in other, less-intensive settings) and never had a fit issue; that’s a benefit of this form factor, and I’ve never had a wobbly clipper.

However I did find that the Air could pinch a little during longer wear sessions, and I was surprised by the relief I felt at removing them after an hour-plus run. On the topic of criticisms, the buds technically have touch controls, but I could barely get them to pick up my touch. You have to be incredibly precise to find the right spot, and I quickly gave up on using them. At this level, it's not a deal-breaker in this type of design (at least not yet), but it's my job to notice.

You can buy the earbuds in black or purple, a choice which carries over to the charging case. They’re IP55 protected, which means they’re safe from dust and jets of water, but you shouldn’t take them swimming.

The charging case is lighter than most I’ve seen, tipping the scales to the tune of 37.3g — that’s without the buds, and you’re looking at a total package that’s under 50g. It’s nice and small too, and I really appreciate case like this that’s lightweight and portable like this: it disappeared in my pockets with no problem.

The simplicity extends to the ports and buttons; you’re getting a USB-C port but no wireless charging, unlike the OpenDots 2, and intriguingly no Bluetooth pairing override. I don’t recall the last time I saw an earbud case without this ‘hope-you-don’t-need-it’ feature, but Shokz apparently thinks you don’t need it at all.

• Design score: 4.5/5

Shokz OpenDots Air: Sound quality

• Dual 11.8mm drivers
• Well-defined treble and bass
• Some premium features missing

Shokz has found an audio set-up it likes and has stuck with it. As with the OpenDots One and OpenDots 2, the OpenDots Air have two custom 11.8mm drivers providing the music. The company is coy on what each of these drivers are actually handling, but I’m guessing at least one is tuned towards low-end, given how much "Bassphere" is mentioned in marketing.

(What’s Bassphere? Um, a marketing word, by the sounds of it, and Shokz is quite light on specifics. I've done my due journalistic diligence in trying to dig through the fluff to get granular on Bassphere, but have been unsuccessful. It seems to be what the company refers to as its two-driver system.)

The OpenDots Air do miss some features of their pricier stablemates. There’s no Dolby Atmos tuning, for one, and it lacks a few other Shokz-designed features, including MirrorPitch (which aims the sound into your ear) and Bassphere 2.0 (like 1.0, but designed to reduce distortion which could arise from the two-driver system).

Okay, I’ve been dancing around the topic; how do the Shokz OpenDots Air actually sound? They’re rather good, for open-ears — they’re not quite on par with the higher-end OpenDots, or some varied rivals, but I enjoyed listening to music with them.

It’s clear to my ear that one of the drivers is dialled into the low end, giving bass a clear scooping distinction that’s often missing in open-ears. Songs like Brian Kelley’s Beach Cowboy or Kasabian’s Superpowers offer clean low-end that sit comfortably below higher-frequency sounds, without blowing it out.

The lack of support for better-than-vanilla codecs such as LDAC, or seemingly any higher-quality streaming, means audiophiles might not find these an enjoyable listen. I can’t pretend they’re on par with ‘standard’ in-ear earbuds costing this much, including ones which are geared towards sports users. But for fitness-first listeners who need their ear canals free to hear traffic, they’re all you need.

Naturally, when you’re out and about, the bass will struggle a little bit — it has a harder time cutting through surrounding noise than treble does. That’s par for the course for this kind of earbud, but it bears repeating for those not familiar with the form factor.

• Sound quality: 4/5

Shokz OpenDots Air review: Value

• Great value for money compared to Shokz roster
• Other cufflinks undercut these

If you’re comparing the OpenDots Air solely to the OpenDots 2, they're great value: you’re basically getting the same earbuds for a sizeable discount. I see the Air being the better buy for most people, out of the two.

But when you look at the wider earbuds market, my recommendation gets a bit more muted. I’ve tested plenty of pairs of clip-style earbuds that hover at, or below, the £/$100 mark, which perform basically the same as the OpenDots Air do. If you’re not married to buying Shokz buds, then you’ll find a few different money-saving alternatives below.

• Value: 4/5

Should I buy the Shokz OpenDots Air?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

Shokz OpenDots Air review: Also consider

The open earbuds market is incredibly competitive. Here are some others that I've tested and would recommend.

How I tested the Shokz OpenDots Air

• Tested for one month
• Paired with Android phone for Spotify, streaming and games
• Used during multiple kinds of activities

I used the Shokz OpenDots Air for roughly a month to write this review. This ensured they underwent some extensive testing.

This testing included countless runs, several cycles, many gym sessions, loads of walks around my neighborhood, plays on various kinds of public transport, a house move, and a trip to a surf town during a holiday.

During this time, the buds were paired to my Android smartphone. They got most of their use through Spotify, but I also used them for calls, watching some YouTube videos and playing games.

I've tested gadgets for TechRadar since early 2019. Since that time I've reviewed countless earbuds, including loads of open-style ones and the Shokz OpenDots One.

• First reviewed in July 2026

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

• Someone used an AirPod to record flying disc throw statistics
• Tested with throws of up to 45mph and no damage
• Strava-friendly export for dedicated disc throwers

One of Apple's most famous adverts opened with "Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently." The text didn't explicitly say "here's to the ones sticking AirPods on frisbees", but I think Steve Jobs would have approved of the Redditor who's done exactly that.

Paul Tracer, aka Disastrous-Body-297, has invented a use for AirPods that I'm pretty sure nobody at Apple ever considered. He used them to upgrade a standard frisbee and to stream real-time data. It can even export sessions to the Strava app.

Airpods can track frisbee throws from r/airpods

Why upgrading a frisbee with AirPods isn't completely crazy

As the intrepid inventor explains: "The AirPod streams motion data to the phone and detects/analyses throws in real time. With optional voice feedback into the second AirPod. It measures speed, revolutions, airborne time, throw count. It also measures heartrate (either with latest AirPods or external HR)."

You can try it for yourself: the app is the sports metrics app Kinapod, which the creator says is currently going through Apple's approval process. The AirPod is literally just put through a hole created in the dead center of the disc. Tracer says "Just punch a hole in the center of the disc and that’s it! You’ll be surprised how reliable it is. The AirPod stem is not entirely cylindrical, it doesn’t slide out."

The result is a lot of data: average speed, maximum spin, total airborne time, and more.

There's a market for that kind of information: as one Redditor, lenfantsuave, joke posts, "Tech disc: I will never financially recover from this." Tech Disc is a company that makes a range of launch monitors for disc golf priced at $299.99, which track multiple metrics and flight paths in order to help players improve their game, and someone from the firm joined in the online conversation to praise Tracer's ingenuity.

Tracer's tracker is very much a "fun thing" rather than a serious setup, not least because expensive earbuds aren't the most cost-effective gyro sensors to attach to a frisbee; the risk of damage or destruction is clearly pretty high, although the AirPods have survived so far according to Tracer.

Tracer is currently chatting with Redditors on forums such as r/discgolf about alternative and more affordable ways of collating data. And in the meantime, the AirPod/Frisbee combination made me and other Redditors happy: "This is very rad," says claybythebay9, while GrandMasterFlex reckons, and I'm including to agree, that "this is sick as hell".

As Apple's ad put it, "while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius." Or as SilverMelodyPrincess says in the Reddit thread: "Apple accidentally made the most over-engineered frisbee stat tracker and I'm here for it."

HEDD HEDDphone D1: Two-minute review

The HEDDphone D1 are a quite frankly astonishing pair of over-ear headphones, trucking in a new line of innovative thought from the Berlin brand that also brought AMT technology to the wearable market. They’re open-back and passive, with eyes locked both on the world of pro audio and at-home audiophile listening.

While most brands struggle to occupy both spaces in any meaningful way, it’s my view that the HEDDphone D1 are a rare and commendable success. They are full in heart and full in throat, with an expansive frequency range and a hugely expressive soundstage. Their Thin-Ply Carbon Diaphragm (TPCD) drivers make good on their claims of tonal balance and transient excellence, making these just as adept at clinical representation as they are at gratifying, fulsome home listening.

The specs are friendly to both camps too, starting with the works-with-anything 32-ohm impedance. Traditionally, I’m less fond of this in other devices, but here and with the D1’s rich sonic capacity across devices, it’s a boon. They’re comfortable to wear, innately and over long periods of time, and they never get fatiguing to listen through either.

I don’t like giving full marks to things. It makes me feel like I’ve failed; like I’ve missed something, somewhere, or that I’ve even dared to be a bit lazy. More’s my disappointment, then, that I can’t fault the HEDDphone D1 in any meaningful way.

Sure, the build quality might stoop a tad beneath the price in places, but then the pristine presence afforded by those unique dynamic drivers shoots well above. Likewise, a slight low-end boost might disincentivise some pro-audio folk from trusting them in their line of work, but that same lift allows these headphones to provide weight and context unlike any other set of open-backed headphones at this (or perhaps any) price. Every question an answer.

So, then, I resolve to put away my thoughts of laziness or journalistic inadequacy, instead settling with the thrilling and essential truth that must be my own final answer: these are the best headphones I’ve tried in my career thus far. And they get full marks. Among the best wired headphones on the market? Emphatically yes.

HEDD HEDDphone D1: Price and release date

• $799.99 / £599 / AU$999
• Launched on 6th November, 2025

When a pioneering set of headphones hails from a German brand literally called HEDD, it’s one’s duty to take notice. HEDD stands for Heinz ElectroDynamic Designs, and is the another in a series of major audio-tech gifts from Heinz Klaus — founder of ADAM audio, and key contributor to the development and improvement of AMT (Air Motion Transformer) transducers.

HEDD is a continuation of Klaus’ inventorial pursuits, first with a new suite of professional monitor speakers, then with bringing AMT and some clever material design to new territory: the world of head-fi. All lovingly designed and manufactured in Berlin.

The subjects of today’s scrutiny are the HEDDphone D1, the fourth set of over-ears to come from HEDD, following HEDDphones ONE, TWO and TWO GT respectively. Where prior cans focused on combining AMT drivers with over-ear headphones, the D1 are an exploration of dynamic drivers through the lens of Thin-Ply Carbon Diaphragm (TPCD).

The HEDDphone D1, then, purport to be every bit as stereotypically precise as one might expect from a pioneering German audio brand — with emphasis on the ‘stereo’, and with pun very much smugly intended. If Heinz can do it, so can I.

At £599 / $799.99 / AU$999, the HEDDphone D1 certainly aren’t cheap; they tickle the upper reaches of what might be considered ‘mid-range’ in a broad market, increasingly filled with audiophile-grade cans that ask for four-figure sums (including HEDD’s own flagship HEDDphone).

But the D1 pitches itself, sonically, as a pair of ‘phones that’ll go toe-to-toe with most when it comes to detail, tone and depth — to the point that they’re marketed quite keenly towards professional audio-folk and audiophiles alike. And, not to spoil you too soon, I think they more-than stick the landing.

HEDD HEDDphone D1 review: Specs

HEDD HEDDphone D1 review: Features

• 50mm Thin-Ply Carbon Diaphragm (TPCD) dynamic drivers
• 5Hz-40kHz frequency range
• 32-ohm impedance

The HEDDphone D1 are a pair of open-back over-ear headphones, designed as a mid-weight contender for pristine professional audiophile listening. They’re a passive, wired affair, and about as operationally simple as headphones get.

The big sell here is HEDD’s Thin-Ply Carbon Diaphragm (TPCD): a diaphragm constructed with an advanced carbon fibre composite that maintains rigidity in spite of its thin, low-mass design. The result is a responsive dynamic driver that doesn’t need to trade its proverbial lightness-of-foot for distortion or tonal imbalance, and doesn’t need conventional diaphragm-level dampening to maintain clarity either.

The HEDDphone D1 is outfitted with two 50mm TPCD-constructed dynamic drivers, which extend up to 40kHz and down to 5Hz — a remarkable range, with a remarkably steady response curve where it counts.

These drivers field an impedance of 32 ohms, making the HEDDphone D1 a suitable candidate for practically any sound source. I usually prefer my monitor headphones to have a little more fight in them than this, but on this occasion, I certainly don’t mind the results.

• Features score: 5 / 5

HEDD HEDDphone D1 review: Sound quality

• Incredible clarity across frequency spectrum
• Deep, full and spacious low-end
• Expansive soundstage

Being someone who encounters and experiences new audio tech as a matter of course, I’m rarely in a position to be surprised by something. I usually have some vague idea of what to expect, and my expectations are usually somewhat in line with what I ultimately hear. Here, though: wow.

Having had plentiful experience with professional monitor headphones before, I thought I knew what I was in for with the HEDDphone D1. I didn’t. These ground-up Berlin-designed drivers are a marvel — and, perhaps, a rare instance of experimental reality actually informing PR copy. The D1’s got everything: depth, width, height; microscopic detail and macroscopic grandeur; pro-grade clinical clarity and gratifying, grin-worthy weight. They are full-range and balanced enough to work well as monitor headphones, but not clinically transparent to the point of flatness. It’s a delicate balancing act that pays off.

There’s a lot to get into here, but let’s start with the bass. Though impressively even with respect to frequency response, there is a slightly pronounced push in the low end — the quality of which is, quite simply, astonishing. There is a bulging fullness, of the same heft that makes closed-back headphones so gratifying, but also a depth-of-field that only open-backs can achieve. It’s the platonic ideal for low-end presence; the best of both worlds.

First impressions of this were achieved through digital streaming, listening to hi-res audio streamed from Qobuz. Pile’s All Fiction is a maximalist flood of roomy orchestrations, reverb-drowned voices breaking like waves, and huge blooms of messy low-end energy. It should not be an easy-to-parse record, but the D1 handle the heft of Loops and Poisons handily.

That deeply-impressive low-end control isn’t all that’s happening here. It serves to support an incredibly detailed upper register, too; things sail above it with ease. Mitskis’ Cats, from early-2026 heartbreaker Nothing’s About To Happen To Me, is a supremely balanced slug of sad-folky Americana, carried on a wave of deep bassy richness and carrying a full, clear, near-sailing Mitski vocal. In fact, those vocals are a revelation of their own, every fathom and every miniscule wave rendered in the same amazing definition.

Definition, ultimately, is the word. The transients are, to my immense gratitude, tight and immediate without overextension or insistence. Mitski’s I’ll Change For You demonstrates this capably, through dead-on kick-drums, rich clatter-y rim shots and the most tactile shakers you’ve ever heard hidden in a ballad. The light plosives in Mitski’s voice are discernable, to great humanising effect.

To figure out some more of that definitional excellence, I turned to PJ Harvey’s Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea. Harvey’s vocals are an immediate, forthright affair, and pop into being with a refreshing urgency. Again, there’s some excellent separation between voice and instruments, even as things spiral away beneath as in Big Exit, Kamikaze and This Wicked Tongue. Across the album, dry drums, harsh leads and percussive acoustic guitars build a clear and crisp picture of the D1’s composure.

Over on vinyl, things are just as impressive. Queens Of The Stone Age’s …Like Clockwork demonstrates the D1’s soundstage admirably, as well as their gutsy, gratifying treatment of distorted guitars. I Sat By The Ocean is cleverly rendered in space; My God Is The Sun is addictively propulsive, from its growling plinth of glistening bass to its tight trio of ever-climbing riffy guitars. Homme’s voice is, as ever, a mile-long track of croon-y honey.

Between PJ Harvey, Mitski and QOTSA, the D1’s aptitude for rock instrumentation — much like my personal proclivities for the same — have been summarily proven. To change tack, and to make a small case for my actually-quite-eclectic-I-promise taste, I threw on my vinyl copy of jazz drummer Roy Haynes’ 1963 album Cymbalism.

It’s a rich and free-wheeling collection of quartet-arranged brilliance, opened up with fast-paced flute-led swinger Modette. Haynes’ ‘snap-crackle’ drums shine immediately, and Frank Strozier’s flute, that threatens to be unlistenably harsh, comes in bright, beautiful and searingly insistent. The double-bass is a subtle, hollow, plucky affair, held up well somewhere between kick and snare; the piano is unobtrusively clear, even sharp.

In Lonnie Liston Smith And The Cosmic Echoes’ sprawling 1973 spiritual-jazz missive Astral Traveling, I found the D1’s tonal strengths on full display. In Search Of Truth’s a slow, sure-footed hike, its footsteps a consistent bass riff over which a spaced-out, upward-spiralling piano, disparate, immaculately-preserved percussive elements and a steady harmonium drone reach towards a mountain’s peak — a full-throated, ensemble-derived answer to the call, and a truly expansive experience in these headphones.

It’s clear to me how the HEDDphone D1 can be marketed simultaneously as a powerful home-listening audiophile product and a pro-grade monitoring headphone. The soundstage is broad and deep across the frequency spectrum; instruments and elements have their space, to be appreciated or scrutinised accordingly. That broad low-end lift could be argued as a platform by which to better examine low-end information, but really, it’s a little gift for you and me.

• Sound quality score: 5 / 5

HEDD HEDDphone D1 review: Design

• Unusual — yet welcome — grip on head
• Incomparably comfortable for long
• Slightly underwhelming material choices in places

The HEDDphone D1 are some seriously comfortable headphones — and not in the conventional way, either. Most headphones aiming for comfort have a light touch; they’re trying to be light, airy, and leave little evidence of presence on your head. The HEDDphone D1 are gloriously opposed to this approach.

Instead of a feather-light balancing act, the D1 goes hard, gripping your head with a deep and encouraging firmness. Some super-soft ear cup cushions eat up a lot of that inward force, and a firm foam cushion beneath the headband provides supple support from above. It’s a tight hug in headphone form, and all the better for it. They melt into your head, and, thanks to their open-back breathability, never get old.

Materials-wise, the HEDDphone D1 doesn’t quite have the same quality of build as other headphones at this price point — with a firm and reverential gaze levelled at the likes of Meze Audio. Besides the metal grilles protecting the diaphragm, and the spine of the headband, everything visible is plastic, foam and variably-breathable fabrics.

This is to say that the money’s been spent elsewhere; within. And given the incredible quality displayed within, I’m actually not all that fussed by the less-rarefied material design here. Besides, things work where it counts. The headband adjustment feels firm and reassuring, and the foam used for the cushions couldn’t be better-suited.

There is some semi-significant sound leakage out into the world, as is to be expected from anything open-back; that said, the same can’t quite be said for the inverse — at least, when music’s playing. It’s hard to be distracted when wearing these things.

• Design score: 5 / 5

HEDD HEDDphone D1 review: Value

• An undeniably upper mid-range price point
• Sonic performance that outstrips pricier cans
• Unignorably high bang-for-buck

Value’s always the hardest thing for me to pin down in a piece of tech. Circumstances differ, but MSRPs above a certain point are almost always a big ask. And I think it’s fair to call $799.99 / £599 / AU$999 a big ask. But in comparing that to the value of other headphones on the market, something emerges. At least, to me. The HEDDphone D1 pretty much clears them all for sonic characteristics.

Reservations may rightly be held for the plasticky nature of the chassis in places, but I think the D1’s built well enough to see off any assertions of poor value for money, particularly when they sound as good as they do. As far as fidelity is concerned, this could well be the absolute best bang-per-buck on the market.

Let me couch that in something a little more tangible. I’ve reviewed audiophile-grade over-ear headphones worth upwards of $2,000 / £1,899 / AU$3,550; I’ve even loved them. But not as much as these. And that’s irrespective of price. If the HEDDphone D1 can outperform something three times their price (and something I’ve deemed more-or-less worthy of that price, too), then they are stunningly under-valued.

Yes, $799.99 / £599 / AU$999 is a big ask for a lot of things, headphones included. But if you care about sonic fidelity personally or professionally, and when you’re getting four-figure sound quality at a mid-budget price point, it’s hard to call this anything but a steal.

• Value score: 5 / 5

HEDD HEDDphone D1: Should you buy them?

Buy them if...

Don't buy them if...

HEDD HEDDphone D1: Also consider

HEDD HEDDphone D1 review: How I tested

• Tested for 5 weeks
• Used as primary home listening headphones, for streaming and vinyl
• Predominantly tested using Qobuz on a Windows laptop, connected to a UAD Volt 4 audio interface
• Also tested on a Vestax turntable setup with an Audio-Technica VM-95EN cart

I spent a month with the HEDDphone D1 headphones, wherein they were used as my primary home listening headphones. They split their time between my attic office space and my living room hi-fi stack.

In the attic, the HEDDphone D1 were used to listen to hi-res audio on the streaming service Qobuz, as well as lossless audio in my digital music library, through the headphone output of my trusty Universal Audio Volt 4 audio interface.

In the living room, they were used to listen to vinyl records played on a Vestax PDX-D3 turntable, outfitted with an Audio-Technica VM-95EN cartridge, via the headphone output of my Vestax PCV-275 mixer.

• First reviewed: July 2026
• Read more about how we test

• Skullcandy launches Crusher 1080 ANC, new premium over-ears
• They mark the debut of three Bose-made features in a non-Bose product
• Just launched and available right now, for $280 / AU$399.99 (about £210)

It is as I foretold: after we saw Skullcandy teases about new headphones, the brand has unveiled exactly the pair of cans I predicted. Meet the Skullcandy Crusher 1080 ANC; they're the pair that skate legend (and brand ambassador) Tony Hawk is pointing at in the picture above — yes, it really is him.

These are, according to the brand, its "best-sounding product" (although interestingly, not the most expensive because Skullcandy's Aviator 900 cans are a little pricier) and in case you didn't know, a 1080 in skateboarding involves three complete skateboard and body rotations performed either frontside or backside.

As a new member of its Crusher line-up, part of the draw will be the adjustable bass (see the big dial on the ear cup), but there's a lot more to celebrate besides that.

You can buy the Crusher 1080 ANC right now; they cost $279.99 / AU$399.99 (about £210) so they're a little cheaper than the likes of the $449 / £449 / AU$699 Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (Gen 2) which they borrow features from.

They come in black, gray, brown, and pink, as you can see modelled sans Tony Hawk below. I rate them in the following order: brown, pink, gray, black, though I'd love to see a camo or floral redesign as Skullcandy is wont to do.

Colors aren't why you'll buy the Crusher 1080 ANC, though. No, it'll be because they offer three new Sound by Bose features at a non-Bose price...

That which we call a Bose by any other name would smell as sweet

We've seen Skullcandy headphones with Bose features before, but the Crusher 1080 ANC are the first pair of cans not made by the brand which have three specific features. And these three features are a big selling point of the product.

The biggest will be Bose QuietControl ANC, which is a massive draw within Bose's own products (including the QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds 2nd Gen). The company's noise cancellation is best-in-class, and now that proprietary Bose technology is baked into Skullcandy's headphones too. To many, this could be a reason to buy the Crusher all on its own.

Bose's TrueSpatial audio with head-tracking (for surround sound profiles irrespective of source material) and WaveForm audio engine (for snappy digital signal processing) are also stepping foot off the Good Ship Bose for the first time with the 1080. These will be great little extras to refine and finesse what Skullcandy already offers.

And that's before we even mention the Sound by Bose tuning and SpeechClarity voice pickup, to improve the music you listen to and your call quality. The latter is new to Skullcandy, but we've seen the former on some earbuds like my beloved Method 360.

And what about the headphones themselves, beyond the Bose stuff? Skullcandy hasn't confirmed the drivers, but I'd guess they'll be 40mm and joined by woofer units.

The battery life is 60 hours with ANC off and 50 hours with it on, which is pretty impressive; there's a 5-band EQ and other features via the Skullcandy app (not Skull-IQ, which some of the firm's earbuds use). Pictures show a dial on the side of the headphones, amongst other physical controls; I'd wager this is a redesigned bass slider, and given how easy it is to miss this on my Crusher 540 Active, I appreciate the rethink.

Reading between the lines, and having tested the Method 540 earlier this year (a 540 is a one-and-a-half skateboard and body rotation performed either frontside or backside, which I cannot do), I get the impression that Skullcandy is undergoing a push to really level up.

The company doesn't seem to be abandoning the commitment to bass that's defined its products in the past (or its love of athletes as brand ambassadors), but seems to want to bring that into a better-rounded audio package with higher-fidelity music on offer. And if the Skullcandy Crusher 1080 ANC is the culmination of this process, I'm really intrigued to know how they sound.

Austrian Audio The Arranger: Two-minute review

The Arranger by Austrian Audio are an attempt to at least begin to fill the gap that exists between the company’s highest-end headphones and its wildly successful entry-level stuff. In case that isn’t a big enough ask by itself, Austrian Audio wants this new gap-filler to be just as convincing as a pro monitoring tool as they are a domestic pair of headphones.

So the brand has come up with a light, comfortable and slightly oddly colored pair of (semi) open-backed headphones that are easy to drive, fold smaller than the norm and are fitted with mildly exotic DLC-coated dynamic drivers that deliver a prodigious 5Hz - 30kHz frequency response. About the only misstep (apart from the finish) is the lack of a balanced cable option — or, more accurately, the lack of a no-cost balanced cable option.

When it comes to performance, though, complaints like this become irrelevant. Without sacrificing anything where detail retrieval, organization or soundstaging are concerned, Austrian Audio has served up a pair of energetic, entertaining and thoroughly engaging headphones that are just as happy to deliver the excitement of a recording as they are to peer deep into the mix and examine it on a microscopic level. As a combination of analysis and enjoyment, The Arranger are very hard to lay a glove on.

Which is not to say they have the field clear, of course. Similarly specified, similarly priced products from brands with similarly credible reputations are, naturally, available among the best wired headphones — and when you’re talking about companies like Beyerdynamic and Meze Audio, you know the alternatives to The Arranger are going to be compelling.

Austrian Audio The Arranger review: Price & release date

• Released June 2026
• Priced $1,299 / £899 / AU$1,899

The Arranger by Austrian Audio are on sale now, and in the United States they sell for $1,299 per pair. They’re £899 in the United Kingdom, and AU$1,899 in Australia. They're intended to fill a gap, but it means they come up against some pretty stiff competition, too.

Austrian Audio The Arranger review: Specs

Austrian Audio The Arranger review: Features

• 44mm DLC-coated dynamic drivers
• 3m cable with 3.5mm/6.3mm termination
• 25ohms impedance, 110dB sensitivity

Passive, hard-wired headphones are seldom groaning under the weight of all their features, and The Arranger are not in any way unusual. The feature-count is short but in this instance, at least, the few features here are all entirely fit for purpose.

The Austrian Audio are supplied with a 3m length of quite sturdily rubberized cable. It fits using the ‘click and turn’ method into the left ear cup, and at the other end there’s a 3.5mm termination that will happily accept the 6.3mm adapter that’s supplied. A 2m 4.4mm balanced cable and a 3m cable with an XLR termination are both available and, rather annoyingly, both will cost you additional money.

The information that travels along the cable is delivered to a couple of 44mm dynamic drivers. They have a diamond-like carbon coating on the diaphragm and also feature a proprietary ring magnet — the aim is superior impulse response, super-low distortion and significant bass extension. Austrian Audio suggests frequency response is 5Hz - 30kHz, which would seem to make ‘significant bass extension’ something of an understatement.

The Arranger are very forgiving headphones — impedance of 25ohms and 110dB sensitivity means they’re not even remotely difficult to drive. A dedicated headphone amp is always a good idea, of course, but even the 3.5mm socket on your laptop should have sufficient oomph to get the Austrian Audio up to speed.

• Features score: 5 / 5

Austrian Audio The Arranger review: Sound quality

• Significant low-frequency substance and variation
• Open, organized and detailed sound
• Tremendous powers of analysis

Austrian Audio, it turns out, was not just talking. The Arranger really do function almost as well as a pair of monitors as they do when asked to simply entertain. In either circumstance, this is a very accomplished pair of headphones.

The (almost) open-backed arrangement means the presentation is spacious and airy, and the soundstage the headphones present is quite expansive, but not at the cost of unity or singularity. Despite being able to open up a recording like Natural Magic’s Galaxy Builder to the point that its constituent parts are individualized and easy to inspect, there’s a togetherness to the way The Arranger present the recording that makes it sound like a performance rather than simply a collection of discrete occurrences.

It helps that frequency response is nice and even, from the deep and almost extravagantly varied low end to the bright, substantial top end. The midrange projects well without forcing the overall response into any kind of ‘V’ shape, and the lack of coloration to the tonality allows every point of the frequency range to sound natural and unforced. Detail levels are high at every stage, and the amount of insight the Austrian Audio have into even quite complex recordings is never less than fully impressive.

As well as body and insight at the bottom end, there’s also unarguable control. The Arranger take a lot of care in expressing the attack and decay of individual bass events, and consequently have no problem in describing rhythms with absolute conviction. This sense of confidence and positivity is, in fact, apparent throughout the frequency range.

As well as being alert to the finest, most transient details that both build a complete picture of a recording and allow an engineer to understand a recording on a sort of ‘building block’ level, The Arranger are more than willing to handle the broader dynamics of changes in volume, intensity and attack. The distance they’re able to put between the quietest and most contemplative passages in a recording and the final all-out crescendo is significant.

It’s by no means an easy trick to entertain with the vigorous and engaging nature of your sound while simultaneously serving as a forensic tool of insight and analysis — it’s so difficult, in fact, that most headphone manufacturers don’t even bother trying. But it’s a trick Austrian Audio manages to pull off with something very much like aplomb.

• Sound quality score: 5 / 5

Austrian Audio The Arranger review: Design

• (Semi-) open-backed configuration
• 320g without cable
• Just one, rather single-minded, option for finish

In many meaningful ways, the design of The Arranger is wholly successful. This is, at 320g without the length of cable attached, a light and comfortable pair of headphones, and thanks to come judicious choices where hanger arrangement, clamping force and padding of the contact points are concerned, it’s a pair of headphones that stays comfortable for hours on end.

The inside of the headband and the ear cups are of medium-density memory foam with a faux-suede covering. It’s soft, and it resists returning your own body heat longer after some alternative designs have started to warm your ears. Some sturdy articulation in the yokes means not only will the ear cups fold flat, but the frame folds in on itself too. This makes The Arranger much more compact in transit, and a far better proposition where portability is concerned.

To my eyes, though, there’s something quite inelegant and rather rustic about the width of the headband and the point where the headband chunkily meets the ear cups. The one available finish — a combination of black, something that thinks it’s gold and something that is unarguably beige — doesn’t exactly shout ‘premium product!’ either. The slats on the ear cups that result in the Austrian Audio being a quasi-open-backed design are a little more successful but, again, the color isn’t helping the headphones look as expensive as they actually are.

There’s absolutely no arguing with the standard of build and finish on display here but, then again, this is no more than you’re entitled to expect when paying over $1,000 for some headphones. The problem for The Arranger, I think, is about perceived value — and it comes up slightly short.

• Design score: 4 / 5

Austrian Audio The Arranger review: Value

• Headphones for every occasion
• Light, comfortable and easy to wear…
• …although not quite as easy to look at

No, $1,299 / £899 / AU$1,899 is not an insignificant sum for a pair of headphones, even a pair from a company with the track record of Austrian Audio.

But when you consider their potency as a tool of analysis, factor in their energetic and enthusiastic attitude when you’re simply listening for pleasure, and then add in the build quality and the comfort that’s a by-product, they become pretty difficult to argue with on a value-for-money basis.

One or two options where finish is concerned wouldn’t go amiss, mind you — in fact, they might help The Arranger to become an even easier sell.

• Value score: 4.5 / 5

Should I buy the Austrian Audio The Arranger?

Buy them if...

Don't buy them if...

Austrian Audio The Arranger review: Also consider

How I tested the Austrian Audio The Arranger

• Connected to a FiiO M15S DAP
• Connected to a full-size system via Eversolo DAC-Z10 pre-amp
• Using music from many formats and of many styles

The FiiO digital audio player features lots of hi-res FLAC and DSD files, and lots of different styles and genres of music within those digital files. The Eversolo DAC-Z10, meanwhile, is the preamplifier for an Arcan ST25 network streamer, a Technics SL-1300G turntable and a Rega Apollo CD player.

Which means that content from internet radio stations, vinyl and compact disc are all available too - which, by extension, means The Arranger by Austrian Audio got about as thorough a work-out as a pair of headphones at this sort of money demands.

• First reviewed: July 2026
• Read more about how we test

Right on cue, Amazon Prime Day in Australia has delivered a much better price on the Apple AirPods Pro 3, dropping Apple’s latest noise-cancelling earbuds to just AU$299.

That’s a mighty AU$130 saving on their AU$429 RRP, and more importantly, it’s the lowest price we’ve seen for the AirPods Pro 3 on Amazon.

Considering they launched at a higher price than their predecessor, this Prime Day deal makes them a far more tempting option for iPhone users who have been waiting for a deeper discount.

I’ve been using the Pro 3 since they launched in September and, while I was initially unsure how much better they could really be than the Pro 2, I’ve had to concede that Apple’s updated earbuds are something special.

The noise cancellation, fit and overall sound quality all make them easy to recommend, and this AU$299 price makes that recommendation even easier.

If you’re a devoted iPhone user, there’s a good chance the AirPods Pro 3 are already on your radar.

If you want a deeper breakdown before buying, our Apple AirPods Pro 3 review covers their features, sound quality and noise-cancelling performance in detail.

My audio-loving colleague Becky Scarrott described them as the earbuds for “iPhone owners who value great, shut-out-the-world noise cancellation”, and that lines up with my own experience.

As soon as you put the Pro 3s in your ears and turn on ANC, they do a remarkable job of cutting out the world around you.

I’ve worn them while walking along busy roads and even while vacuuming at home, and in both cases, the AirPods Pro 3 have made it far easier to focus on whatever I’m listening to.

They’re not the cheapest earbuds around, even with this Prime Day discount, but at AU$299 they become a much more compelling pick among the best wireless earbuds, especially if you’re already deep in Apple’s ecosystem.

I don’t expect this price to stick around once Amazon Prime Day wraps up, so if you’ve been waiting for a proper AirPods Pro 3 discount, this is the deal to jump on.

Quick links to the best Apple deals on Amazon

• Amazon Prime Day: shop the main Prime Day sale
• Apple at Amazon: browse everything Apple in one place
• AirPods deals: check the best AirPods prices
• iPad deals: shop iPad offers at Amazon
• Apple Watch deals: see the best Apple Watch prices
• iPhone deals: check current iPhone deals
• Apple accessories: browse AirTags, chargers, cables and more
• MacBook price checks: find MacBook restocks and price drops

Even more AirPod deals

Noble Osprey: Two-minute review

Ah, the Noble Osprey; see how the majestic raptor hovers over its prey, watching with beady eyes as the young trout — wait, what do you mean this isn’t the first few words of a David Attenborough narration? Oh. I’m glad you told me that now.

The Noble Osprey are, in fact, a new pair of true wireless earbuds from the premium audio brand Noble. They’re not cheap, relatively speaking (and this is a crowded market), but they do undercut some of the best earbuds on the market to have graced our testing process. They're also more wallet-friendly than other buds from the brand such as the Noble FoKus Amadeus and FoKus Rex5, making them a little more competitive than what’s come before.

Despite this cheaper price, the Osprey also share a few traits with their siblings. They have another distinct marbled look, this time in blue, and again a focus on high-quality audio, with a refined V-shaped sound profile and support for LDAC.

I really wanted to like the Osprey; I tested the FoKus Apollo over-ears which sounded fantastic, and love an earbud that’s focusing on refined, higher-resolution sound instead of an omnipresent thumping bass. But over the several weeks of testing, I repeatedly found myself opting for other buds over the Osprey, which isn’t a good sign.

Unlike the namesake birds, gliding unbothered in the sky, the Osprey are certainly susceptible to the force of gravity… that is to say, they just wouldn’t stay in my ears. I tested the various sizes and shapes of ear tips offered in the box, and even rotated and twisted the buds around uncomfortable angles to see if I could lodge them into my ear, but no cigar.

I don’t mean they wobbled when I went for a run; I could be sitting stock still and they’d slide (I hesitate to use the word 'yeeted', but there it is) straight out of my ears of their own accord. Even cooking or eating was a challenge with them in; they’d fall out so frequently I’d always just remove them — or replace them with a pair I wasn’t testing.

The problem was incessant and it sowed in me a reticence to use the buds. This sentiment colored my entire time with them. I don’t think I’ve ever used a set of earbuds that fit as poorly (well, a tip-toting pair at least; they draw with the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4) as the Noble Osprey.

I'm only laboring the point because it is a real shame. There’s a lot to like in these buds. They look distinctive, offering some of the flair of wired, Shure-adjacent IEMs but without the wire. The case is lovely and small, and holds a fair amount of charge too.

And the audio quality from these Noble earpieces is also good (when you can keep them in), offering a V-shaped presentation but with delicate, sparkling trebles and a refined low-end that’s rich in detail. The use of dual drivers as well as LDAC and Bluetooth 6.0 compatibility ensures you’re getting that extra sonic oomph you’re paying for. I just wish the buds would stay in my ears so I could appreciate the sound quality more…

Noble Osprey review: Price and release date

• Announced on June 2, 2026, shipped later that month
• Selling for $199 / £199 / AU$292
• Undercuts Noble's other buds, AirPods Pro and Galaxy Buds Pro

Announced on the 2nd June, 2026, the Noble Osprey were shipped to early buyers by the end of the month.

They cost $199 / £199 / AU$292, so they’re priced just a hair below the AirPods Pro 3 or Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro, but in the same rough ‘premium wireless earbuds’ area that indicates these are top-tier buds.

Not highest-tier, I suppose, when you consider Noble’s other buds. The Rex5 cost $449 / £419 / AU$699, literally twice as much as the Osprey, so this bird-named pair of buds is still a very affordable model as far as Noble is concerned.

Noble Osprey review: Specs

Noble Osprey review: Features

• Minimum 5 hours listening, 7 hours without ANC
• Passable ANC, but struggles in wind
• App offers EQ, but not much more

The Noble Osprey are earbuds designed for audiophiles, and battery life is often a department that sees culls in favor of driving those various drivers (and powering the necessary antiphase tech for noise nixing). Case in point, the Osprey only last for five hours of listening when you've got ANC enabled.

That timespan extends to seven hours if you turn off ANC, which is a reasonable figure. The 35-hour battery life of the case is also reasonable too, and I've tested plenty of earbuds that don't offer that amount of extra juice.

Talking of the ANC, it's passable, but nothing to write home about — the Osprey won't be joining our best noise-cancelling earbuds guide any time soon. It stripped away the rumble of a bus and dampened the whirr of a nearby washing machine, but didn't offer the near-silence that many rivals do. They often struggled with wind too.

The Noble Osprey app offers a few useful features, including the ability to customize what the buds' touch controls do, turning off (or on) ANC, and toggling the Bluetooth tone switch.

The main tool, though, is the equalizer, offering a 10-band EQ or the choice between six presets. It's a rather effective EQ, letting you pull the music in various directions, and you can save various custom modes in addition to the presets.

If you don't think you'll use the equalizer, though, the app's not really worth downloading; it doesn't offer that much else, and there's a dearth of extra features that often crop up in consumer-grade earbuds.

• Features score: 3.5/5

Noble Osprey review: Design

• Svelte carry case
• Attractive blue marbled design
• Not designed to stick in the ear

You’ve read the introduction, you know that the Noble Osprey buds simply wouldn’t stay in my ears, no matter what I tried. And before the “why didn’t you…” of the comments section: trust me, I test buds for a living, this is not my first rodeo. It took very little motion to dislodge them from my ears: going on walks, sitting on a bumpy bus, moving about while cooking.

This was more than a minor annoyance; I basically couldn’t use them if I wasn’t sitting still at a desk, and even then the fit was unreliable. When they started to slip, they fell fast, tanking the audio quality and, if I tried to push them back into my ears, causing me to accidentally press the on-bud buttons.

Now and then I managed to lodge them in my ears in a way that, temporarily at least, kept them locked in position, and once or twice I managed to go on a walk with the buds. But this wasn’t reliable, caused my ears to ache, and still required me to adjust the fit almost constantly.

What’s the problem? They’re not the lightest buds I’ve ever tested, weighing 6.5g, but that shouldn’t be enough to hurt the fit. At a guess, it’s the top-heavy weighting of the buds themselves, though the lack of any friction in the tips (or perhaps a fin to help them lodge into ears) doesn’t help either.

Not only is it infuriating to constantly adjust the earbuds in your ear, it runs the risk of knocking the touch controls on each. It’s only a risk, though, and not a guarantee, because I found the controls quite unreliable to trigger.

The Osprey come in a lovely-looking azure charging case — azure until it gets scuffed up, which happened very quickly for me, making it look a little less lovely.

Said case is pretty small, with the buds nestled into it nicely, and it's light in weight, tipping the scales to 61g. I couldn’t find any information suggesting they’re IP rated, but the case certainly feels solid enough to protect the buds from a drop.

• Design score: 2.5/5

Noble Osprey: Sound quality

• 10mm + BA driver
• Refined V-shaped sound
• LDAC support

Putting aside fit issues (which are hard to put aside when they affect sound quality so frequently — but play nice!), the Noble Osprey sound really good.

Each bud has been kitted out with a 10mm dynamic driver, plus a balanced armature driver, and they combine to create a refined V-shaped sound.

Bass is cohesive and scooping, holding a distinct space in the mix without overriding higher-end frequencies. Treble is sharp and bright, giving vocals sparkle and adding energy to string or brass stings. And while the mids aren’t as prominent in the mix as, say, bass, they hold enough space that music doesn’t feel like there’s some void in the middle.

Songs like Don McCloskey’s First in Flight let the various higher-frequency instruments, and the dancing bassline, all sit separately without descending into one chaotic mush. Acoustic guitars and vocals don’t clash like they do in cheaper buds, like in Charlie Mars’ She Ain’t Coming Back, which retains detail and timbre.

Helping this detail is the Osprey’s support for LDAC, for an upgrade over SBC or AAC.

The dual drivers bring another benefit: audio spacing. There’s distinct placement and a broad soundstage present in music here. How to get it? Try Yi Nantiro’s Oasis, which sees the harp dance around your periphery, or the London Symphony Orchestra’s recent recording of Holst’s The Planets, in which you can basically point to where each section of the orchestra was seated during the live recording.

The Osprey get pretty loud too if you push them, only distorting when you’re at the highest few volume increments. I didn’t go anywhere near that loud for most of my listening, but I appreciate that you can listen at higher volumes without losing quality.

• Sound quality: 4.5/5

Noble Osprey review: Value

• Rather affordable compared to audiophile buds
• Expensive compared to consumer-grade ones
• Don't offer the complete package like same-priced rivals do

The Noble Osprey sit with a foot (or claw? Talon?) in two camps. On one side, they're affordable audiophile earbuds, designed for listeners who care about music quality above all else. On the other, they're premium models for the average consumer, who wants a more balanced overall package.

Unfortunately, while the Noble Osprey sound really good, I'm not sure they sound $200 good. The distinction between them and same-price Apple, Bose or Sony rivals isn't pronounced enough, when you consider that those buds tend to offer a more balanced design and wider feature set.

Sure, audiophiles who only consider audio quality might not want those other features, but it's still a high price. For the same cost as the Osprey, you can get other buds that work even better.

• Value: 3/5

Should I buy the Noble Osprey?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

Noble Osprey review: Also consider

Want to see what other earbuds your money can get you? Here are some alternatives for roughly the same price.

How I tested the Noble Osprey

• Tested for one month
• Paired with two different Android phones
• Used for various activities and tasks

I used the Noble Osprey for roughly a month before writing this review, and the writing process added at least a week more of testing time. I began by using the pre-attached ear tips, and cycled through various in-box options, before settling on the two-tiered tips you see in the pictures.

During that span, they were paired to two different Android smartphones: a Motorola Edge 70 Fusion, and a Realme 13 Pro Plus, both times with the app installed on the phone. Mostly, music listening was done with Spotify and Tidal, while Prime Video and Now were used for movies — and various games got a look-in, too. I also used them for some calls and voice notes.

Initially, I used the earbuds for a wide range of tasks, including going for walks around my area, commuting or travelling on various forms of public transport, and while doing activities around my house. Towards the end of the testing process, when the fit issue made other uses frustrating, I only used them while seated at a desk. I completely omitted several tasks that are part of my usual testing process, including gym trips and runs.

I've been reviewing tech for TechRadar since 2019, which has seen me use countless earbuds and audio products.

• First reviewed in July 2026

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

Amazon Prime Day has landed! And while that means there are plenty of tantalising deals and discounts to sink your teeth into — you can view all of our latest finds in our live coverage of the sale — it's the Prime Day headphone deals that I've got my eyes set on.

Yes, headphones are regularly one of the standout categories during any Amazon sales event, but Prime Day is the one that usually sees the biggest savings, and this year is no different.

If you've been looking to upgrade your personal listening, you're in good hands with me. Not only do I know how to spot a great deal, but I also know which pairs of headphones — whether they be over-ear, in-ear, noise cancelling, whatever — are worth buying. That's because I not only look after home entertainment and audio for TechRadar here in Australia, but I'm also the Editor of Australian Hi-Fi magazine. I quite literally live and breathe audio.

And it appears we've been spoilt this Prime Day, as I've already spotted a plethora of fantastic discounts on top-rated headphones — and it's only day one!

Standouts so far include the AirPods Pro 3 dropping to their lowest-ever price of just AU$299, the superb 1More SonoFlow over-ears are now available for under AU$100, and the Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless can be picked up for a steal at AU$259.

There's plenty more where that came from, so be sure to check out all of the Prime Day headphone deals below. I've separated them by style, to make it even easier for you to find what you're looking for.

The best Prime Day Australia headphone deals 2026

Over-ear headphones

In-ear headphones

Open earbuds

Wired earbuds

Prime Day 2026 in Australia: all you need to know

• A new leak shows off the Nothing Ear 3(a)
• We see the earbuds in four colors, with the case
• The official unveiling is scheduled for tomorrow

If you can't wait until tomorrow for the official unveiling of the Nothing Ear 3(a), the budget wireless earbuds have now appeared in an extensive leak that reveals the design, colors, and features — so this is pretty much a full spoiler.

The early reveal comes courtesy of WinFuture, and is based on information from retailers who couldn't wait to get their listings live. We can see the earbuds in all four of the already announced colors: black, white, yellow, and pink.

There are a few interesting tidbits here, but when it comes to the aesthetics, there are no dramatic surprises: the look of these earbuds is very reminiscent of previous Nothing Ear models, with the semi-transparent stems and the transparent lid on the charging case.

What we do learn is that the Nothing Ear 3(a) are set to come with a 12-millimeter driver, as well as support for LDAC and Hi-Res Audio Wireless — so while the price is affordable, it seems the audio quality won't be compromised too much.

Touch to record

The leak gives us a glimpse of what seems to be a special feature we haven't seen from Nothing products before: the ability to press the stem of the earbuds to record voice notes, which is something to look out for.

WinFuture also refers back to previous leaks that mentioned a retail price of €99, so it would appear that the upcoming wireless earbuds are going to stick to the $99 / £99 / AU$169 starting price of the excellent Nothing Ear (a).

In our Nothing Ear 3 review, we praised those earbuds for offering "zealous, customizable sound" — though we weren't quite sure about how much value for money they offered, which is something this new pair might move the dial on.

One of the quirks of the Nothing Ear 3 is the 'Super Mic' that's included in the charging case, which you can use for calls and voice notes instead of the microphones on the earbuds — but as yet it's not clear if the Nothing Ear 3(a) will offer the same feature.