Trying to land on a singular best pick the best wireless earbuds is a little impractical in 2019. When you walk around any city or airports, AirPods, Jabra Elite 65ts, and Galaxy Buds are impossible to miss whether original or fake. If you own many Apple devices and AirPods fit you well, there’s your answer. Similarly, Samsung customers might lean toward the Galaxy Buds for their deeper level of integration with Galaxy smartphones. Or maybe your biggest deciding factor is budget. Yes, the products listed below are on the expensive side.
Over the last year, we’ve seen new wireless earbuds making significant leaps in battery life and connection reliability. The days of intermittent music cutouts are pretty much over.
Note that there are some earbuds that I’ve left out here (including the Bose SoundSport Free, Pixel Buds 2, AirPods Pro) because their manufacturers have already announced or rumored to updated models soon. The Pixel Buds 2 have just been announced, so we won’t know exactly how they sound or how well they’ll work till 2020, since Google won’t be shipping them until then.
Best wireless earbuds: Sony WF-1000XM3
- Earbuds weight: 8.5 grams each
- Charging case size: 5.6 x 4.7 x 2.5 inches
- Battery: six hours with noise canceling and eight hours without (up to 24 hours with charging case; 32 hours with noise cancellation turned off)
- Price: UGX 1.1m ($229.99)
Sony’s latest iteration of wireless earbuds are perhaps the best. They look like an antiquated Bluetooth earpiece, granted a much more attractive one than those gadgets of old. That said, Sony has a lot going for it to justify that design. It’s got amazing noise cancellation, incredible battery life, and superb sound quality. (It’s also one of the more pricey options.)
Beats Powerbeats Pro
- Earbuds weight: 10.2 grams each
- Charging case size: N/A
- Battery: nine hours (up to 24 hours with charging case)
- Price: UGX 900k ($249.95)
The Powerbeats Pro take many of the best things about AirPods and improve upon key pillars like sound quality, battery life, and fit. They can keep playing for up to nine hours of continuous listening, have easy-to-use physical buttons on each earbud (including volume controls), and offer a much richer music output with a wider soundstage and pleasing balance between treble, mids, and bass. Yes, there’s an extra kick for the latter, but the Powerbeats Pro work great for all music genres and deserve to be used everywhere — not just when you’re sweating in the gym.
Apple AirPods 2
- Earbud weight: 4 grams each
- Charging case size: 1.7 x 0.84 x 2.1 inches
- Battery: five hours (up to 24 hours with charging case)
- Price: UGX 740k ($199.99 ) and UGX 600k ($159.99 without wireless charging case)
These are the most common brands. Apple’s second-generation AirPods don’t make any significant upgrades to sound quality, and their design is exactly the same as the originals. So if they didn’t fit in your ears then, they won’t now.
Apple’s take on the earbuds refashioned its EarPods design into a wireless pair of headphones by simply clipping the cord, allowing them to maintain the company’s long-iconic earbud design.
Microsoft Surface Buds
- Earbuds weight: 7 grams each
- Charging case size: 2.9 x 1.3 x 1 inches
- Battery life: eight hours (up to 24 hours with charging case)
- Price: UGX 930k ($250)
These may not be out yet, but microsoft surely isn’t going to win any awards in the fashionable design department with its Surface Buds; they’re gigantic, and their design is supposed to facilitate more granular touch interactions. Then again, Microsoft isn’t really going for sleek and stylish.
The company made the Surface Buds to work as an office tool as much as a music-playing device, so they can live transcribe what you’re saying as you give a presentation, then summon Cortana with a long press on the side of the buds. But don’t worry. If you’re wearing these around in public, we’ll assume you’re just taking a really important call.
Sennheiser True Momentum Wireless
- Earbuds weight: 6.5 grams each
- Charging case size: 3.1 x 1.8 x 1.4 inches
- Battery: four hours (up to 12 hours with charging case)
- Price: UGX 1.1m ($229.99)
What Sennheiser’s Momentum True Wireless earbuds lack in aesthetics, they make up for in sound quality — at a price. These wireless earbuds as having “the best, purest sound of any true wireless buds yet.” That remains true today. They’re a joy for the ears, but Sennheiser’s extremely premium ($300) earbuds are foiled by a tendency to quickly drain when in their charging case.
Samsung Galaxy Buds
- Earbuds weight: 5.7 grams each
- Charging case size: 1.5 x 2.8 x 1 inches
- Battery: six hours (up to 13 hours with charging case)
- Price: UGX 480k ($129.99)
Samsung’s Galaxy Buds have a discreet design and can last a long time on a charge, but their audio quality is fairly average, and they’re awful for phone calls. But if you’re thinking of buying them standalone at their normal price, well, that’s a harder decision to justify.
Granted, these are among the cheapest high-end name brand wireless ear buds you can buy, so it’s understandable that you’d take some hits in the design, comfort, and sound department.
Jaybird Vista
- Earbuds weight: 5.9 grams each
- Charging case size: 2.9 x 1.4 x 0.9 inches
- Battery life: six hours (up to 16 with charging case)
- Price: UGX 665k ($179.99)
They fit snugly and have a nice small profile, their charging case is wonderfully efficient and portable, and they offer extensive EQ controls for customizing sound to your liking. Some might be turned off by the fact that the Vistas only support the basic Bluetooth SBC codec and not even AAC, but they’re tuned well enough that I don’t notice any obvious quality degradation.
They’re pretty low-key in the design department, and the relative low weight puts them on par with the standard consumer earbuds from other tech companies, but with the added benefit of IPX7 waterproofing.
Amazon Echo Buds
- Earbuds weight: 7.6 grams each
- Charging case size: 2.2 x 3 x 1.1 inches
- Battery life: five hours (up to 20 with the charging case)
- Price: UGX 480k ($129.99)
Amazon entered the wireless earbud market last month, just a week before Microsoft’s entrance with its Surface Buds. But where Microsoft went higher-end and business-focused, Amazon is going for cheaper and more consumer-friendly. The Echo Buds look just fine, if not a bit on the larger end.
