Best Deals on Headphones

If you want earbuds, but don’t like the feel of plugging up your ears, the Bose Ultra Opens are a unique option—and this is the first time they’ve been on sale since the holidays. They hook on your ear, just above the lobe, kind of like a cuff-style earring. They sound surprisingly good, too, once you get the placement just right. And it’s totally easy to hear things around you with a clarity that the "transparency" mode of most earbuds can’t match.

While there’s nothing revolutionary about the design of Sonos’s first headphone, it is well-executed. If you like the Sonos brand, this is a good opportunity to get this model at a discount, as it doesn’t go on sale often. The sleek and even minimalist Ace is actually flattering when sitting on your head. The wireless noise-canceling model also offers warm, comforting sound and solid bass.

The AirPods Pro are Apple’s best-selling earbuds, with good reason. They sound good and offer effective noise canceling, including a transparency mode that pipes in outside sound so you’re not fully cut off from the world while out walking. Better yet, says Apple, a free over-the-air upgrade later this year will allow the model to deliver a clinical-grade hearing test, which can be used to turn them into an over-the-counter hearing aid.

The Sony WH-1000XM4 may have been replaced by the newer and sleeker XM5, but our testers report that the models perform similarly. The Sony XM4 delivers truly superb sound quality, dead quiet noise cancellation, plus a nice array of features. They were recently discounted at other major retailers, but now only Walmart has a sale, and that price has dropped $25 in the last few weeks.

While Apple claims the AirPods 4 are improved over the AirPods 3, our testers were less impressed. They’re still solid headphones if you don’t like having something stuck in your ear. The fit, despite Apple’s tweaks, is pretty much the same, as is the sound. The price is somewhat lower and that’s an unalloyed good.

Bowers & Wilkins, aka B&W, might not be a household name, but this British company has been making audiophile-grade speakers and headphones for decades. The PX7 S2e delivers on both noise cancellation and lively sound quality.

The price for these headphones does tend to fluctuate a great deal. And while they did sell for as little as $250 during the holidays, we haven’t seen a discount that big outside of that. This deal is more in line with the sales we tend to see throughout the year.

If you want a pair of noise-canceling earbuds at a budget price, check out the Soundcore Space A40s. Our testers report that the sound quality is solid—and better than many more expensive models. The bass packs some wallop, and the overall sound is warm, which makes the A40s pleasant to listen to over a long period of time. The noise cancellation gets top marks from our testers as well. It has a transparency mode that allows you to monitor your surroundings, such as when you’re out running or walking down a busy street.

JBL Tune 510BT headphones feel like they’re built with quality in mind: They’re cheap, but they don’t seem cheap. This Bluetooth model delivers pretty good sound quality, it has a 40-hour advertised battery life, and we’ve seen it selling at remarkably low prices. The 510BT sits on the ears, which some people find more comfortable than being engulfed by the more common over-ear style. As an extra perk, you can also use them with a cable if you forget to charge them.

If you want to treat yourself (or someone else) these noise-canceling Sony earbuds sound just sublime. If you care about music, they’re more than worth the money. The XM5s are the sleek successors to the company’s WF1000XM4s, and they deliver so much musical detail that you simply hear your favorite songs in a different way. The noise-canceling performance of the XM5s is strong as well, and Sonys have an effective ambient mode that pipes in outside noise for safety or convenience.

They were just under $200 at Walmart recently, but you won’t find them on sale at any other major retailer.