[ad_1]

The mod­ern head­phone mar­ket offers a huge selec­tion of head­phones: your eyes run wide, it’s hard to make the right choice. Some mod­els are suit­able for lis­ten­ing to lec­tures or talk­ing on the phone, oth­ers for games, oth­ers for lis­ten­ing to music in high qual­i­ty, and oth­ers are posi­tioned by the man­u­fac­tur­er as uni­ver­sal. It should be remem­bered that ver­sa­til­i­ty comes at a cost of lim­it­ed func­tion­al­i­ty.

It is impor­tant to remem­ber that head­phones are an indi­vid­ual sub­ject, and in addi­tion to pure­ly tech­ni­cal para­me­ters, per­son­al taste pref­er­ences must also be tak­en into account when choos­ing them. They can often be deci­sive when choos­ing head­phones. The KP advis­es you to first decide on the design of the mod­el, and then with the rest of the options. There­fore, we divid­ed the rat­ing of the best head­phones into cat­e­gories in accor­dance with the design para­me­ters.

Editor’s Choice

Denon AH-D5200

The Denon AH-D5200 over-ear head­phones deliv­er supe­ri­or sound and styl­ish design. 50mm cups are made from a vari­ety of mate­ri­als, even exot­ic options like zebra­no wood. They have the nec­es­sary acoustic prop­er­ties: good sound insu­la­tion, vibra­tion absorp­tion, min­i­mal sound dis­tor­tion. A head­room of 1800mW ensures detailed and clear stereo sound, deep and tex­tured bass, and close sound.

>

>

Head­phones will reveal their full poten­tial only when work­ing with a sta­tion­ary ampli­fi­er. The head­phones are equipped with ergonom­ic mem­o­ry foam ear cush­ions, the head­band is made of wear-resis­tant soft arti­fi­cial leather. For their seg­ment, the head­phones have an aver­age weight of 385 g. The head­phones can also be used portable. The kit comes with a fab­ric stor­age case and a detach­able 1.2 m cable. The only draw­back of the head­phones is the lack of a hard stor­age case. We can safe­ly say that the Denon AH-D5200 is one of the best head­phones for audio­philes.

Main characteristics

Device type	wired head­phones
Design	full size
Type of acoustic design	closed
Noise sup­pres­sion	par­tial
fre­quen­cy range	5–40000 Hz
Imped­ance	24 ohm
Sen­si­tiv­i­ty	105 dB
Max Pow­er	1800 mW
Mount type	head­band
The weight	385 g

Pros and cons

Qual­i­ty sound, detach­able cable, leather ear cush­ions

No stor­age case

HONOR Earbuds 2 Lite

These are wire­less in-ear head­phones for music lovers with active noise can­cel­la­tion and high-qual­i­ty sound. Each HONOR Ear­buds 2 Lite is equipped with two micro­phones that active­ly can­cel exter­nal noise using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. A long press on the ear­piece will turn on the sound trans­paren­cy mode, then the user will hear the sounds around him.

The case is also a charg­er, a set of ear pads and a USB cable are includ­ed. The styl­ish head­phones are IPX4 water-resis­tant for direct splash pro­tec­tion. How­ev­er, they can­not be sub­merged in water. There is also a touch con­trol sys­tem. Fans of gad­gets with tan­gi­ble but­tons may be uncom­fort­able with the lack of mechan­i­cal con­trol of the gad­get. How­ev­er, this is unlike­ly to get in the way of those who are look­ing for the best head­phones for music lovers.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

Top 3 Best Wired Over-Ear Headphones for Listening to Music

1. Audio-Technica ATH-M50x

The Audio-Tech­ni­ca ATH-M50x full-size wired music head­phones will delight many audio­philes and audio pro­fes­sion­als. Head­phones guar­an­tee sur­round and clear sound with min­i­mal dis­tor­tion. The high sen­si­tiv­i­ty of 99 dB ensures high-qual­i­ty sound even at high vol­umes. The mod­el does a great job with bass.

Music lovers will appre­ci­ate the good pas­sive noise iso­la­tion of the device — 21 dB. Due to the low imped­ance of 38 ohms, the head­phones will delight music lovers with low-pow­er portable ampli­fiers with clear sound, but for full sound you will need a more pow­er­ful source. Three cables includ­ed in the kit allow you to con­nect the mod­el to any sound source.

Thanks to its light weight, stan­dard 45 mm dri­vers and a soft head­band, the mod­el fits per­fect­ly on the head and guar­an­tees a com­fort­able fit. The head­phones are portable and fold­able and come with a leatherette case for stor­age and car­ry­ing.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

Wired head­phones

Many devices get rid of wires, but wired head­phones are the stan­dard of qual­i­ty

2. Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro (250 Ohm)

Pro­fes­sion­al stu­dio head­phones for lis­ten­ing, mix­ing and edit­ing music. High-qual­i­ty noise iso­la­tion and unique Bass Reflex tech­nol­o­gy allow you to delve into the world of music and feel the bass as much as pos­si­ble.

Head­phones are designed for high load, so the imped­ance of the mod­el is quite high — 250 ohms. Music lovers are advised to pur­chase a head­phone ampli­fi­er to lis­ten to music at home. The mod­el is com­pat­i­ble with both portable devices and pro­fes­sion­al stu­dio equip­ment.

The long twist­ed 3‑meter cord can be a nui­sance for nor­mal walk­ing, but can be use­ful when work­ing on stage or in the stu­dio, as well as lis­ten­ing to music at home. The head­band is secure­ly and com­fort­ably fixed, and the remov­able soft velor ear cush­ions fit snug­ly around the ears.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

3 Sennheiser HD 280 Pro

Light­weight, fold­able Sennheis­er HD 280 Pro stu­dio head­phones are a god­send for audio­philes and DJs. Head­phones have a wide fre­quen­cy range and high pow­er. The noise reduc­tion of the mod­el up to 32 dB almost com­plete­ly iso­lates the lis­ten­er from the out­side world.

>

>

Nat­ur­al sound at high imped­ance up to 64 ohms ful­ly unlocks the poten­tial when work­ing with stu­dio audio equip­ment. The mod­el is equipped with eco-leather ear cush­ions and a head­band with soft inserts that are firm­ly attached to the head with­out cre­at­ing dis­com­fort while wear­ing.

How­ev­er, users note that when used for a long time, the eco-leather cups heat up and the ears sweat, which cre­ates incon­ve­nience.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

Top 3 Best Wireless Over-Ear Headphones for Listening to Music

1.Bose QuietComfort 35 II

The Bose Qui­et­Com­fort 35 II wire­less head­phones for music lovers will delight you with smooth, clear sound, deep bass and pow­er­ful noise can­cel­la­tion. ANC (active noise con­trol) active noise iso­la­tion tech­nol­o­gy is ide­al for lis­ten­ing to music in noisy places. Mechan­i­cal con­trol — there are but­tons and a slid­er on the case, or remote con­trol — through the appli­ca­tion.

The mod­el is equipped with the Mul­ti­point func­tion, that is, the head­phones can con­nect to sev­er­al sources at the same time and quick­ly switch between them.

How­ev­er, the out­dat­ed micro-USB con­nec­tor can bring incon­ve­nience, because almost all mod­ern gad­gets are equipped with a USB‑C con­nec­tor. Comes with an audio cable and a spa­cious stor­age case. The great­est dis­sat­is­fac­tion among users is caused by a voice assis­tant and a head­set micro­phone. The first turns on while lis­ten­ing to a song and talks loud­ly, for exam­ple, about the bat­tery lev­el, the sec­ond does not work well out­doors, so you need to raise your voice to talk on the street. The activ­i­ty of the voice assis­tant can be adjust­ed in the appli­ca­tion, with a micro­phone, most like­ly, you will need to put up with it.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

2. Apple AirPods Max

These are wire­less head­phones for music lovers and fans of Apple ecosys­tem prod­ucts. Deep bass and pro­nounced high fre­quen­cies will not leave indif­fer­ent even the most cap­tious music lover.

The head­phones can switch from active noise iso­la­tion mode to trans­par­ent mode, in which exter­nal noise is not blocked. This fea­ture is very use­ful and vital when lis­ten­ing to music on the street or in crowd­ed places. Com­pared to most oth­er head­phones on the mar­ket, Air­Pods Max have less vol­ume head­room, and there­fore less chance for the user to dam­age their hear­ing.

Head­phones are con­trolled through the appli­ca­tion, or mechan­i­cal­ly: on the right cup there is a Dig­i­tal Crown and a rec­tan­gu­lar but­ton. Wire­less over-ear head­phones in most cas­es come with an audio cable for con­nect­ing to sta­tion­ary devices. But the audio cable for Apple Air­Pods Max is pur­chased sep­a­rate­ly, which is quite expen­sive. The Light­ning cable includ­ed in the kit is only suit­able for charg­ing the gad­get.

The head­phones auto­mat­i­cal­ly sync with Apple tech­nol­o­gy, there is no sleep or off but­ton on the case. Dur­ing syn­chro­niza­tion, the head­phones auto­mat­i­cal­ly detect when the user has tak­en the ear­piece out of the ear and auto­mat­i­cal­ly pause play­back.

With Android devices, the head­phones can be con­nect­ed, but not all func­tions will be avail­able.

>

>

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

How to con­nect wire­less head­phones to your phone

Wire­less head­phones are one of the most con­ve­nient inven­tions of the 21st cen­tu­ry.

3. JBL Tune 660NC

The JBL Tune 660NC Active Noise Can­cel­ing Head­phones offer qual­i­ty audio per­for­mance and nat­ur­al, supe­ri­or sound. Head­phones sound equal­ly good both when lis­ten­ing to music on a smart­phone and when work­ing with pro­fes­sion­al equip­ment. The built-in micro­phone does not dis­tort the sound, so the inter­locu­tor hears the speak­er clear­ly. Noise can­cel­la­tion is turned on and off with a sep­a­rate but­ton.

The mod­el is able to work with­out recharg­ing for 44 hours, such a long auton­o­my and low weight will please fans of trav­el­ing away from pow­er sources. The ear­buds charge quick­ly, with five min­utes of charg­ing enough for two hours of active use. The device can also be used as a wired device — a detach­able cable is includ­ed.

The head­phones do not come with a case or cov­er, and the ear cush­ions of the emit­ters can­not be removed and replaced. How­ev­er, the head­phones fold com­pact­ly, the cups rotate 90 degrees and fit com­fort­ably in the pock­et of a jack­et or back­pack. Due to the lack of a smart­phone appli­ca­tion, it is not pos­si­ble to change some of the head­phone set­tings, for exam­ple, you can­not adjust the equal­iz­er to the user’s musi­cal taste.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

Top 3 best wired in-ear headphones for listening to music

1. Westone UM PRO30

The sound is clear and expres­sive, ide­al for lis­ten­ing to instru­men­tal music. The mod­el is equipped with three emit­ters, each of which is focused on its own range.

These are very loud head­phones, the sen­si­tiv­i­ty is 124 dB. The high imped­ance of 56 ohms will not reveal the full dynam­ic range when work­ing with devices of low­er imped­ance. How­ev­er, for a clear­er sound, you can sep­a­rate­ly pur­chase an audio card with a suit­able imped­ance.

Behind-the-ear hooks and a selec­tion of ear cush­ions in dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als and sizes ensure a com­fort­able fit. A con­ve­nient case with holes is suit­able for car­ry­ing on a belt or cara­bin­er, a detach­able cable pro­vides com­pact stor­age.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

2. Shure SE425-CL-EFS

Shure SE425-CL-EFS wired vac­u­um head­phones are equipped with three emit­ters with dif­fer­ent ranges. The mod­el uses two high-qual­i­ty micro­drivers — low-fre­quen­cy and high-fre­quen­cy. Thanks to this tech­nol­o­gy, the head­phones are char­ac­ter­ized by high-qual­i­ty sound and excel­lent detail.

The earplugs per­fect­ly repro­duce live and acoustic sound, but the bass is not heard as well, how­ev­er, as with all rein­forc­ing head­phones. The device has excel­lent sound insu­la­tion — up to 37 dB of exter­nal noise is cut off. The kit comes with a detach­able cable, a hard case and a set of ear pads.

If the cable or one of the head­phones breaks, they can be eas­i­ly replaced. With the right choice of ear cush­ions, you can achieve com­plete sound iso­la­tion.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

3. Apple EarPods (Lightning)

Apple’s flag­ship head­set is known for its sleek design, seam­less head­set and micro­phone, and great music sound. Apple Ear­Pods are com­pat­i­ble with devices that have a Light­ning con­nec­tor.

>

>

Bright sound with min­i­mal dis­tor­tion is pro­vid­ed by a wide fre­quen­cy range and the unique struc­ture of the speak­ers them­selves, which fol­low the shape of the ear.

Sound­proof­ing is weak, as in prin­ci­ple with all in-ear head­phones. Head­phones are equipped with a con­ve­nient head­set remote con­trol on the cable. The mod­el is suit­able for active sports, but you need to be pre­pared for the con­stant tan­gling of wires.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

Top 3 Best Wireless In-Ear Headphones for Listening to Music

1. Huawei FreeBuds 4

The weight­less Huawei Free­Buds 4 wire­less ear­buds lead the pack with sur­round sound and advanced fea­tures. When lis­ten­ing to music, these head­phones have deep bass, detailed fre­quen­cy sep­a­ra­tion and sur­round sound.

The device is equipped with an active noise iso­la­tion func­tion with two modes — com­fort­able and nor­mal (pow­er­ful). The user can select the desired noise reduc­tion mode through the appli­ca­tion on the smart­phone. An equal­iz­er is also avail­able in the appli­ca­tion for cus­tom bass and tre­ble set­tings. The audio opti­miza­tion fea­ture will adjust the vol­ume of speech in video or audio based on the user’s hear­ing.

The head­phones are equipped with the Mul­ti­point func­tion (con­nect­ing to sev­er­al devices at the same time), IPX4 mois­ture pro­tec­tion, a posi­tion sen­sor — an accelerom­e­ter and a motion sen­sor — when the ear­phone is tak­en out of the ear, it auto­mat­i­cal­ly turns off.

The use of in-ear head­phones does not pro­vide for the pres­ence of ear cush­ions, so it is impos­si­ble to pre­dict in advance whether the shape of the mod­el will fit the shape of the user’s ears.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

Wire­less head­phones

Ide­al head­phone for gym, walk­ing and trav­el

2. Jabra Elite Active 75t

Wire­less ear­buds for qual­i­ty music lovers who lead a sporty lifestyle. They are equipped with four micro­phones for active noise iso­la­tion. The mod­el is more suit­able for sports fans, it is equipped with motion and posi­tion sen­sors, a trans­paren­cy mode and a small auton­o­my of up to 7.5 hours.

Users note detailed sound and good accent­ed bass. How­ev­er, the micro­phone does not work well in strong winds: the inter­locu­tor will not hear the speak­er. You can set the equal­iz­er in a con­ve­nient mobile appli­ca­tion. The com­pact charg­ing case of the device fits in your pock­et. Excel­lent con­nec­tion qual­i­ty with a smart­phone elim­i­nates sound inter­rup­tion, as the range of the device reach­es 10 m.

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

3.OPPO Enco Free2 W52

Wire­less in-ear head­phones OPPO Enco Free2 W52 repro­duce high-qual­i­ty and loud sound. In addi­tion, the mod­el is equipped with three micro­phones for active noise reduc­tion up to 42 dB, trans­paren­cy mode and touch con­trol. The degree of sig­nal ampli­fi­ca­tion can be adjust­ed indi­vid­u­al­ly.

Blue­tooth 5.2 tech­nol­o­gy trans­mits the sig­nal quick­ly and sta­bly, elim­i­nat­ing audio delay and inter­fer­ence. The pack­age includes: head­phones, charg­ing case and USB‑C charg­ing cable. The main dis­ad­van­tages: sound dis­tor­tion in head­set mode and at high vol­ume lev­els.

>

>

Main characteristics

Pros and cons

How to choose headphones for music

The elec­tron­ics mar­ket is over­flow­ing with dif­fer­ent head­phone mod­els. To buy the best, you need to ana­lyze a num­ber of para­me­ters, while not for­get­ting the price. Not always the mod­el of a well-known com­pa­ny jus­ti­fies its inflat­ed cost and vice ver­sa. When choos­ing the per­fect head­phones for lis­ten­ing to music, you need to con­sid­er:

• Pur­pose of use. Decide when and under what con­di­tions you will lis­ten to music: on the run, at home or sit­ting in front of the mon­i­tor screen? A music lover will choose high-qual­i­ty wired closed head­phones, a sound engi­neer will choose wired mon­i­tor head­phones, an ath­lete will pre­fer wire­less ear­buds, and an office work­er will choose in-ear wired ones.
• Resis­tance. The sound qual­i­ty depends on the imped­ance val­ue of the head­phones and the device with which they will be used. An approx­i­mate fre­quen­cy range suit­able for a com­put­er or smart­phone is 10–36 ohms. For pro­fes­sion­al audio equip­ment, this para­me­ter is much high­er. The high­er the imped­ance, the bet­ter the sound will be.
• Sen­si­tiv­i­ty. The high­er the sound pres­sure lev­el in dB, the loud­er the head­phones will play and vice ver­sa.
• Noise sup­pres­sion. If you need to com­plete­ly iso­late your­self from the out­side world to enjoy your favorite music, choose either closed-back head­phones that com­plete­ly iso­late the ear canal, or mod­els with active noise can­cel­la­tion. But be care­ful when using this fea­ture out­doors.
• Addi­tion­al func­tions. Mod­ern head­phones are turn­ing into inde­pen­dent gad­gets with a stan­dard set of func­tions from dial­ing a phone num­ber to a voice assis­tant inside. If nec­es­sary, you can buy a more advanced mod­el.
• Musi­cal pref­er­ences and own ear. Dif­fer­ent musi­cal styles sound dif­fer­ent in head­phones. There are no exact instruc­tions for choos­ing a mod­el for a rock or opera lover, so rely on your ears. Lis­ten to your favorite song on dif­fer­ent head­phones and decide which devices are more pleas­ing to your ears.

What are headphones for listening to music

By way of signal transmission

Accord­ing to the method of sig­nal trans­mis­sion, head­phones are divid­ed into wired and wire­less. The for­mer work by con­nect­ing direct­ly to the device using a wire through which the sig­nal is trans­mit­ted, the lat­ter work autonomous­ly, the sig­nal is trans­mit­ted using the blue­tooth com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­to­col. There are also com­bined mod­els with a detach­able wire.

The main advan­tage of wire­less head­phones is the free­dom of move­ment of the user, they are com­pact and light­weight. How­ev­er, there are a num­ber of points on which wire­less head­phones lose to wired ones. In the absence of a sta­ble com­mu­ni­ca­tion sig­nal, there may be inter­rup­tions in the oper­a­tion of the head­phones and a decrease in the sound trans­mis­sion speed. In addi­tion, wire­less head­phones require con­stant recharg­ing and close atten­tion from the user, because they can fall out and get lost.

Wired head­phones are a clas­sic acces­so­ry. They are hard­er to lose, they do not need recharg­ing. Because of the high-qual­i­ty and clear sound, sound engi­neers pre­fer wired head­phones. The main dis­ad­van­tage of this type of head­phones is the wire itself. He con­stant­ly gets con­fused in his pock­ets, the plug breaks and one of the head­phones may sud­den­ly stop work­ing or start to dis­tort the sound.

By type of construction

Intracanal or vacuum (“plugs”)

From the name it is clear that these are head­phones that are insert­ed direct­ly into the ear canal. They do not allow noise from the out­side to pen­e­trate and spoil the clean sound inside. Usu­al­ly, in-ear head­phones come with soft ear tips or sil­i­cone ear tips. Head­phones with sil­i­cone tips are called vac­u­um. They fit clos­er to the ear and do not allow the head­phones to fall out.

Due to the com­plete noise iso­la­tion, in-ear head­phones can be life-threat­en­ing. A per­son should hear when a car or a dubi­ous per­son is approach­ing him. Also, the dis­ad­van­tage of “gags” is phys­i­cal dis­com­fort with pro­longed use, for exam­ple, a headache.

Plug-in (“inserts”, “droplets”, “buttons”)

In-ear head­phones, like in-ear head­phones, are insert­ed into the auri­cle, but not so deeply. Often sup­plied with soft foam ear cush­ions for com­fort­able use and noise can­cel­la­tion.

Overhead

On-ear head­phones are put on the ears, press­ing them from the out­side. The speak­ers are locat­ed far from the auri­cle, so the full sound of the head­phones is pos­si­ble at high vol­umes. They are fas­tened with an arc-shaped head­band or behind the ear (arc above the ear). Over-ear head­phones are more com­mon­ly used with a com­put­er.

full size

Out­ward­ly sim­i­lar to over­head, dif­fer only in fix­a­tion. These are large head­phones that com­plete­ly cov­er the ears. They are easy to con­nect to any device. Ear cush­ions pro­vide good sound iso­la­tion, large speak­ers — clear repro­duc­tion.

>

>

Monitor

This is an enlarged ver­sion of full-size head­phones. The main dif­fer­ences: a mas­sive head­band, a ring-shaped long cord and con­sid­er­able weight. These head­phones can hard­ly be called portable, although they do not need this func­tion. They are used by pro­fes­sion­als in record­ing stu­dios.