Sound quality is important to me. Whether I'm listening to hi-res mixes on Tidal or making music of my own, I want to hear it in the absolute best detail I can. That's why, during Prime Day this July, I finally pulled the trigger and bought the Sennheiser HD 660S2. But since then, I've started to wonder whether getting a DAC is essential to unlocking the loftiest realms of sonic sophistication.

While the Sennheiser HD 660S2 aren't the most expensive headphones I've ever owned, I'd argue they are the most premium, sonically speaking. Compared to wireless headphones where a decent chunk of your spend is going on Bluetooth chipsets, ANC and fancy features, wired headphones such as the HD 660S2 are a pure audio play. Pretty much every cent you spend goes towards their engineering for sound quality.

As a result, it's not surprising that my initial response to these cans has been positive. They don't have the most strongly flavored sound profile — for example, there wasn't throbbing bass pounding my ear drums like Neil Peart trying to slaughter a fleet-footed fly crawling across his skins. But their frequency balance is as judicious as any of the best headphones, neglecting no part of the spectrum.

Another huge factor is their open-backed design. As they let in near enough every perceivable external sound, the idea of using them on the subway brings me out in a cold sweat — ain't nobody there to hear fellow passengers discuss nasty medical ailments in graphic detail before breakfast. But that same transparency gives them a seriously spacious sound that allows each element a decent amount of room to breathe, already making them a great upgrade over their closed-back cousins.

Perhaps the biggest win in their corner is the very fact that they're wired. As they don't have to contend with the limited bit- and sample rates of Bluetooth headphones, they're free from lossy compression (in themselves at least — they can't help your source material if it's not up to the job), meaning they can maintain the original source's resolution and detail. While that might matter less when you're using a flimsy $30 / £20 / AU$40 pair of cans, in more premium headphones, you can absolutely hear lossless formats the way they're meant to be heard.

This all comes with a pretty serious asterisk though. As alluded to above, unlike their wireless rivals, wired headphones aren't packing their own DAC, meaning those digital files you're listening to need to be converted to analog audio before passing along that wire. And while laptops — and the few phones that still have 3.5mm jacks — have their own built-in DACs, these usually lack the power to drive heavy duty cans like the HD 660S2.

Don't get me wrong: while I knew the Sennheisers wouldn't necessarily be giving me their A-game without a DAC, their sound has still been impressive, which is no mean feat. But it has started me wondering: what am I missing? Could one of the best DACs help me unlock the loftiest realms of audio quality?

I resolved to find out.

DAC-seat driver

Given iFi created many of our picks for our best DACs guide, it seemed a sensible place to start and I eventually settled on the iFi Zen DAC 3. Not only is this portable DAC capable of audio resolutions of up to 32-bit/768kHz, its 390mW amplifier should have plenty of power to drive the 300-ohm resistance of the Sennheiser HD 660S2.

Setting it up is simplicity itself. All I had to do was hook it up to my laptop with a USB-C cable, plug the HD 660S2's chonky 6.3mm jack in its front port and I was all set to start comparing the quality of some tunes.

Mid-range frequencies fared surprisingly well, even without a DAC. During Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes by Paul Simon, I felt like I was sat right at the heart of Ladysmith Black Mambazo's choir and there was some really tasty detail to the low toms in the percussion. Once I'd plugged in the iFi, there was some improvement, with a little more dynamism to those vocals and a bit more spaciousness in the mix, but the changes were very subtle.

Treble is a similar story. Before I plugged the DAC in, Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac sounded bright and crisp — the strumming of the guitars felt suitably tight and had a decent amount of bite, without feeling brittle. Hooking the the HD 660S up to the DAC didn't substantially transform the treble, but the iFi did allow for even more low-end heft to the track without overshadowing the pinpoint definition of those guitars. Honestly, this is probably the first time I've ever felt like this track actually sounded bassy.

In light of this, you won't be surprised to hear that low-end performance is where iFi's DAC made the biggest difference, making Otomo by Bonobo sound truly ridiculous. Even without the DAC, the HD 660S2 made the bass sound warm and punchy, without harming the clarity of the percussion or those tribal choral vocals. But when using Zen DAC 3, the impact bass during the drop was unreal — the sub bass is so strong it feels like it hits you right in the brain stem.

This increased low-end clarity and dynamism also helps when it comes to precision and separation too. Deprived of DAC, the HD 660S2 did an excellent job of rendering I Need the Night by London Grammar — those reverberant vocals sounded wonderfully detailed and gorgeously expressed, even when the beat kicked in. But with a DAC picking up the slack, the sustained guitars and bass were able to shine more without encroaching on the vocals, while the beat still felt suitably punchy.

So the iFi Zen DAC 3 definitely added some spit and polish to my tunes.

DAC to reality

Still, all of the improvements I've noted above feel incremental at best. Attempting to jack up my listening experience with a DAC resulted in what I'd class more as a 5% improvement, rather than the revolutionary experience I was expecting. So what gives?

Turns out, some sacred cows need to be put out to pasture. While there are plenty of people who will swear blind that you need a discrete DAC for a pair of high-impedance headphones like the HD 660S2 (which come with a rating of 300 ohms), that's not actually always true. Because, if you're lucky, you may find that your gear's built-in DAC is plenty powerful enough on its own.

I should have dug into the specs of my hardware a little more. Both the MacBook Air M5 I use at home and the MacBook Pro M4 I use at work have a pretty sophisticated DAC built-in — if you're driving some low-impedance wired earbuds, it'll deliver a far lower voltage but when you pop in a pair of audiophile-grade headphones like the Sennheiser HD 660S2, it'll deliver substantially more power. That's why these cans sounded so great out of the box to me.

While that's great news for me — and for anyone else who's happy to drop $1,299 / £1,299 / AU$2,099 on a MacBook just as an expensive network audio player — it's not that illuminating on whether your more humble devices will benefit from the help of an external device.

So I guess it's DAC to the drawing board.

To hell and DAC

Like all great technologists, I know every catastrophic failure is just a fantastic opportunity to pivot. So I redesigned my experiment on the fly. I grabbed one of our testing smartphones — the skilled yet affordable OnePlus Nord CE5 — plugged in a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter and jacked in the Sennheiser HD 660S2. And boy, was it a... whatever the opposite of a revelation is.

When drip-fed on the meager power a phone outputs, the HD 660S2 sound like a completely different pair of headphones. As you'd expect, their output is much quieter and mids lack impact. On Painted Wolf by O’Flynn, the Rhodes-style keyboard and strings sounded far more hollowed out than when listening with the DAC, which gave that fiddle part real body and texture.

Without the Zen DAC, the phone struggled to deliver much treble either. Thanks to its bright presentation, Crash into Me by Dave Matthews Band quickly shows up any glassiness or sibilance in a pair of headphones high-end, yet here it sounded rolled off and lacking in confidence. Conversely, once hooked up to iFi Zen DAC 3, the HD 660S2 made each of those densely layered guitar parts feel distinct and detailed — I could practically hear the vibration of the plectrum as it scrapes over the strings.

One area I'll give the Sennheisers their due though is when it comes to bass. Even without a lot of power behind them, the low end of Listen by Pola & Bryson and Goddard. still sounded pretty tasty — those snarling D&B bass warps still felt deep and beautifully detailed and there was a soupçon of sub beneath it all. The DAC still delivered here too though, swaddling you in lush pads, while that bassline genuinely sounds like you’re being hit full-force in the chest by a Funktion One rig.

It isn't just the frequency balance that felt off either: the lack of DAC limited the HD 660S2's to present its soundstage with quite as much dynamism or distinction. Playing Breathe This Air by Jon Hopkins with the Zen DAC 3 plugged in, I found the wonderful interplay of piano strikes across the stereo field to be genuinely breathtaking. Thanks to the Sennheisers' open-back design, they were still able to get a decent stereo spread without the iFi's help but the pinging of each element across the soundstage felt considerably less dynamic than before.

So a DAC absolutely makes a huge difference. If you're playing music off a cheaper or more portable device, any increased investment in higher-quality headphones may well be wiped out if you don't pair it with a discrete DAC. But don't assume you need one by default, as the days of all built-in DACs being dreadful are well behind us.

JBL Live Buds 4 review

Ever wondered what life would be like if your earbuds had a touchscreen case? OK, you probably haven’t, but stick with me here. The JBL Live Buds 4 are the new generation of the audio specialist’s in-ears that pair with a smart charging case, enabling you to adjust sound settings, adapt ANC, and more — all without having to download a companion app.

They’re a standout model in a congested market. The Live Buds 4 also sit within JBL's wider Live range, which is itself fairly congested in that it also includes the stemmed JBL Live Beam, plus the open-fit JBL Live Flex. This specific model, though — the Live Buds 4 — comes with a number of claimed upgrades over its predecessor, including enhanced ANC, new “fidelity drivers,” and boosted call quality. But are they worth the money and can they compete with options in our best earbuds roundup? Here’s what I think after three weeks of testing.

We’ve got to start with the smart charging case, which has a revamped UI for a smoother, more complete user experience. The touchscreen is undoubtedly small, but it's highly responsive, and there are clear menus to access EQ tweaking, ANC modes, appearance options, and even tools like a flashlight and timer. I sometimes preferred using the JBL Headphones app for the ease of a larger screen, and the ability to set a custom wallpaper from my photo gallery, but for on-the-go tweaks, the charging case is a neat option — even if it is arguably a little bit gimmicky. But hey, I like a good gimmick now and then.

Beyond what I’ve already mentioned, the case features a lot of fun features, like a smart-talk option, which picks up voices if you want to have a conversation while keeping your buds in. There are also customizable touch controls for the buds themselves (which I found to be reactive and convenient), and settings for how your voice sounds on a call, including a bright, natural, and powerful option.

Speaking of calls, JBL has included 6 mics in these earbuds, as well as its new Perfect Calls 2.0 tech, which makes use of AI to keep your voice clear, even in noisier environments. As I mentioned in my JBL Live Beam 4 review (I know, it's easy to get confused with names), I did find my voice to be relatively clear on calls and when taking a recording, but unfortunately I didn’t get the premium clarity I was expecting. There was some noticeable sibilance in my recording, and I also found that some background noises remained more prominent than anticipated.

I also want to talk about active noise cancellation, which has been improved for the Live 4 series. Overall, ANC is decent, but it’s still not up to the standards offered by buds from Apple and Bose. When out and about or on public transport, I could still make out background chatter, and in the office, typing sounds and doors closing were still audible. Sounds are still dulled effectively, and ANC is by no means bad — but if you’re expecting a curtain of silence when using the Live Buds 4, you may be left wanting more.

One area that the Buds 4 totally excel in, though, is sound quality. For earbuds in this price-range, the Buds 4 are excellent, dishing out impactful bass, clean mids, and expressive highs, impressive handling of dynamics, and good attention to detail.

When tuning into Labor of Love by Ned Doheny, I was struck by the beautifully textured and weighted acoustic guitars, which were well separated from clear, tonally accurate vocals. Subtle percussive details also came through beautifully, and funky bass sounded impactful without drowning out other sounds across the frequency range. What’s more, by activating the higher-res Bluetooth codec, LDAC, I could make out some more intricacies in the mid-range, with almost life-like guitars taking the listening experience to the next level.

The Live Buds 4 proved to cope brilliantly with any genre, though. With a deeper, more energetic track, such as Don’t Compare Yourself by Kolter, the pumping deep bass hit phenomenally hard, and reached down to tremendous depths for this level. Bassy synths sounded textured and controlled, lively drums sounded articulate and precise, and emotive vocals, while impactful, never overwhelmed the mix.

I have very few complaints about the sound, and it’s super-simple to customize it to your liking with the EQ settings on the charging case or JBL headphones app. But one thing that could’ve been better was the spatial audio setting, which just lacked the clarity and openness of the standard tuning. I’d also argue that the soundstage is relatively broad on the Live Buds 4 anyway, so you should just keep this mode off if you ask me.

Let’s also talk design, as this is the main area where the Live Buds 4 differentiate themselves from the Beam and Flex. They take up a small, snug in-ear feel, which is ideal for those who prefer earbuds without the stems. I found the buds to be incredibly comfortable, and had no issue keeping them in for multiple hours at a time. They’re also highly secure, never feeling as if they’ll fall out of your ears.

The buds also have a good standard of build, the case has an attractive, textured finish, and the model can be purchased in a wide range of colors. The buds are also IP55-rated, making them splashproof. Some rivals offer superior IP57 protection, but IP55 is enough to keep your buds safe on a rainy day.

One more difference the Buds 4 have, is that they offer the least amount of battery life in the Live 4 lineup, with 8 hours of playtime with the buds when ANC is on, and up to 40 hours with the case. That’s still a good amount of playtime, and competes well with major rivals.

So, are the JBL Live Buds 4 worth their £179.99 / AU$269.95 (about $240) asking price? For me, it’s an emphatic yes. Of course, they’re not the cheapest buds on the market, but they’re also a fair bit cheaper than big-name rivals like the AirPods Pro 3 and Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds Gen 2. They also sound fantastic for the money, with the nifty charging case only adding more value. Sure, they could do better in the call quality and ANC department, but ultimately, they still offer decent enough quality in those areas.

JBL Live Buds 4 review: price & release date

• List price of £179.99 / AU$269.95 (about $240)
• Revealed in May 2026

The JBL Live Buds 4 were revealed in May 2026, alongside their siblings, the JBL Live Beam 4 and the JBL Live Flex 4. They released about two years after their predecessor, the JBL Live Buds 3.

They come in at £179.99 / AU$269.95 (about $240), which is the same as their predecessors cost at the point of launch (in the UK). We’re yet to catch wind of a release date and pricing for the US, but we’ll update this review accordingly if and when further details emerge.

These buds are available at a relatively affordable price for the quality on offer, coming in at a lower cost than rivals such as the Apple AirPods Pro 3 and the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds Gen 2.

Our top pick for wireless earbuds whatever your budget is the Technics EAH-AZ100, at $299 / £259 (around AU$478). So at quite a bit less than those figures, the JBL Live Buds 4 can be yours for a shade under flagship money — and that's a very good thing in terms of value.

That said, the Huawei Freebuds Pro 5 are our current 'best mid-range' pick in that detailed guide, and those excellent buds retail for the same £179.99 fee as the JBL option. They don't have a smart charging case, but still, food for thought…

JBL Live Buds 4 review: specs

Should I buy the JBL Live Buds 4?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

JBL Live Buds 4 review: also consider

How I tested the JBL Live Buds 4

• Tested over the course of three weeks
• Used in the office, on walks, and on public transport
• Mainly streamed tunes over Tidal, but tapped into Spotify too

I spent three weeks putting the JBL Live Buds 4 through their paces. During this time, I listened to countless hours of music, messed around with everything the smart charging case had to offer, and exhausted their various features.

As always, I made sure to use these buds in a range of environments — including at home or at the office, but also when out on walks near busy roads, and when on public transport like buses and trains. When listening to tunes, I predominantly streamed music over Tidal on my Xiaomi 17 phone, but I also jumped into Spotify now and then. I made sure to soft through the multi-genre TechRadar reference playlist, but also bumped a bunch of tunes from my personal library.

More generally, I’ve spent years testing audio gear here at TechRadar, where I serve as a Senior Reviews Writer. I’ve reviewed everything from premium wireless headphones like the Sony 1000X The Collexion to hulking party speakers like the Marshall Bromley 750. Of course, I’ve also tested many pairs of wireless earbuds, so I know exactly what it takes for a model to stand out in a highly competitive market.

• Read TechRadar’s reviews guarantee
• First reviewed: August 2026

Huge online retailer Amazon and Labor Day Weekend are a match made in heaven when it comes to deals. And right now, you can score big savings on some of our top-rated earbuds and headphones this year, including (only the most popular earbuds in the world) AirPods Pro 3 for 20% off and, if it's cans you want, Sony's five-star WH-1000XM5 noise canceling over-ears at a huge 50% off!

• See every Labor Day deal live now at Amazon

I've included everything from your entry-level, 'spare pair' buds to keep in a jacket pocket if your main set is caught short for battery, right up to premium over-ears you'll want to keep around your neck even when you're not listening to them.

Every product listed here gets a strong TechRadar recommendation, and features (or did feature until very recently) as some of the best earbuds or best noise-cancelling headphones in those specific guides.

One note on the Bose QuietComfort headphones down to $199 in this roundup: these are the very good, four-star late 2023 set and not the all-new August 2026 launch (although, check out that green colorway!). It's still a top deal, I just want you to be sure about what you're buying.

Have a browse through all of my recommendations below to see if there's a deal on a set of headphones, on-ears, open earbuds or regular in-ears that perfectly meets your needs. Happy shopping — and enjoy the music!

9 best earbuds/headphones deals in Amazon's Labor Day sale

Indian tech brand Noise has teamed up with Bose for a brand new pair of open earbuds, the Noise Master Buds Open.

These clip-on buds are a first for Noise in the open ear segment, but join its existing Master series lineup, that includes over-ear headphones and in-ear buds — which were also built alongside Bose.

And lucky me — I’ve already tried the Master Buds Open for myself. I got hands on with the brand new open earbuds at IFA Berlin 2026, and spoke with Noise about its collaboration with Bose and the fancy features crammed into its latest creation.

Bose sound at an affordable price… kinda

Allow me to start with something of a disclaimer. The Master Buds Open aren’t a fully fledged Bose product, they simply feature ‘Sound by Bose’ technology. This means that the audio giant helped to tune the sound on the Master Buds Open, and there’s a specific Sound by Bose EQ option for the model.

We’ve seen other brands use Sound by Bose tech in the last year or so, with Baseus making use of a partnership in its Inspire line (including the XH1 headphones), and Skullcandy teaming up with the ANC giant for products including the Method 360 ANC (which we rated very highly).

However, Noise has a closer relationship with Bose than most, as the latter has invested in the Indian company across recent years, and the pair have already developed a number of audio products together, including the Noise Master Buds 2 and Master Buds Max.

Although the new Master Buds Open don’t quite offer the exceptional build and sound quality we’ve come to expect from products like the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds Gen 2, this collaboration certainly heightens the perceived value of Noise’s affordable audio gear, and helps it to stand out as a relatively recent entrant in competitive markets like the US, UK, and EU.

Getting hands on

Anyway, let’s talk about my time getting hands-on with the Noise Master Buds Open.

I have to say, when the buds were brought over to me, they made an excellent first impression. They come in a beautiful case with appealing metallic details, and the buds themselves look incredibly sleek and almost futuristic — especially in the slick Silver colorway.

In use, the Master Buds Open also felt supremely comfortable. I find that some clip-on earbuds have the tendency to either feel a bit tight, or almost too loose, but in my short time with the Master Buds Open they seemed to master the clip-on feel, with a secure yet comfortable fit and almost weightless on-ear sensation.

Sonically, the Master Buds Open performed about as well as I expected, although I should preface my thoughts by noting that the unit I tried was a prototype, and so the Master Buds Open may sound a little different at launch.

Naturally, I made use of the Sound by Bose EQ option, and I’d say the earbuds performed decently overall. A representative played me a bit of I’m Alive by Céline Dion, and I was treated to clear vocals, with fairly prominent bass (as far as open ears go), and well-separated guitars in the mid-range.

I also had the chance to play some songs of my choosing, and switched over to Can’t Resist by Jamback. In this house track, I realized that treble was pretty forward, meaning that drums higher in the frequency range were particularly prominent. Bass was also decently weighted, although you won’t get the pounding low-end that some of the best wireless earbuds can provide.

Was I blown away by the audio on offer from the Master Buds Open? Perhaps not — at least not at this stage. But they did perform pretty well overall, especially when you consider their price. I was told that the Master Buds Open will release for about €119 (around $140 / £100), which is relatively affordable — especially when you consider that Bose’s Ultra Open Earbuds have a list price of $299 / £299 / AU$449.95.

A surprising highlight

While the Master Buds Open will undoubtedly face stiff competition from similarly priced rivals like the Anker Soundcore AeroClip, they did impress me with their comfort and looks.

But one thing struck me more than any other: their surprisingly feature-rich companion app. Not only did I find Noise’s app to be incredibly easy to use and navigate, but I also couldn’t believe how much functionality it had to offer.

There’s a spatial audio setting, designed to offer “dynamic and realistic” audio, as well as a Gaming Mode if you need low-latency audio — a nice touch for keen mobile gamers.

On top of this, the Master Buds Open have customizable touch controls, multi-point, Find My Device capabilities, and a Focus Mode, which locks the buds’ controls when you just want to zone in on your tunes and avoid accidental touch commands. Of course, there are also EQ settings, including a fully customizable equalizer, and mics built in for taking calls on the go.

Noise was also keen to show me that the Master Buds have a built-in AI assistant. This enables you to ask questions with your voice, read chat history, and transcribe meetings or discussions. That’s quite a lot of functionality for buds in this price-range.

While there’s no specific launch date for the Master Buds Open just yet, Noise has said that they’re set to launch on their website and with some major online retailers from late September 2026.

IFA is, as you'll probably know, a huge annual tech expo held in Berlin. It's also where some of audio-slash-hi-fi's biggest hitters unveil their latest wearable innovations — and this year is one of the best (and most varied) product lineups we've seen to date.

Here, I've chosen the top headphones and earbuds TechRadar saw at IFA 2026 — let me assure you, each member of our team got their 10,000 steps in during the first two days of the event to bring you this (and some of us worked feverishly back in the office, too).

A few of the products in this roundup were nominated for our 25-strong IFA 2026 'Best in Show' awards — and some even won! You'll see the little badge in the top corner of the image, beside their entry.

There's a separate piece for the main winners, though. This missive hones in on the new, noteworthy, and sometimes even slightly 1970s-retro earbuds (Noise, I'm looking at you) and headphones.

Sometimes, I've linked out to our more detailed coverage and early hands-ons of the product, because it's tough to get too granular within this multi-product roundup format.

Ready? Strap in, you're off to Berlin. Willkommen!

Noise Master Buds Open with Sound by Bose

Did you want IFA to showcase a lesser-known audio specialist now working with Bose to produce a set of open earbuds that look like something from the original 1960s Star Trek television series? Of course you did. That's why we love IFA.

What you're looking at is the Noise Master Buds Open from Noise, which is actually a leading Indian connected lifestyle and smart technology brand, sometimes known as 'Gonoise', according to the company's website. And the company now wants to go global.

The headline grabber here is, of course, that they're developed in collaboration with Bose and feature Sound by Bose technology, but for me the Master Buds Open's ergonomic clip-on design in such a premium case is also worthy of note.

Co-founder of Noise, Amit Khatri, said at the launch, “The Master Series was envisioned as our definitive expression of premium audio — bringing together thoughtful design, exceptional sound and meaningful consumer experiences. The response to Master Buds, Master Buds 2 and Master Buds Max has been phenomenal, and with Master Buds Open, we are taking the portfolio into its natural next chapter."

Noise has yet to confirm pricing or full specifications for Master Buds Open, but says those details will follow closer to launch slated for late September 2026. And I, for one, will be waiting.

Belkin SoundForm Isolate and SoundFrom Dot Buds

Anyone even mildly interested in keeping their tech charged up will know Belkin for its power banks (and probably phone cases and cables), but its range is diversifying — and it now includes some potential winners in the audio sector.

At IFA 2026, the brand unveiled two new super-affordable pairs of earbuds, each with ANC and asking prices far below any rivals.

The SoundForm Isolate Buds in the images above sell for a very palatable £39.99 (about $54, AU$80), and the SoundForm Dot Buds go for even less, at £29.99 (around $40, AU$60).

True, those names are meaty, but after a quick listen in Berlin, we can tell you that for this money, the audio is too.

Beyerdynamic Aventho Y

Do you need to 'find your why' when it comes to enjoying music? Actually, me neither, but Beyerdynamic's new over-ears are very affordable if a strict budget is your reason for considering them over more flagship sets.

Beyerdynamic is also calling this new model its "most personal headphone yet, designed to adapt to the way you listen," and as you'd expect in 2026, there's active noise cancellation on the menu. But one particular claim on the spec sheet — "more than 90 hours of battery life" — is what really got my attention.

Those four colorways, listed as 'Liquid Black, Blue Fusion, Soft Jade, and Peach Blush,' are certainly striking, but it's not unusual for Beyer to go bold — who could forget the debut of the true wireless guitar-pick shaped Free Byrd or delightfully 8-bit Custom Game headset.

All of this for $149.99 (so around £110 or AU$208)? I put more information on them in my news coverage of these headphones, but I think my why could be their serious stamina for that money, you know.

Baseus Bowie MC2 NC

In one of the more "Wait, really?!" moments at IFA, Baseus unveiled a new model of its still-new open earbuds model.

It seems like only yesterday my colleague was reviewing the Baseus Bowie MC2 cuff-style earbuds (pictured above), which he confirms are some of the best open earbuds for people on a budget.

In truth, it was nearly three weeks ago, but still, for the brand to be back with a follow-up to these buds so soon is very unusual…

Anyway, the wraps have been pulled off the Baseus Bowie MC2 NC, which have one main change over the existing earbuds: the addition of noise cancellation. (You got it from the title, didn't you?)

Now, ANC and an open-ear fit — especially an earcuff-style one — aren't always the best of friends. But we can't wait to see whether Baseus has pulled it off here for a slightly higher asking fee of $99.99 (likely about £99.99, based on the non-NC buds' price of $79.99 / £89.99 or about AU$180), because the product upon which they're built is very good indeed.

JLab JBuds Open Sport 2, JBuds Go Sport ANC and JLab JBuds Mini ANC

Three products in one entry? I don't think you're ready for this 'Jelle'…

JLab has unveiled a few new offerings at IFA, but the highlight is a product we already knew about, but that we're seeing in a new way. Back when they were first unveiled in January, we gave the super-small JLab JBuds Mini ANC an early listen and loved that they'd happily fit on your keychain (with a price cheaper than some actual keychains, too).

Now, these affordable buds officially work with Apple's Find My for the first time (a feat not easy to achieve outside of Apple's AirPods and Beats products), so you can use your iPhone to locate the lost buds. Given that JLab loves the idea of you chaining them to your keys, this effectively means the JBuds' case can replace your AirTag 2. All for $42.99 / £39.99 (about AU$80) for them.

What about the other two products? There's the JBuds Open Sport 2, which are new hook-style open earbuds that act as an update to the JBuds Open Sport (surprise surprise), and will cost $52.99 / £49.99 (about AU$100). Then, there's the JBuds Go Sport ANC, which are due to sell in mid-September for $42.99 / £39.99 (about AU$80) — and we have some more details in our news coverage of the release.

And what of the Jelle? It's a new range of color options based on gel nail colors and is launching for the headliner Mini ANC, as well as the JBuds Luxe, which will sell for $84.99 / £79.99 (around AU$160) in these new finishes. You know how most headphones are often very 'matte black plastic'? These are shiny. No, really, they're shiny.

Philips Fidelio L5

These winsome Philips wireless headphones launch in October 2026, and the brand claims they tote its "most intelligent active noise control yet".

You also get custom 36mm ceramic-coated dome drivers with woven silk suspension, LDAC for better-quality audio (ideal for Android owners), plus Bluetooth 6.0 with the more efficient LC3 codec, and Auracast support.

The Fidelio L5 also offer wired hi-resolution audio up to 96khz/24bit via a wired USB-C connection, up to 60 hours of battery life (or 50 with ANC deployed) and a five-mic system for call and noise-cancelling quality.

Replaceable components are the name of the game at IFA this year (thanks to the EU's legislation on user-replaceable batteries), and the Philips Fidelio L5 are built with that in mind. Philips tells me that both the ear cushions and the rechargeable battery can be easily replaced by the consumer.

The Philips Headphones app with 'AI Neural EQ' and spatial audio support round out what seems a versatile and long-lasting set of cans, on paper at least — and for extra marks, the L5 also incorporate GRS-certified recycled plastic and the packaging uses FSC-certified recycled cardboard with inserts printed on recycled paper.

The Philips Fidelio L5 over-ear wireless headphones will be available from October 2026 for € 199.99 / GBP £179.99 (so around $243 or AU$339, where sold), and although they look like a more standard set of cans than other entries in this list, sometimes you just want good ANC headphones. And, my music-loving friend, that is why I'm here.

Anker Soundcore Sleep Earbuds 4 Pro

The best wearable technology serves up real-world benefits, and what could be more beneficial than some decent shut-eye? What you're looking at is the Soundcore Sleep Earbuds 4 Pro, which use in-ear PPG optical sensors to monitor your heart rate — and really rather accurately, thanks to the rich capillaries within your ear canal. Said monitoring delivers data to the buds' smart-screen, effectively making that part of the package a phone-free SleepHub charging case.

The Sleep Earbuds Pro also offer 30dB active noise cancellation, and there's a snore monitoring system in the case to detect and mask the sound of your partner (or dog) snoring. Despite all of the tech stuffed inside the buds, the driver housing is actually thinner than previous generations, which should be even more comfortable for side sleepers.

How else can they help you get a decent night's sleep? Why, with audio, of course! Anker's BioSync dynamic audio system monitors your relaxation in real time, adjusting the audio content to help you find the most effective route to the land of nod. I'm feeling sleepy already.

EarFun Wave Pro X

EarFun made its name delivering premium headphones and earbuds without the premium price tag, and the Wave Pro X are probably the company's best example of that in action yet.

Yes, they were announced a little while ago (and delayed following the announcement to get the tuning just perfect), but they're very much here now — and they are award-worthy, thank you very much. Their patented dual-driver system puts a 40mm diamond-like carbon driver and 10mm liquid crystal polymer driver on a precisely aligned axis, with the aim of a more natural and integrated sound than you sometimes get from multi-driver solutions.

The Wave Pro X also features an 8-mic AI system to continuously optimize the onboard hybrid ANC system, even in wired mode, and the Qualcomm QCC3095 Bluetooth 6.0 chipset brings aptX Lossless, LDAC, Auracast, and USB Audio to the table. Add AI translation and up to 90 hours of battery life to the spec sheet, and you've got yourself a superb pair of headphones.

Plaud One

Plaud One is less a 'regular set of earbuds' and more a 'wearable AI companion'. This product combines three key features: wearable conversation capture, context that builds across day-to-day conversations, and AI that can analyze data and take appropriate action.

The buds can capture online meetings, face-to-face discussions, and phone calls, and they have built-in eSIM and 4G LTE for phone-free operation.

What makes Plaud One different? The product understands context. Rather than treating each recording as a standalone transcript, it can retain information across multiple discussions — so a chat from one meeting can be stitched to a later conversation or call.

This upgrade enables the Plaud Agent to help you take further steps, identifying actionable tasks and completing them across tools such as Google Calendar, Gmail, and Slack.

IFA, Berlin's huge annual tech expo, is where some of the biggest tech firms unveil their latest innovations — and this year is one of the strongest we've seen in a long time for interesting new releases.

IFA is a great place to find fascinating new gadgets and devices, ranging from next-gen AR glasses to self-driving personal mobility vehicles, and from weird new kitchen appliances to armies of humanoid robots.

We've chosen the top products from those that were nominated for our IFA 2026 'Best in Show' awards to produce this list of our 25 winners, based on how innovative they are, how well they serve their intended use, and the degree to which we think they'll influence their area of the tech market.

There were many more products that we really liked, of course, but we had to be ruthless — here are our top picks from IFA 2026.

Anker Soundcore Sleep Earbuds 4 Pro

The best technology delivers real-world benefits, and what could be more beneficial than a good night's sleep? The Soundcore Sleep Earbuds 4 Pro use in-ear PPG optical sensors to monitor your heartrate, which is more accurate than other optical tracking methods thanks to the rich capillaries and stable position of your ear canal. That monitoring delivers data to the smart-screen, phone-free SleepHub charging case.

The Sleep Earbuds Pro feature passive isolation as well as 30dB active noise cancelling, and the case-based snore monitoring system detects and masks the sound of your partner snoring using its built-in sounds. Despite the addition of multiple new components the housing is thinner than previous generations, and even more comfortable for side sleepers.

Anker's BioSync dynamic audio system monitors relaxation in real time, dynamically adjusting the audio content and structure to help you find the most effective sleep sounds. Sleep earbuds are something that can truly improve your health and happiness by improving your sleep, and these look like a really smart upgrade.

Agibot A3

Agibot is doing some amazing things with humanoid robots, and the full-sized Agibot A3 combines multiple capabilities in a lightweight, extremely dynamic model: if you're assembling a robot dance troupe or planning a big exhibition, the A3's the bot to buy.

The A3 weighs just 55kg, has a power-to-weight ratio of 0.218kW/kg, and delivers up to 12kW of instant peak power, enabling it to somersault. Its battery runs for up to 10 hours and is hot-swappable in seconds, so it's great for applications where it needs to last all day. It'll happily fit in an SUV for travel, too.

In addition to voice and app control, the A3 delivers industry-first touch sensing that adds physical interaction to its controls. It also has a 360-degree multi-array mic system for accurate voice recognition, even in noisy environments.

One of the most exciting features of the A3 is its large-scale swarm co-ordination, which uses precise UWB positioning to enable performances by up to 100 individual robots. That makes it possible to create very complex, high-impact performances for big events, as well as enabling multiple units to work smartly in environments such as factories or warehouses. The awareness and the uptime make this a great new approach to robotics.

Hypershell X Ultra S

The Hypershell X Ultra S exoskeleton helped mountaineer Adriana Brownlee in -30C temperatures on Mount Everest, supported athlete Aurélien Fontenoy's 4,037km Route 66 journey while recovering from injury, and is currently being trialed by search and rescue organizations worldwide.

Before Hypershell, exoskeletons cost $100,000 and above; the same capabilities are now available to consumers for less than $2,000, in a device weighing under 2kg.

The X Ultra S is an end-to-end AI motion-control system that uses an AI model to transform raw sensor data directly into motor torque, enabling faster response, smoother adaptation, and more natural human-machine synchronization.

There are 12 active modes, including walking, cycling and running, and a new Gentle Assist mode for older adults and users with short or shuffling strides. Fitness Mode adds resistance, turning a walk into a workout.

But it's the price that won us over here — this could be a game changer for getting people with limited mobility out and doing more things that they love, from hiking to just visiting the local stores.

JMGO IRIS Ultra Max

The IRIS Ultra Max is one of the world’s first true 4K 120Hz flagship smart projectors, delivering native 4K (rather than pixel-shifted) at 120Hz from input to output, all from its very compact case.

The Ultra Max's dual iris system has 6+9 blades, the highest count in its class, which promises to improve stray light suppression by 11.34% for a more accurate picture, while delivering class-leading contrast, with a quoted ration of 10,000:1. The MALC 6.0 Triple-Laser Engine delivers an impressive 6,500 ISO lumens of brightness, making it more visible in more lighting conditions, and with a promised ability to recreate 110% of the BT.2020 color space, with an astounding color accuracy of delta-E of 0.7, meaning it's truly capable of pro-level color range and accuracy.

The IRIS Ultra Max also introduces an industry-first 3-in-1 Optical System that integrates 0.88–1.7:1 Optical Zoom, Four-Way Lens Shift (V ±130%, H ±53%), and an AI-Powered Gimbal (360° H, 150° V) into a unified projection architecture. This makes it more more flexible than traditional projectors to positioning, because it has so many different options for correcting its picture. It gives small home theater setups top-tier performance without compromise.

DJI Osmo Pocket 4P

Designed for vloggers and movie-makers alike, the Osmo Pocket 4P is the world’s first dual-lens pocket gimbal camera. It delivers cinema-grade imaging in a pocket-friendly form, and features DJI's Academy Award-winning Ronin stabilization.

The main lens is a wide-angle 20mm equivalent with an f/2.0 aperture, and a new 1-inch CMOS sensor that offers 17 stops of dynamic range and over one billion colors via DJI's new 10-bit D-Log 2 color profile.

That's supplemented with a 60mm medium-tele portrait lens, which gives you 3x optical zoom and up to 12x digital zoom. Its f/1.8 aperture is particularly good for creating bokeh effects by compressing the background and pulling it closer to the subject.

The Osmo Pocket 4P also features the latest version of DJI's ActiveTrack, which uses AI algorithms to maintain tracking lock at up to 12x zoom. It can actively track up to eight people, framing groups and centering anyone new who steps into the field of view.

RayNeo GT Max AR Glasses

The RayNeo GT Max AR Glasses are the world's first AR glasses to support Dolby Vision playback as part of creating a virtual cinema experience. They deliver up to 1,200 nits of perceived brightness, a 120Hz refresh rate, and real-time SDR to HDR conversion for super-clear images, too. Their optical system is 29% thinner and lighter than traditional designs, and delivers an industry-leading 59-degree field of view.

One of our favorite features is the adjustable virtual screen sizes, with a choice of 227 inches, 267 inches or 307 inches. That's clever: the tighter size is ideal for spreadsheets and productivity apps if you're using them as a display for a phone or laptop, while the larger sizes deliver immersive gaming and video.

Steady, Pinned and Follow modes enable you to anchor the screen or have it move with you, and 3DoF spatial tracking maintains the screen position without straining your eyes, and keeps subtitles, taskbars and image edges within the viewing area as you move. These look like the most advanced way to take a screen with you everywhere, and they could be indispensable for long flights.

TCL P80 Ultra

If you spend as much time on your phone as we do, you'll be blown away by the screen of the TCL P80 Ultra. It's the first phone to integrate NXTPAPER eye-comfort technology, with a 1.5K sharp AMOLED display for reflection-free reading even in bright sunlight, and a button that instantly turns your P80 Ultra into an e-reader with paper-like viewing.

The P80 Ultra has nano-etched anti-glare glass, eliminating surface reflections without reducing brightness. It also features circular polarized light technology, which changes the light output to more closely replicate the characteristics of natural light, and flicker-free dimming.

The camera's pretty special too. It's a 50MP 3x periscope telephoto lens with a 50MP 1/1.56-inch large-format sensor, capturing more light per pixel than smaller sensors and enabling 6x lossless zoom. Image stabilization eliminates motion blur in photos and video, and TCL's MuseFilm filters promise cinematic-quality images. But it's the groundbreaking display that really won us over — a lot of people will find it much kinder on the eyes.

Lenovo ThinkBook 14x Gen 2

Lenovo's ultra-light laptop makes even ultraportables look positively porky: at just 2.18lbs / 990g and just 12.9mm thick it's one of the lightest and thinnest laptops around, making it ideal for business travelers and students alike — especially if you opt for the backlit keyboard, which is really helpful in dimly lit rooms and airplanes.

Lenovo has somehow managed to give the ThinkBook 14x the super-thin treatment without sacrificing connectivity, so in addition to its Wi-Fi 7 it features two 10Gbps USB-C ports, two 5Gbps USB-A ports and an HDMI 2.1 port, so there's no need to haul a hub around with you. It also has a spare M.2 slot that enables you to expand its storage, which makes this a solid long-term investment.

The ThinkBook 14x Gen 2 is also one of the most customizable ultraportables, powered by Intel Core 7 (Series 3) processors and with display options including vivid OLED and touchscreen LCD. It's good-looking too, with a choice of metallic finishes including Luna Gray, Celestial White, Mystic Violet and Veil Blue.

EarFun Wave Pro X

EarFun's headphones consistently deliver premium performance without the premium price tag, and the Wave Pro X are the brand's best yet. They feature a patented dual-driver system that places a 40mm diamond-like carbon driver and a 10mm liquid crystal polymer driver on a precisely aligned axis, creating a more natural and detailed sound than you typically get from multi-driver designs.

The Wave Pro X feature an 8-mic AI system that continuously optimizes the hybrid ANC system, even in wired AUX mode, and the Qualcomm QCC3095 chipset delivers Bluetooth 6.0, aptX Lossless, LDAC, USB Audio and Auracast. Add AI translation and up to 90 hours of battery life to the mix and you've got a truly excellent pair of headphones — EarFun has been working on these for a long time, and even delayed them in order to get the tuning just right.

Urevo CyberPad 3

The CyberPad 3 is a home/office treadmill that's designed differently to traditional models. Its WalkFree Adaptive Speed Control uses pressure sensors built into the running board, which detect your stepping motion to automatically start and stop operation; when you're walking or running it takes data from the motor to calculate speed adjustments in real time.

Its multi-user support is smart too, capturing raw weight and stride-rate data to generate a structured user profile that's directly linked to the speed-control algorithm.

The support structure is made from Q235 steel with a side frame of die-cast aluminum, and it utilizes a redesigned transmission path to deliver an exceptionally compact construction: the ultra-slim body is under 11cm thick. Despite its small size it features a 15% incline-lift mechanism and a 42cm running belt, with its size based on analysis of human shoulder widths.

Plaud One

Plaud One is a wearable AI companion that combines three key features that are usually separate: wearable conversation capture, context that builds across day-to-day conversations, and AI that can analyze data and take appropriate action. It can capture online meetings, and face-to-face discussions and phone calls, and it has built-in eSIM and 4G LTE for phone-free operation.

What makes Plaud One different is that it understands context. Instead of treating each recording as a standalone transcript, it can retain context across multiple discussions — so a conversation from one meeting can be connected to a later conversation or call.

That understanding enables the Plaud Agent to help you take action, identifying next steps and completing tasks across tools such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Notion, and Slack.

Minisforum MS-S1 Max-P495

The MS-S1 Max-P495 delivers large-model AI computing from an exceptionally small footprint with a very high specification. It combines AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 495 with up to 192GB of unified memory to run 128B+ LLMs locally, delivering up to 126 TOPS, and its unified memory architecture eliminates VRAM bottlenecks while also reducing latency.

That power is cooled by a high-performance thermal solution featuring a copper base, six heat pipes, dual fans and phase-change cooling, and it's encased in a fully scalable design, with a slide-out chassis for easy upgrading and a rack-ready form factor.

With 4x PCIe expansion, dual 10Gb Ethernet, dual 40Gbps USB4 v2, Wi-Fi 7, and a built-in 320W PSU, the MS-S1 Max-P495 delivers future-proof power for desktop systems and scalable AI clusters alike — it's a mind-blowing beast made to meet a new kind of research and development need.

XPPen Magic Pro 13

XPPen's Magic Pro 13 is a mobile drawing pad designed for creative pros, featuring an industry-first hardware-level drawing display mode that delivers low latency, native color output and higher bandwidth video transmission over a simple one-cable connection, giving you a paper-like experience with 16K pressure sensitivity and cursor hover support.

It's the first drawing pad in its category to come with dual-USB support, enabling you to benefit from a high-speed data connection while charging your Magic Pro 13.

The Magic Pro 13 features the new Shelf digital asset management system and XPPen's Canvas software, designed to deliver a simple and intuitive sketching experience for capturing ideas when inspiration strikes. And for creatives on the move it offers two thermal management modes, balancing performance and energy efficiency based on different creative scenarios.

Strutt ev1c

Strutt's ev1c reimagines the power chair with three major advancements: Strutt's evSense sensing array, a quad-drive drivetrain, and a modular, connected design.

eVSense uses two LiDARs, 10 time-of-flight sensors, six ultrasonics and two cameras to create 3D maps in real time, powering the Co-Pilot collision avoidance for people, pets, and edges, and the Auto-Pilot, which enables you to select on-screen destinations, or use LLM-powered voice commands such as "Take me to the kitchen" — basically it's a self-driving personal mobility vehicle.

The drivetrain features four-wheel independent suspension, ABS, active steering, and an integrated electronic stability program (ESP), safely managing 13-degree slopes, cobblestones and rough terrain without slippage or tipping. And when it's time to travel, it breaks down into five modules for easy trunk storage. It looks like a genuine move forward for this kind of mobility device.

xTool M2 Color Craft Laser

The xTool M2 is the first desktop machine to combine full-color CMYK printing, laser engraving and laser cutting into one enclosed Class 1 system, delivering a full print-then-cut workflow. Simply print your full-color design onto a piece of wood, leather or acrylic, and the xTool M2 Color Craft Laser cuts or engraves the exact contour with camera-guided precision. And there's a built-in air-assist pump, an industry first for a semiconductor laser, that keeps cut edges clean by reducing carbonization and yellowing.

Having these three capabilities in a single device is a huge power-up: instead of having to print on one machine and engrave or cut on another, you can turn your raw idea into a finished, professional-looking product in a single operation. It's ideal for stickers, labels, signage, personalized gifts, and small-batch products — you could start a whole business with this one device. And because it's an enclosed system, it's also very safe.

Perlegear AX1 Smart Adaptive Mount

The Perlegear AX1 Smart Adaptive Mount answers an interesting question: what if your TV mount was as smart as your TV? The AX1 is an AI-powered, motorized TV mount that can automatically adjust the height of your TV to different viewing positions, so for example you might have it low for solo TV watching, but raised for watching sports with friends, or for following an on-screen fitness app or motion-based game.

The AX1 is controllable via gesture commands, its mobile app, via remote control, or via Alexa, Google Assistant or Siri. It can distinguish between single- and multi-person viewing, with the latter calculating the best screen height for the group, and it's capable of moving a 200-pound / 90kg TV up to 15.7 inches / 400mm vertically, with real-time obstacle detection that stops and reverses the move if the path is blocked.

Speediance Gym Monster 3

The brilliantly named Gym Monster 3 delivers serious strength training for home workouts, combining the experience of a Smith machine, barbell, dumbbells, cable machine, rowing machine, pulley system, and squat rack into one streamlined setup with up to 200lbs / 90kg of intelligent digital resistance.

Twin 800W direct-drive motors deliver smooth, consistent resistance through every rep, and it's adjustable in one-pound / 0.45kg increments, so you can progress at your own pace, rather than make big jumps you might not be ready for.

The Gym Monster 3 is controlled via a clever Bluetooth Ring Control that enables you to make adjustments without stepping away or breaking your flow, and it features four dedicated training modes: Standard, Chain, Eccentric, and Fixed Speed. It also features a built-in AI coach that can guide you from your first session onwards.

Midea GreenApex Dishwasher

The humble dishwasher hasn't changed much since Josephine Cochrane's 1886 invention went electric in the late 1920s and gained spray arms in the 1950s. But the Midea GreenApex is very different from traditional grease-busters. It's a dual heat-pump system that uses a single coordinated heat pump platform to deliver washing, rapid drying, and dry storage in a single appliance.

The GreenApex is 50% more energy efficient than conventional dishwashers, delivers 30-minute rapid drying and 168 hours of dry storage without continued system operation, and offers gentle heat-pump drying at around 45°C, so you don't need to worry about high temperatures damaging more delicate items. It feels like a major leap forward for an appliance type that doesn't often have the phrase 'cutting-edge' associated with it.

Reolink OMVI 2i Ultra

The Reolink OMVI 2i Ultra Security Camera features an innovative, decoupled dual-lens tracking system in which the individual lenses operate fully independently of one another. Unlike in other dual-lens or hybrid zoom security cameras, the two lenses here are not mechanically linked, so the fixed 130-degree 4K wide-angle lens never moves, while the telephoto camera is free to rotate anywhere, including to cover areas outside the field of view of the main lens.

This means that when the 4K camera's on-device AI spots a person, vehicle or animal, it triggers the pan-tilt camera to lock onto and follow that subject even after they exit the wide camera's field of view — but you don't lose any recording from the wide camera's view during that time.

You can also use the wide-angle view to redirect the pan-tilt camera to a particular location by simply tapping that point in the live camera view, or have the wide camera and the pan-tilt camera monitoring two distinct locations, such as your driveway and a side gate.

Navimow H510 Pro

The Navimow H510 Pro features four key innovations: precise edge finishing, zero-turn steering, adaptive mowing intelligence, and 3D modelling.

Rather than edging with a trimmer line, which can be noisy and cause minor damage, the H510 Pro has an extendable robot arm that performs zero-gap edging quietly and safely — it's the most interesting and smart version of this technology that we've seen.

The all-wheel-drive system protects your turf too, with a zero-steering system that avoids dragging the wheels across the grass during lateral turns. And the Adaptive Mowing Intelligence feature analyzes grass growth patterns to determine the optimal mowing frequency, using the 1/3 cutting rule to preserve lawn health.

With 3D terrain modeling rather than the industry-standard 2D, and a sensor array including infrared as well as LiDAR and vision for low-light reliability, and triple-sensor avoidance to protect wildlife, the H510 is a smart solution for even the most challenging lawns.

DJI Romo 2 Series

The Romo 2 Series is a robot vacuum that won't be defeated by obstacles such as deep rugs, sliding door tracks and other barriers. That's because it has robotic legs that can step over obstacles as high as 4cm, and double-step thresholds up to an impressive 8.5cm.

It also features a built-in LiDAR-guided ultra-wide-swing robotic arm to extend the mop's reach, and its powerful suction system features an automatically lowering plate that forms a semi-seal on carpet for better extraction of dust and allergens.

The Romo 2 Series also benefits from the tech of DJI's flagship drones, with a Structured Light-Speckle projector and dual fish-eye vision sensors for full 3D depth perception. It can detect items such as cables and training pads as thin as 2mm, and its AI can distinguish between debris and liquid, as well as deal with transparent obstacles such as glass doors and mirrors.

Acer Vero 16

With so many laptops sacrificing easy maintenance and repairability for super-skinny styling, the Acer Vero 16 is a breath of fresh air. While it doesn't skimp on style or power — it's highly portable, delivers up to 180 platform TOPS with an Intel Core Ultra X9 processor 388H, and can be configured with a stunning 16-inch 3K OLED display — it's made with longevity in mind.

A tool-free latch provides easy access to the Vero's innards, and the battery and SSD are replaceable, while the system is designed to support the next two generations of processors if you want to upgrade. Fully 70% of the chassis consists of a blend of PCR (post-consumer recycled) and bio-based oyster shell material, and it meets US military standards for toughness. This is a laptop that's built to last, in a way that's rare to see — and very welcome.

Asus ProArt GR1X

The Asus ProArt GR1X is tiny, measuring just 150 x 150 x 51mm. But there's nothing small about its specification. Designed for advanced content creation and local AI workflows, it delivers data center-class compute inside a mini PC, removing the need to run LLMs remotely while eliminating cloud latency, cost, and IP protection concerns for pro creators.

The ProArt GR1X features the groundbreaking Nvidia RTX Spark 'superchip', which means you get a 20-core Grace CPU and a 6,144-core Blackwell GPU, delivering up to one petaflop of FP4 AI inference performance. With up to 128GB of LPDDR5X unified memory at 9,400MHz, it enables you to run up to 120B-parameter LLMs locally, and render entire 3D scenes on-device in Windows 11.

That kind of power demands highly efficient cooling, and Asus has developed an advanced precision-cooling system that delivers 1.6x more efficient thermal coverage than standard compact systems. Asus also solved the challenge of metal-enclosure signal attenuation by embedding the Wi-Fi 7 antennas behind a glass-like signal-transparent material. It's quite the design coup, and an impressive showcase for Nvidia's new elite chip.

EcoFlow STREAM 5000 / STREAM AC 5000

The EcoFlow Stream series is a plug-and-play modular system for residential solar energy generation and storage that's designed to be renter- and apartment-friendly. It can add battery storage and smart power-management to existing solar PV installations, as well as being employed to create a new home system from scratch.

The Stream Series features EcoFlow's Oasis 3.0 home energy management system, which understands dynamic energy tariffs, keeps an eye on the weather forecast, and continuously analyzes your home energy needs to optimize generation, storage and consumption.

That means you can give the EcoBot AI agent instructions such as "I need my car charged by 7am tomorrow at the lowest possible cost" and it will implement the necessary steps, or have your energy schedules reconfigured automatically when you have visitors or other instances of increased demand.

From October the EcoFlow Stream series will also get a new feature: Local Mode, which gives you uninterrupted operation and local app control even if there are cloud or connectivity outages. It's a very powerful (no pun intended) system that's been designed with the real world in mind.

Tapo D260

The Tapo D260 wired/wireless security camera is a video doorbell that delivers all the benefits of high-spec security without the potential downsides: it stores facial recognition data locally to protect privacy, and no features are locked behind a subscription. It's advanced, yet totally cost-free once you buy it.

It has 4K resolution, a wide 180-degree field of view to cover the entire doorway, and delivers sharp detail in subjects up to 30 feet away.

The D260 features multiple intelligent detection and recognition features, including radar as well as the obligatory infrared motion sensor. These enable it to discount false alerts from things such as moving branches or passing headlights, while on-device AI can recognize people, packages, vehicles, and animals.

If you wish, you can opt in to build a library of family and friends using facial recognition, and there's even a voice changer to disguise your voice when speaking to unfamiliar callers. In a world where people are sick of subscriptions, this offers a great security upgrade without the monthly fee.

• Baseus Bowie MC2 open-ears launched recently, gaining our glowing review
• Baseus Bowie MC2 NC just made their debut mere weeks later, at IFA 2026
• This model adds noise cancellation and comes at a slightly higher price

It seems like only yesterday I was reviewing the Baseus Bowie MC2 cuff-style earbuds, which I thoroughly believe are some of the best open earbuds for people on a budget.

It was actually about two weeks ago, but the brand is already back with a follow-up to the buds.

At annual tech conference IFA 2026, the wraps have been pulled off the Baseus Bowie MC2 NC, which have one main change over the existing earbuds: the addition of noise cancellation. (You got it from the title didn't you?)

The Bowie MC2 NC are due to go on sale at some point this month, for a slightly-higher price of $99.99 (likely about £99.99, based on the non-NC buds' price). The previous pair sell for $79.99 / £89.99 (about AU$180), so you're paying a little more for noise cancellation. As you'd imagine.

Mostly, these are the same earbuds, with an identical feature set, sound profile and charging case. The latter's stamina is stated to be slightly better, with a 60-hour battery life, but given how much of a power drain noise cancellation is, the resulting battery life will likely be less.

Noise cancellation in a noise uncancelling bud

Noise cancellation is an odd feature for open earbuds — and it's very rare to see it in this ear cuff-style design. ANC typically removes background sound, but the entire point of open earbuds is to allow you to hear what's going on around you. Very few open-earbuds makers have offered any degree of noise cancellation; Honor's Earbuds Open and Shokz' OpenFit Pro are two of the few examples that do, but both sport a more 'traditional' open-ear shell design, rather than the Baseus Bowie's cuff shape.

In practice, though, I get it. You might want to hear what's going on around you while you're stood beside a busy, dangerous road, but not when you're on loud public transport. Some degree of versatility is welcome.

Cancelling sound on these buds is a technical challenge, though. It's hard to remove background noise from music, when these sounds are coming around the bud too. It's like trying to block a river, with a dam that only covers half of it.

To solve this problem, Baseus has redesigned the 'air cushion', or the comfy padded layer around the Bowie MC2's bud. This apparently now blocks up your ear better, to create an acoustic seal that can better block surrounding sounds.

Whether there's appetite for noise cancellation in noise uncancelling buds remains to be seen, but it's good that there are options; this is, as far as I can recall, the first clip-on pair I've heard of with the feature.

They say the old ones are the best ones, and in the case of the Sony WH-1000XM4 over-ear headphones, there’s certainly a case to be made. While the now-iconic cans are six years old and have spawned two successors, we still rate them very highly here at TechRadar, especially when they can be picked up at a discounted price, such as AU$299.99 right now at Amazon.

Yes, they have gone lower in price before, but this is the lowest I’ve personally seen in recent months — they tend to regularly hover around the AU$329 to AU$349 mark, so for them to now dip just below AU$300 is worth shouting about.

The Sony XM4s were, for a long time, sitting pretty atop my guide to the best headphones in Australia. They did eventually have to succumb to the sonic talents of their newer sibling, the Sony WH-1000XM6 but, make no mistake, the older XM4s still offer an awful lot to impress.

For starters, they’re much, much more affordable. While price drops on the XM6s are becoming more common, they’re still very much a premium set of cans that still cost north of AU$550. In fact, if you consider the XM6’s launch price of AU$699, you could get two pairs of the discounted XM4s with change instead.

With regard to all other aspects you’d want to consider when buying a pair of headphones, the Sony XM4s tick multiple boxes. Their active noise cancellation system still holds up, and is capable of blocking out all but the highest of frequencies.

As for sound, again there’s little to fault. As we said in our Sony WH-1000XM4 review when listening to Janelle Monae’s Make Me Feel, “From the bop of the percussion to the wall of sound that accompanies the pre-chorus, it sees the Sony WH-1000XM4s firing on all cylinders, with expressive dynamics and clear and distinct separation between each instrument.”

We also love their fold-flat, travel-friendly design — something Sony decided to ditch with the successor XM5s — and their 30-hour battery life. There's even a Quick Charge feature that nets you five hours of playback time from just 10 minutes plugged into power.

As mentioned, this AU$299.99 deal is the lowest I’ve seen in a long time, and that means it might not last forever. At this price, your options for truly talented headphones are limited, however I have found a couple of alternatives:

• For AU$50 more you could get the Bose QuietComfort Headphones SC
• Or for AU$50 less you could opt for the newer, more colourful JBL Live 780NC

• Beyedynamic has unveiled its Aventho Y wireless over-ears at IFA in Berlin
• They're packing 90-hour stamina, a folding design, and a battery storage compartment in one ear cup
• There's an optional 'upgrade bundle' with a low-latency USB-C dongle/detachable boom mic

Looking for all-new headphone releases at IFA 2026? You came to the right place. At the Berlin tech expo, Beyerdynamic has just taken the wraps off its new wireless cans in all four novel colorways.

With the tagline 'Four colors, four feelings, one WHY', you can probably guess that Beyerdynamic is going deep with these cans, and the firm is calling the model its "most personal headphone yet, designed to adapt to the way you listen".

As you'd expect in 2026, there's active noise cancellation on the menu, but one particular claim on the spec sheet — "more than 90 hours of battery life" — is what really got my attention.

Let's dig into the striking aesthetics first, shall we? It's not unusual for Beyer to go bold (who could forget the debut true wireless guitar-pick shaped Free Byrd or delightfully 8-bit Custom Game headset), and here, there's a nice stylized 'Y' on the reassuringly big ear cups.

What of those finishes? Beyer tells me that each of the four colorways represents a different emotional connection to sound, but make no mistake — every Aventho Y set of headphones delivers the same sonic tuning, features and performance.

Anyway, your finish options (as described by the audio specialist) are:

Liquid Black — Focus & Depth: grounded, confident and immersed
Blue Fusion — Calm & Escape: relaxed, open and free
Soft Jade — Clarity & Renewal: refreshed, balanced and inspired
Peach Blush — Warmth & Connection: comforting, soft and uplifting

I mean, I'm not not intrigued…

Find your Y

Beyerdynamic wants you to know that versatility is at the heart of the Aventho Y. And here, versatility comes in the shape of various optional accessories, including ultra-soft black or grey velour ear pads and an upgrade bundle featuring a low-latency USB-C dongle and detachable boom microphone.

Another plus is that they're genuinely designed for long-term ownership. The design folds and features a user-replaceable battery, magnetic ear pads, aluminum sliders and stainless-steel hinges that the company assures us are easy to replace. An integrated storage compartment inside the ear cup even keeps the optional USB-C dongle and spare battery protected and easily accessible.

Bluetooth 6.0 is here with multipoint connectivity, and while that 90-hour battery life claim is with ANC off, you should still get up to 60 hours with ANC on, and just five minutes of fast charging will apparently provide up to six hours of playback. To be clear: those claims are big.

Through the Beyerdynamic app, listeners can customize EQ profiles, explore genre-based sound presets, receive firmware updates, and manage smart settings such as auto power-off.

Take note though: your basic purchase includes a USB-C charging/audio cable and a soft carrying bag, so lovers of hard-shell cases may need to look elsewhere.

Pricing? Of course. The Beyerdynamic Aventho Y will be available for a refreshingly affordable $149.99 (so around £110 or AU$208) very soon, but anyone lucky enough to be visiting IFA 2026 in Berlin from tomorrow (September 4) can experience the Aventho Y firsthand at the Beyerdynamic booth, located in Hall 4.2, booth #147.

Something for our best noise-cancelling headphones buying guide perhaps? We're working on a full review, so when we know, so shall you.

We've always been fans of Sony's high-end noise-cancelling headphones here at TechRadar, so today's excellent price cut on the Sony WH-1000XM5 in the Amazon Labor Day sale is an easy recommendation.

Right now, you can pick up these headphones for just $198 (was $399) at the retailer, which is a match for the previous record-low price. They've only dropped to $198 on one previous occasion back in late June, so this is a fantastic deal all around.

It's a good opportunity to snag a decent pair of noise-cancelling headphones for work, commuting, or even college — although anyone will appreciate just how good these headphones are. Although they've recently been superseded by a sixth-generation model, the Sony WH-1000XM5 are still among the best headphones you can buy right now.

Highlight features for the Sony WH-1000XM5 include rich and detailed sound, superb active noise cancellation, and a comfortable fit that's perfect for all-day use. At the time of release, we thought they were pricey, but today's discount at Amazon definitely addresses that particular issue.

Sony WH-1000XM5 record-low price at Amazon

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

When we originally reviewed these headphones, we awarded them a full five out of five stars, calling them "the best headphones in the world thanks to their class-leading noise-cancelling features and well-balanced audio.” Even though a few years have passed, they're still exceptional in terms of performance — and much cheaper than the newer sixth-generation model.

The only real reason to get the newer headphones, in my opinion, is if you're desperate for a folding mechanism. The M5 (unlike the M6 and M4) don't have folding hinges on the headband, which is an annoying oversight that means they're a little less portable overall. If you can live with that, however, there's very little reason to skip today's discount over at Amazon.

• Belkin unveils SoundForm Isolate and Dot earbuds
• Offer ANC, Multipoint and ear wings for a really low price
• Also, there's a new set of child-focused over-ears

You may know Belkin as a company that typically sells power banks, phone cases and charging cables, but its range is diverse and now includes some potential winners in the audio sector.

At IFA 2026, the brand has expanded its fledgling audio family with two new super-affordable pairs of earbuds, each of which offers Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) at a price far below rivals.

There's the SoundForm Isolate Buds, which sell for a very palatable £39.99 (about $54, AU$80), and the SoundForm Dot Buds, going for £29.99 (around $40, AU$60). Those names are meaty, but hopefully the audio is too.

Don't confuse the SoundForm Isolate Buds for the SoundForm Isolate; rookie mistake. Those are existing over-ears. Add 'Buds' for the new products.

Also, when it comes to the Dot option, you can select a model with or without ANC, because Belkin wants to give customers the choice. And the set that can't cancel noise can be yours for just £19.99 (around $26 or AU$36). Dot Got it? Good.

As luck would have it, we've got feet on the ground in Berlin at IFA, and my colleague Harry Padoan got a quick listen in with the SoundForm Isolate (main image and below).

His early thoughts? "From my brief time using the earbuds, they sounded very bass-heavy out of the box. The low-end was powerful and fairly regimented too, which is ideal for more energetic tracks," Padoan said. "While this could sometimes mean that vocals and mid-range sounds weren't the clearest in the mix, the audio quality seems relatively solid overall for the price you pay."

These options have been released alongside the SoundForm Play, over-ear headphones which are intended for "older kids".

Dot's the deal?

Both of Belkin's new earbuds are sold on an important promise: ANC for a lot less than Bose, Sony or Apple. But these buds have a few other benefits.

The Isolate offer Multipoint connection, a clear call quality mode, and a 32-hour battery life. They come with a wing-style design, with a ridge that keeps them locked in your ear, which should make them suitable for workouts.

The slightly cheaper Dots miss out on the wings, and have a slightly lower battery life at 30 hours, but still get Multipoint and clear calling. They also come in both ANC and non-ANC versions. The non-ANC model costs £19.99 (about $25, AU$40), so they're super cheap, but do miss a pretty useful tool.

Conspicuously absent? Any mention of the buds' audio architecture. It seems, then, that the feature list is the real selling point here; don't expect incredible sound (perhaps you guessed that from the price).

You'd be forgiven for being apprehensive about buying earbuds from a charging bank company, even a well-known one such as Belkin. However, many similar companies have begun making the jump into audio: Anker's Soundcore now makes some of our favorite earbuds, and Baseus is following suit — and both are also showing products at IFA.

This is because, unlike some spaces within tech, the power bank and charging tech sector is growing quickly (maybe people are holding onto their phones longer in these challenging times?), affording these brands some extra cash to put towards designing new affordable wearables.

What I'm saying is, it's well worth paying attention to Belkin's offerings. I'll be very interested to see if the company's affordable buds can rival our go-to best budget earbuds recommendations.

• Anker sub-brand Soundcore unveils 7 new headphones at IFA
• New wireless open-ears, over-ears and in-ears, as well as sleep buds
• These include Aerofit 2, taking features from some top options released earlier in the year

Released in May, the Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro are my favorite earbuds of 2026 so far, leading to a glowing 4.5-star review... and now Soundcore has taken that DNA, and given it a little twist.

I'm talking about the Soundcore Aeroclip 2, which have just been unveiled at IFA 2026. On the surface, they seem like simple successors to the original Aeroclip, and an odd comparison for the aforementioned in-ear buds. But it's all about the feature set.

You see, the Aeroclip 2 come with Anker's Thus chip, the firm's very own internal AI chipset, used in the Liberty 5 Pro. This brings a suite of advantages that other earbuds of this design simply don't have, including clearer call quality, optimized battery life and a listening test. The new buds are due to cost $169.99 / £159.99 (about AU$320) and go on sale on September 22.

Another point of comparison is that both the Liberty 5 Pro and Aeroclip 2 also now have an advanced model: the 5 Pro Max and Aeroclip 2 Pro respectively. In the latter case, as in the former, the big upgrade is a control panel on the charging case, as well as a note-taking and transcription tool which uses the actual case to take notes. The advanced model is due to cost $229.99 (about £200, AU$400) but has no set release date just yet.

Not all of the Thus chip's features are present: I loved its noise cancellation capabilities, but since clip-style earbuds are designed to not cancel noise, naturally that won't show its face here. But if I want ANC, I have plenty of other options...

A busy IFA for Anker

Anker's Soundcore sub-brand had plenty of other devices at IFA.

First up, there's the Soundcore Space 2 Pro, over-ear headphones which build on the Space 2 we saw earlier this year. Again, the improvement is that they use the Thus chip, with noise cancellation that's apparently 1.5x better than on the original model. There's also a listening test, longer battery life and comfier build, with whatever an "optimized headband" is. These cans are set to cost $199 / £199 (about AU$400), and again go on sale on September 22.

Don't want over-ears? Well, Soundcore has standard earbuds too, in the form of the Liberty Buds 2. These are lightweight, without long stems, and weigh 4.7g each. They use 9.2mm wool paper diaphragms, and once again have the Thus chip, for the listening test and clear calling.

You can buy the Liberty Buds 2 on the same day as these other gadgets: September 22. They'll sell for $129.99 / £129.99 (about AU$230).

Soundcore is continuing its line of sleep earbuds with the... Sleep Earbuds 4 (and 4 Pro). These follow on from the Sleep A30, so the brand is changing up its naming conventions here.

These have build-in photoplethysmography sensors to track your sleep stage, heart rate, heart rate variation and other metrics, with "snore masking" and a redesigned shape so they're even smaller. A neat tool is that they offer dynamic audio: if it notices you waking up, it'll start playing a sleep sound to lull you back to sleep.

The standard buds come in October, and I wasn't provided a price. The Pro models come later, in November, and their main upgrade is that they have a screen on the case, so you don't need to use your phone to manage or monitor them.

Finally, we have the Anker RIC Hearing Aids, which continue a growing trend among audio companies: using their tech to create over-the-counter hearing devices. These use the Thus chip, and therefore the clear-calling and Hear ID tools, to boost sounds you struggle to hear. No word on a price or release date for these.

Phew. Take a breath. That's only the tip of the iceberg for Anker at IFA, with charging devices and home security cameras and more, but luckily for this missive, none of them go on (or near) your ear.

Sonos just announced two new big pieces of hardware to its lineup: a Sonos Beam Ultra soundbar and some Sonos Ace Ultra headphones. And while they both sound like solid upgrades to the manufacturer's top-tier audio tech, you'll have to pay a premium for both products.

Luckily, though, as part of this year's Labor Day sales, several pieces of existing Sonos audio equipment are on offer at Best Buy — including the current Sonos Beam (Gen 2) soundbar and the original Sonos Ace headphones.

• Shop all Sonos deals at Best Buy

Firstly, let's start with the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) at Best Buy for $369 (was $499). We still rate the four-star soundbar as an excellent compact choice that's a smart buy if you need a simple upgrade to underwhelming built-in TV speakers. It offers an impressively wide soundstage in such a small package and requires minimal fuss to get it all hooked up.

Meanwhile, the Sonos Ace at Best Buy for $299 are a much more tempting buy following this $100 discount. We still liked them enough to award them four stars in our review, but only as a top choice if you're exclusively using them to watch movies.

One thing of note: the new model will have better integration with the wider Sonos ecosystem, so if that's important to you, it may be worth waiting for the new model. Just be aware, though, that they will cost up to $449 at launch, so considerably more expensive than this original version.

There are a couple of other Sonos speakers and soundbars on sale for Labor Day, so do check out all of the deals below.

4 best Sonos deals at Best Buy

Call off the sniffer dogs: I've found the best Labor Day weekend headphone deal (some might say, the only such discount worth considering), so you can stop hunting around for good bargains.

I'll cut to the good bit: the Sony WH-1000XM5 are now just $198 (was $399.99) at Amazon — a whopping 50% off!

The Sony WH-1000XM5, which we gave a perfect score to in our review, are back down to their lowest-ever price. Banish the thought of these $399 cans, they're now down to $198 (which is actually just over half off) at Amazon.

All four color options are down to this low price too; we've seen the headphones dip to this price before, but only once, in June of this year. There are some other discounted cans, but nothing like the Sonys; let's call off the search and I'll see you again next year.

Despite being a few years old, these are still stellar headphones, especially at the cost; the newer Sony WH-100XM6 headphones are reduced in the Labor Day sales, but only down to $398, so these 5th-gen models are the true bargain.

If you want something even cheaper, the entry-level Sony WH-CH520 are now just $38, down from $69.99, again over at Amazon.

These are more affordable Sony models, with balanced sound but some missing features and a less-premium design. The XM5s are the real bargain of the day, thanks to all the extra features they offer.

Today's best Sony WH-1000XM5 deal

Any flies in the ointment? Sonically, no. Even at full price these headphones are the real deal. The only minor issue, if I'm being really picky, is that this model doesn't fold up for easy and compact transportation — although you do get a lovely case, in which the cups will lie flat.

Other than that, this is the easiest deal recommendation I've ever made, days ahead of Labor Day. I'll go ahead and clock off early eds, if that's all?

Shop more of today's best Labor Day sales

• Amazon: 45% off TVs, AirPods, air fryers & vacuums
• Apple: iPads, AirPods & MacBooks from $99
• Appliances: up to $1,200 at Samsung
• Best Buy: 60% off appliances, TVs, laptops & more
• Casper: up to 30% off mattresses
• Dell: laptop deals from $249.99
• DreamCloud: up to 60% off mattresses, 66% off bundles
• Home Depot: 40% off appliances, furniture, grills & tools
• Lowe's: $1,000 off appliances, patio & tools
• Nectar: up to 50% off mattresses, deals from $349
• Saatva: up to $625 off luxury mattresses
• Samsung: up to $2,000 off 4K, QLED & OLED TVs
• Target: 45% off clothing, tech & furniture
• Walmart: 58% off back-to-school, furniture, & clothing

This year's Labor Day sales are getting underway, and I've already spotted some big savings on several of the highest-rated and most popular headphones we've tested here at TechRadar. I've rounded up the 12 best deals below, including favorites from the likes of Sony, Bose, Shokz, and more.

One of my top picks is the Bose QuietComfort Headphones at Amazon for $199 (was $229). I'm actually wearing some of these excellent over-ear cans right now, and I take them with me almost anywhere I go. They offer fantastic noise cancellation while in the office or commuting, top-tier audio quality for music and videos, and impressive battery life of up to 24 hours. All for a great price, too.

Another strong option is the Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 at Best Buy for $139.99 (was $179.99). These remain some of the best bone conduction headphones you can buy today and are a top recommendation for runners if you want to stay aware of your surroundings while out training.

Have a browse through all of my favorite Labor Day headphone deals below, with offers that I don't expect to be beaten until at least Black Friday in November.

12 best headphones deals in the Labor Day sales

Sonos has just made three new announcements: it's launching a new pair of headphones called the Sonos Ace Ultra; it's launching a new soundbar called the Sonos Beam Ultra; and it's rebranding its software side as an "operating system" that it's calling Sonos 27 — and is adding a new AI-enabled voice assistant, new AI agent integration, and smarter ways for its speakers to work together.

I spoke to Sonos' CEO Tom Conrad about the new launches — especially the new software, since any new software changes that Sonos makes will be met with caution from the community, as Conrad and I discussed last time we spoke.

First, here's a rundown of the details of what Sonos is launching, starting with the Ace Ultra. These new headphones will launch at $449 / £399 / AU$699, and bring a new 40mm driver promising improved sound — but more interestingly they're powered by a new chip called the Headphone Engine 2 that means they'll be able to do what people expected the original Sonos Ace to do: they'll be able to work as a standard part of the Sonos ecosystem.

The Beam Ultra, meanwhile, sits between the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) and the Sonos Arc Ultra — it's a compact soundbar, but it delivers 7.1.2 channels of Dolby Atmos sound, using nine drivers (including two upfiring drivers, which is a first for the Beam range). It launches at $699 / £699 / AU$1,099.

Both of the new products are available to pre-order on September 1, 2026, and will launch on September 29, 2026.

When it comes to software, Sonos has given its platform a name for the first time: Sonos 27. Part of the launch of Sonos 27 is the reveal of Sonos Fabric, which is the name Sonos has given to "the system capability that enables Sonos products to sense each other and adapt to the moment" — and immediately, Fabric is being used to enable smart music switching on the Ace Ultra, and the ability to have portable surround speakers in Sonos home theater setups. Conrad will explain both of those in our interview.

There are two other new elements to Sonos 27, though. Sonos 27voice is a new voice assistant that's based on AI tech, and Sonos 27mcp is a new way for AI agents to connect to Sonos systems and control them.

In our conversation, Conrad dug into why the company is doing all of this and what the company is offering for AI skeptics — so let's get into it, starting with Conrad's explanation of why they wanted to give the software a name at last.

Tom Conrad: When I got the nod to become permanent CEO about a year ago, one of my observations about the company's recent history was that while we had started as a system company, we had spent the last almost decade being really focused on getting great at shipping individual products, filling out the product line with every shape and form that our customers were interested in. Small, medium, and large soundbars; a couple sizes of subwoofer; big amplifiers, small amplifiers; portables… you get the point. And Patrick [Spence, former Sonos CEO] and the team became a really well-oiled machine with respect to hardware execution.

But in doing that, I think the unintended consequence was that at times we took our eye off the ball [regarding] what it meant to bring those products together into a cohesive whole. And someone shortly after I arrived said that the thing about Sonos is it's really 100% hardware and 100% software. And I love that framing, because it's so right. We have these two really hard problems to solve, and if either one of them doesn't get complete dedicated focus from exactly the right people, we don't deliver what our customers expect.

And so, we've done all kinds of things to elevate the software expertise in the company over the course of the last year. And at the same time, we've really invested in the idea that the software is what makes the system. And as you look at how we've taken our products to market through the years, we've always given the hardware a name — Arc and Ace and Beam and Move — but the software has never had a name.

So one of the big announcements this week is that we're giving the software a name. And what we make is really an operating system for audio experiences in the home — and ‘OS’ has always been there in our name! And so we're simply calling the software Sonos 27 because, really, it is that ‘systemness’ that the software provides that makes Sonos. And we're attaching the year moniker to it, because Sonos does get better year after year. There'll be a Sonos28 and a Sonos29 and so on.

Matt Bolton: As soon as I saw the name, my first thought was whether this means we're talking about a planned update cadence, and that feels like it would probably be a different approach than Sonos would have necessarily taken in the past?

Tom Conrad: Yeah, I think one of the things about the company for the last many years is that because we only talked about the hardware, anything we wanted to do in software had to kind of ‘ride along’ on the hardware itself. And so we'd add Atmos, or we'd add voice assistants, or we'd add new surround experiences, but they would always be tied to the fact that we're making a new soundbar, so we can work on home theater experiences. We're making a product with a microphone so we can work on voice products. By separating out the idea of the operating system, we're giving it its own identity, its own road map, its own cadence of release, which we think is a really exciting change for the company.

And our customers can expect that the software doesn't get better only when we release new hardware. And it doesn't even get better just once a year. It gets better all the time through the year, which I think fits a new, modern way that people talk about their software platforms.

Matt Bolton: What we've been seeing more recently is you guys rolling out improvements and features on a pretty regular basis. The question I have as a user is: does this mean that I'm going to be waiting for a once-a-year Sonos 27 update to get new features?

Tom Conrad: I understand that feeling. But I think if you look at even what Apple does now, they once a year talk about their new operating system, and then the features roll out through the year, some of which they've sort of talked about in their big moments and some of which are a surprise and delight along the way, and our model will be exactly the same.

Matt Bolton: I assume this means that you've got a road map already in mind that covers Sonos 28 and Sonos 29. How far in advance are you thinking?

Tom Conrad: We do, for sure. Certainly, the list of things that I want to accomplish in software runs to many years. But one of the unique opportunities in software — unlike hardware, where you have to make these bets that go out, two or three years after you start programs — is that in software, even a big program might be six months of effort.

And so, while I like to have a two- or three-year road map for software, I like to be constantly replanning so that we can react to what's happening in our customers' lives. If you think back three years ago, for example, we hadn’t even had the ChatGPT moment yet. And so, to have a locked three-year roadmap and be resolutely dedicated to that path, not understanding how the world has changed in the last three years, would be foolish. And so we have a plan, but also the wisdom to be constantly reevaluating and reprioritizing as our customers' needs evolve.

Matt Bolton: How far ahead do you plan to communicate to customers what is coming? Like you say, Apple will announce at WWDC things it doesn't expect to necessarily launch until quite a bit later in the year.

Tom Conrad: I think it's likely that we'll do a couple of events or moments a year where we talk about what's coming and what's newly available. And so I think you can expect, in many years, there'll be kind of a fall event, like this one, where we talk about our big plans for the year, and then there'll be kind of a midyear check-in where we'll add to the story.

Matt Bolton: So let’s talk about AI integration. Generally, people have gotten to the point where they're now pretty skeptical of AI features being added to everything, but it sounds like you're taking a practical approach. So how do you assess what you should build and integrate — what you can do with, as you say, the three years of the ChatGPT ‘moment’?

Tom Conrad: I guess we'll start with what we do for skeptics. The things that we do with conversational AI are completely opt-in experiences, to the point that our speakers all have a hard microphone button on them, so you press it, and it literally breaks the electrical connection between the microphone and the rest of the device. So for those who are uninterested in this moment, we provide a platform that I think has incredible utility, even absent modern AI-powered capabilities.

But I think in some ways, the more exciting dimension of what we're doing is that we're really not starting from, ‘Oh, there is this incredible new technology in large language model, generative conversational AI infrastructure, what can we build with that?’ Instead, we're starting from really spending time with our customers and understanding what they might want to do with voice in the context of Sonos in their home. And we have the room to do that because we've been shipping voice assistants on Sonos for nearly a decade, including our own.

And when I talk to customers, they say, ‘I love the idea that I can engage with the Sonos system in my home without taking my phone out of my pocket. It takes a long time for me to get to the app, my partner looks at me sideways. Like, why are you on your phone when we're having a conversation?’ I mean, I think broadly you'd be hard-pressed to find somebody who's like, ‘I wish that the people I share my home with were on their phone more.’ Instead, they're looking for ways to put the phones in a drawer and enjoy being together.

I think voice is intuitively a great way to solve that, and that's why Sonos One, our first product that had a voice assistant, was such a smash hit 10 years ago. I think people understood that this is a great way to engage. But, unfortunately, the [voice] agents themselves really didn't meet the expectations of the customer.

When I go out and talk to people, the first thing they say is not crazily complex scenarios about how to control my smart home in nine different ways — all this stuff that you hear about from other players in the industry. They say, ‘I just want to be able to talk to the assistant about what I want the same way I would talk to a human being.’ I wanna be able to say, ‘Play that album that I loved in college, with the one with the singer from the Cocteau Twins. I think the band did the theme song to that Fox show. What's it called? It's about a doctor who's really grumpy all the time. Oh, yeah. It's called House.’

And, certainly, with first-generation voice assistants, even if they knew the name of the song, they would have to remember that you have to say ‘Play this song by this artist’ and not say the album and not say the artist first — and [we had to] guess what the agent is thinking. So job one, two, three, four, five, and six is: speak to this thing naturally.

The second thing that they say is they don't really care about all of these seemingly made-up examples of things that tech companies seem to think that we want to do. ‘I looked at your calendar and noticed that you have people coming for brunch tomorrow, and the refrigerator says you're out of eggs. So I'm gonna text your wife to tell her that you've gone to the store to get-’… I mean, no one wants the system in your walls to do that stuff in the real world, I don't think.

But they do want to be able to quickly control ‘atmosphere’, I would call it — which means music, means a soundtrack, and often means lighting. And yeah, they wanna be able to set timers. They wanna be able to ask about the weather. Everything else is really far down the list from there.

So we built [Sonos 27voice] to do exactly those things. It's really fast. It's really reliable. It's really resilient to anything you throw at it linguistically. And I think people are gonna be really delighted with just the fact that it just works. One benefit to narrowing the problem domain to exactly what customers are asking for is that we're also able to deliver this with modern infrastructure that is affordable to run, which means that we can make it a standard part of the Sonos system without having a secondary subscription on top — which is another dimension that people, I think, really want. They don't want another line item on their credit card just to be able to control the ambiance in their home.

Matt Bolton: What is the technology in the background? Are you using a particular language model? Are you running on your own servers or tying into someone else's systems?

Tom Conrad: Let me give you the one last piece of the puzzle that we hear from customers, because it will help me explain the architecture. They do also say that they want access to comprehensive world knowledge. I'm in the kitchen. I'm cooking a pork tenderloin. I wanna know what the temperature should be for it to be safe to eat. My wife and I are having a debate about the name of the actor from Ted Lasso. And people want the voice assistants to be able to talk to them about the world.

So you need something that is everything that I described, but also has the wisdom to reach out to a more sophisticated general-purpose model when the query is outside of the domain of ambiance and timers and weather and the stuff that makes up 95% of what people ask. So we've built our own core model that is a purpose-built, fine-tuned, kind of mid-scale large language model, if you like, that we run on our own infrastructure and answers that 95%, and then reliably routes to an external frontier model for the general knowledge or complex questions.

And we'll even do fun things, like if the frontier model can help in the task of figuring out the music, it will do that too. So you can say things like, ‘Find some music that's breaking through on TikTok and filter it through that shoegaze music that I liked when I was in college in the nineties and make a playlist for me.’ And it will use the frontier model to understand what's being talked about on TikTok. It'll use our infrastructure to understand my musical taste, and then it'll build a playlist and go. So that's what we're doing with Sonos 27voice.

Matt Bolton: I assume the frontier model will change over time, but which one are you using for launch?

Tom Conrad: We're not talking about the infrastructure at launch, but you're right to assume that part of the flexibility here is to be able to trade in and out frontier models to optimize costs, et cetera.

Matt Bolton: The other side of the AI features you announced that I'm really interested in is the MCP integration. Sonos has this long history of being relatively developer-friendly and open, which you guys emphasized a lot in the announcement of this OS. So the MCP integration feels like you’re re-embracing the element of wanting people to be making stuff that works with your system.

Tom Conrad: I think one of the exciting things that's happened in the last, not even two years, but in the last six months, is that suddenly we see ordinary people are able to make software, right? And I know we see it all over the company, and we see it all around the world with our customers. Already, unofficial hacked API access to Sonos is a very common, vibe-coded use case, and you hear people, lots of very high-profile people, talking about controlling their system. And then I meet customers all the time who are experimenting with these things.

And so, we're launching Sonos 27mcp, which makes a supported, full surface-area set of actions in the Sonos system available to our customers, to interact with music through any agent that they choose. Sonos will show up in the Claude connector directory — and the ChatGPT connector directory, and the Grok connector directory, and the Gemini connector directory — alongside Slack and Calendar and Figma, all the other things that you might interact with in Claude on any given day.

And you can do pedestrian things like turn the music down in Claude or whatever you’re using on your phone, in their app, in their desktop app, in a web browser. It will have enough context to understand that the music is on your Sonos system, and it will find the music that's playing and turn it down.

And it will also chain tools together, so you could say things like, ‘Look at my calendar and see the party that's coming up, look at who's coming, help me figure out what would be a great set of music to play based on what we know about these people from my email history with them.’ It's a terrible made-up example. But it's really good at chaining together a bunch of tools and its own native inference and doing these things.

And then as you point out, in the sort of hobbyist community, there's this tremendous opportunity to make bespoke control experiences, both software and hardware, using this infrastructure to integrate Sonos into the emerging agentic frameworks like OpenClaw and Hermes. There's going to be dozens of these things that take over, over the course of the next year, and we'll be able to participate in that.

I think it's just gonna be really fun to see what our customers do with this. And I think it's a really unique capability, because to do it well, you have to have both the technical infrastructure — which is to say access to the nouns and verbs of your system through the internet — which very few people have.

And then you also have to have the, like, philosophical perspective that says openness is good, and allowing integration and access from these third-party systems doesn't disintermediate us. It elevates us, and not every company — maybe no other company — has that perspective.

Matt Bolton: It feels like it must be part of building a future-proof system as well, because MCP seems like quite an agnostic approach, and it means that if, say, Apple adds good MCP support to Siri, you don't have to do anything to support it. But at the same time, does it make it any harder for you to develop on your end knowing that you're going to have this really open-ended way for agents to come in and interact with the system? Does that complicate building and planning features in any way?

Tom Conrad: First, just as a footnote, I should say that it may turn out that Apple's answer to all of this integration is not MCP, but what they call App Intents. And we're also, in this moment, shipping App Intent support on Apple's platform, so we have that piece as well. It's kind of a semantically one-to-one mapping — where the connector lives is different, but what you can do with it is very similar.

How do I say this… Maybe the worst of all worlds is to have all of the third-party engagement with your product be done through hacks and unsupported APIs… I have a friend who has a newborn, and he gets up early to work. He wants to be notified when his wife wakes up, so that he could put the coffee on. And so he basically just set [Claude] Fable about the task of, like, ‘Figure out when my wife wakes up’. And so the agent hacked his smart bed. And then he's like, ‘And start the coffee maker [at that point]’. And it hacked the API for his coffee maker.

I don't know that I wanna be on the receiving end of that universe, because now when I change an implementation detail, it breaks these experiences. And I think the customer blames the coffee maker company and the smart bed brand. They don't blame the fact that they essentially had hacked themselves on top of some infrastructure that was never meant to be built upon.

And so I think the new world sort of demands a certain amount of willingness to participate in this, and I'm really excited at the idea that the MCP infrastructure gives us a really nice structured way to not just do it once and have it applied to multiple platforms, but to do it in a way that allows for a layer of compatibility as we evolve the back-end services.

Matt Bolton: The other thing I wanted to ask regarding so much talk of this being an open platform is just how open are we talking? Would we see Sonos 27 on other devices, on non-Sonos hardware?

Tom Conrad: I think, for now, the magic of Sonos really is the marrying up of what we do in hardware and then what we do with software. And so you'd never say never, but at least as it relates to the core audio business that we're in, I think we're focused on making our own exceptional experiences for the home.

I will put a tiny asterisk on that. We have a great partnership with Peloton that started with us tuning the audio experience in their newest equipment, but is extending over time to allow the Sonos system in their customers' homes to become the audio destination for [their products’ audio output]. It's not quite us bringing the operating system into other people's audio hardware, but it’s a good example of continuing the work that we've all already done to integrate everywhere where our customers wanna be.

Matt Bolton: In the Sonos Ace Ultra, obviously the big headline hook for the hardcore Sonos fans is going to be the Sonos system connectivity that people had hoped the first Ace would have. Why is the new Headphone Engine 2 hardware necessary to make that happen?

Tom Conrad: There were two pieces to unlocking the headphone connectivity for the system. The first is that we needed Wi-Fi performance and secure storage transport of [security] credentials, which is deeply embedded into the actual silicon that goes into the headphone. Unfortunately, Ace doesn't have that platform, so we couldn't responsibly bring the feature to Ace without putting your Wi-Fi password, for example, at risk on an open network during configuration. And without the improved Wi-Fi capability of the headset itself, we couldn't get the kind of ‘walk around your home’ networking performance that we wanted for the product.

But to your point, I'm really proud of the original Ace. They're super comfortable. They've got great battery life. They've got best-in-class noise cancellation performance. They're great headphones.

But it is the best example of how, in that chapter, the company had forgotten how important it is to make sure that the products we make are really part of the system, and not just an exceptional pair of headphones. Because let's be honest, there are lots of exceptional headphones in the world.

And so from the jump on Ace Ultra, we knew that we had to do the thing that our customers most wanted, which was to make the headphones an intuitive part of the [Sonos] system.

There are two mechanisms for engaging with this feature. The first is really kind of magical: you can walk up to any speaker that's playing in your home, press a button on the headset, and the music just jumps from the speaker into the headphone. You can then walk to some other part of your house, press the button again as you stand in front of [another speaker], and the music or content jumps from the headphone to the speaker. No app, no delay, no Bluetooth; it's really just the Sonos ‘Fabric’ tech facilitating this effortless, seamless experience around the home.

I said there were two things that unlock this capability. The first is the hardware that lives in the new headphones. The second is something that happens in the operating system itself, which is that — with the launch of Amp Multi — we built a virtualization technology that allows a single instance of the Sonos OS to host multiple instances of the runtime. And what that's for in Amp Multi is that you’ve got one box running four rooms.

We've taken that capability and extended it to the whole modern speaker family, so that this Sonos Play that's sitting on my desk with me can run more than one instance of the runtime. And so the headphones, which don’t have the CPU horsepower to run the full Sonos stack, doesn't have to — because it can nominate a speaker on your network to be its proxy.

And so when you when the music jumps from the speaker [to the headphones], we spin up a virtual instance of Sonos [software] in one of the speakers — it might be the one you're standing in front of, it might be another one that's less utilized — and send audio over the network as a stream to the headphones, rather than running the full stack in the headset.

And what's cool about this is whatever speaker is doing that work still has the performance overhead to run as a speaker to play music for someone else in the home. So it's a deceptively simple feature that has a lot...underneath it.

Sonos Fabric is the moniker that we've given to the fundamental technology of Sonos that bonds, and groups, and links headphones. And the other exciting thing that we're doing with Fabric in this release is that we're enabling what we call portable surrounds, which is the ability to take a Sonos Play or a Move and to use them as surrounds in a home theater setup.

So the idea is you've got Sonos Play or a couple of Moves in the kitchen, the backyard, whatever — for movie night, you can bring them in, set them down [behind you], and use them for the surround Atmos experience in your family room. And then when you're done, put them back to work in other places in your house.

What's so cool about this technologically is that the way a speaker becomes part of your home theater is fundamentally technically different than the way that a speaker joins the grouping architecture of Sonos [for multi-room], because the latency requirements between the soundbar and the surround speakers are much higher.

So when a speaker joins a home theater configuration, it actually, from a networking standpoint, connects directly to the soundbar. It doesn't go through your home network. And so when you take a speaker that was in the kitchen as part of the grouping architecture, and move it into a [home theater] satellite position, a whole bunch of magic stuff has to happen.

First of all, the soundbar and the speaker have to recognize one another. And so we use the accelerometer in the portable speaker to understand that it's been picked up and set down. And when it's set down, we send an ultrasonic signal. If there's a soundbar in the room that can hear it, it sends a signal back, and they do a handshake to figure out left-to-right distance, to automatically tune, and spin up to the home theater networking connection — all without you doing anything. No app involved at all.

It’s another one you kinda have to experience to really appreciate, but I’m super excited to begin to ship these much more flexible home theater configurations. It's unlike anything that the rest of the industry is delivering today.

Matt Bolton: Can you tell me about the new driver design in the Ace Ultra? What did you want to change compared to the previous one?

Tom Conrad: We have just some of the most sophisticated audio engineers in the world working on these products, and they wanted to deliver deeper bass, clearer details, and a clearer soundstage with less distortion. We had the opportunity to go in and build a custom driver for Ace Ultra to tune it in the studio with some of the best, and award-winning audio engineers in the world.

You have to hear it and compare it side by side with Ace, but I think you'll find that it has a deeper bass response, clearer detail, [better] balance across the audio spectrum.

Matt Bolton: I thought it was really interesting that the Beam Ultra comes in kind of as a replacement for where the original Arc ended up in the product range following the launch of the Amp Ultra. Why did you go down the route of squeezing more channels into the smaller Beam body, instead of sticking with the bigger and more flexible Arc shape to fill that role?

Tom Conrad: Our goal was to deliver truly the best midsize soundbar in the world. There are still plenty of people around the world that want a smaller form factor. They want something that can tuck underneath the television when it's sitting on a credenza, or for a smaller television. Or, frankly, they just want an object that doesn't call as much attention to itself as a larger soundbar.

And yet they want full true 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos. They want a height experience that puts them really inside the action. And so with Beam Ultra, we built a system that has nine drivers, including two upfiring drivers, that bounce audio off the ceiling and the walls to create that immersion.

If you spend time with any home theater customer, you understand that they really want a pristine dialogue experience where the dialogue always cuts through the busy scenes. And so the center soundstage of Beam Ultra is dramatically improved.

They also want bass that lands with a tremendous weight without having to put a subwoofer into the room. They want music that's expansive and has a clear soundstage. And the creators want products that recreate their intention in the family room with great accuracy.

It's so hard to talk about these products that deliver these sound experiences before people have the chance to experience them in person. But everyone we're sharing Beam Ultra with just can't believe the amount of sound experience and presence you get out of such a small soundbar.

Matt Bolton: So was it the case that when you were speaking to customers, you figured out that if people are buying at this kind of midrange price, they more often want the smaller size rather than the bigger size — even if that adds complication on your end?

Tom Conrad: That's right. I mean, we already have the best-in-the-world large soundbar in Arc Ultra. And so the question really was for the rest of the market: what can we do to make a huge generational leap in capability here? And that's the place that Beam Ultra comes from.

Matt Bolton: It feels like you could have gone with 5.1.2 channels on the Beam Ultra, and that probably would have made people happy if delivered with higher quality. What was there in the development that meant that you settled on 7.1.2 as necessary, or the right option?

Tom Conrad: Well, I think part of it is that we deliver in Beam itself such an exceptional experience around the 5.1.2 experience. We really wanted to find a way to expand the product portfolio rather than just refreshing Beam. And so, in this moment, Beam will stay in the market as our solution for the customer that is more price-conscious and who wants that 5.1.2 experience, and Beam Ultra sits above it to deliver a more immersive Atmos surround experience.

Open earbuds are super-hot right now, especially with great options from more premium brands — our guide to the best open earbuds is full of these. But prices have been coming down, and you can now find super-cheap options on Amazon, many for under $40 / £40 / AU$60. Some are from brands you’ve never heard of, others from well-known brands that are selling older models at a discount.

We all know that buying budget tech tends to come with a few sacrifices. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider them (just take a look at the great picks in our best budget earbuds guide for proof).

The problem is that open earbuds are tricky to get right. You need a combination of stability to keep them in place and an audio mix that’s engaging while also allowing ambient noise to get through. The only way to know if they've succeeded is to test them, so I picked three options from generally reliable budget earbuds brands and put them through their paces, all for under $40 / £35.99 / AU$60.

I put the Tozo OpenEarRing, Soundcore Anker V20i and Belkin SoundForm ClearFit buds to the test, listening to music and podcasts with them all over the course of two weeks.

There was no point focusing on whether these are elite sonic performers — they won’t be, and that's. But I wanted to know whether they’d still fit well, deliver enjoyable audio, and do a good job at keeping me aware of my surroundings.

For those who like to cut to the chase, I'll tell you up front that I think the Tozo OpenEarRing are actually good, the Anker Soundcore V20i are a solid buy, and the Belkin aren't worth it — but read on for exactly why.

Fit and stability

The whole point of open earbuds is they keep your ear canal open so you can hear both your music and what’s going on around you. But that means they’re challenging to design because there are no in-ear tips to keep them securely in place.

Instead, what keeps them stable is either an ear hook that sits around the back of your head, or an ear clip that slips over the side of your ear. (There are some options that just sit in the ear like regular earbuds, but without inserting into the ear canal — but when it comes to open earbuds most people focus on hook or clip style.)

The Belkin SoundForm ClearFit buds have the ear hook design, but it’s a fairly short hook and the angle it curves at didn’t feel particularly comfortable behind my ear.

The main unit of the bud, which sits in front of your ear, is also quite bulky. It felt like there were weight distribution issues between the hook and the buds, which meant they never felt totally secure when I was walking, and slipped and bounced around a little when I was running.

What made this experience worse was that the touch controls on the side of the buds were incredibly sensitive, so in trying to get the right fit or move them back into position, I was playing/pausing and skipping tracks without meaning to.

Now, the Soundcore Anker V20i may look similar with their ear hooks, but these are longer, which kept them more stable because they were anchored in place. They also had a really useful customization feature at the base of the hook, which gives you four slightly different angles to wear them at, depending on the shape of your ear, to help keep them secure.

They felt a little unstable on longer, sweatier runs, but their design differences meant they fit much better than the Belkin buds did.

The Tozo OpenEarRing buds have a different design altogether. They’re part of a category of buds we refer to as 'clip-on'. You part the buds ever-so-slightly and then slip them over your helix at the side of your ear.

Tozo’s take on this design was very easy to wear. It’s worth mentioning here that this style of design does get much closer to your ear than the ear hook style does, which instead sits above it. But the main, circular part of the Tozo buds sat in my concha comfortably, while still not creating a seal, so my ear canals were kept open.

In the past, I’ve preferred clip-on designs. I wear glasses often, and wear sunglasses over summer. I also have thick hair. These factors mean it never feels like there’s enough space behind my ear for buds with ear hooks.

Having said that, plenty of people do rate more expensive hook-style designs, like the Shokz OpenFit 2+. But if I wanted to play it safe with a cheaper pair, I’d pick the clip-on style every time — and that was the case with the Tozo. I had no complaints at all about the fit.

Fit for purpose sound

I wasn’t expecting high-fidelity sound from these buds. But I wanted to test whether they could achieve a decent listening volume (sometimes a challenge with open buds) and if there was enough musicality to make for an engaging and fun listen.

I’ve had people tell me they like having a pair of open earbuds for listening to podcasts while they walk, so I also tested how vocals sounded.

The Belkin buds were a disappointing listen with most genres of music. Even at the highest volume they felt quiet. But pushing them to higher volumes gave a really tinny and distant quality to the tracks. There also wasn’t much bass and the mix lacked definition, with instruments tending to blur together. If you’re listening to any sort of music with power behind it, it’ll lack impact here.

Having said that, tracks that were mostly instrumental sounded decent and podcast vocals were clear enough. Combine these experiences with the fit and I think I’d only recommend these buds if you want to listen to podcasts while you’re walking.

The Soundcore buds performed a little better. They were noticeably louder, but achieving higher volumes is tricky in this design. There was a little more bass presence and weight in bass-heavy tracks, so they're largely fine if you want to listen to a workout playlist but don’t need that thumping low end. Podcasts sounded pretty good too.

The Tozo buds sit much closer to your ear, which means they can achieve pretty high volumes. I also noted good instrument separation and a clarity that surprised me at this level. I felt a sense of things feeling a little bright, sharp and fatiguing eventually, but that was after several hours of use on a long walk.

Now, I wouldn’t say the bass had much weight or impact, but the sound was impressive given that these are open and incredibly cheap. Especially if you tweak the EQ, which is very easy from within the app. Just don’t expect the kind of low-end extension you’d get from an in-ear pair and you’ll be fine.

Does sound leak out?

Most open designs are built to point sound waves towards your ear, so even though they’re open, everyone around you won’t hear what you’re listening to. But in practice, these buds can leak a lot of sound.

I ran several tests to determine what the sound leakage was like at different volumes and distances.

The Soundcore buds performed well. When I was listening to podcasts and music at a medium volume, they weren’t audible from about two feet away — but crank music up to full volume and you can hear it faintly from three or four feet away.

The Belkin buds had the most sound leakage. They felt the furthest away from my ears, so maybe that’s to be expected. At two feet, podcasts and mid volume music was audible, but only if I was testing in a really quiet environment. At full volume, they could be easily heard from three or four feet away in a quiet-ish environment too.

The Tozo buds can get much louder, so I expected a lot more sound leakage. Surprisingly, they performed similarly to the Soundcore buds. There was some faint leakage at lower volumes or in a louder environment. In a really quiet environment and at full volume, I could definitely hear the music from a couple of feet away, but only faintly.

These aren’t options for quiet office spaces, but you knew that already given the design. It’s worth considering that there’s always going to be a little noise leakage in a cheaper, open design, but I’d say a clip-on choice will minimize it significantly given the simple fact that the speakers are closer to your ears.

Awareness of your surroundings

I’ve said in reviews several times before that if you don’t really need open buds, there’s little reason to consider them. I personally think you get a lot more for your money from in-ear designs among the best earbuds. But if you do really like the idea of hearing your surroundings as you listen to music, for your safety or just to feel connected to the world, then have at them.

Both the Belkin buds and Soundcore buds let a little more environmental sound in simply because they were a little further away from my ear. I heard close conversations, traffic, alarms and people shouting.

Now, ironically, at one point I was so preoccupied trying to get the Belkin to feel more stable, I actually lost my focus on the sound of nearby traffic, so I still ended up unaware of my surroundings. So I guess that just goes to show how important fit is.

With the Tozo buds at full volume playing music, I definitely wasn’t aware of as much outside sound, but I could still easily hear alarms, traffic and shouting. When I was using them to listen to podcasts, I was aware of everything.

Levels of awareness are pretty subjective and hard to judge. You could be hearing everything around you and still get distracted by your music or your own thoughts. But I’d say if you want to hear as much as possible, go for ear hooks designs.

Fuss-free controls

When I’m out walking or running and want to pay attention to my surroundings, I don’t want to be getting my phone out every few minutes to pause or skip tracks. Which is why I want to quickly mention the controls you’ll find on each pair of buds.

As I mentioned earlier, the Belkin buds had controls that were way too sensitive. It also seems like the whole front panel of the buds registers touch controls, which made them really difficult to use or wear. Unfortunately, there’s no app support for these buds to turn those off.

Once you memorize what these different controls mean, they do become handy. But the accidental taps outweighed the benefit of the intentional ones.

The Soundcore buds also have sensitive controls, but it was much easier to position them without setting them off. I also like that you can customize them from within the app.

Tozo’s controls don’t work with a single tap. I like this as it solves the issue of unwanted taps. But then again, the double click to play/pause was sometimes difficult to register.

This highlights a fundamental design problem with open buds. You’ll need to be able to touch them often to get the right fit, but still need to be able to touch them to control them.

The cheap Amazon open earbuds winner

The winner here was definitely the Tozo OpenEarRing buds, outshining the other two in terms of fit, stability and sound.

They weren’t perfect, but if you want a super-cheap choice that’s going to deliver decent sound and allow you to hear most of what’s going on around you too, I think they’re surprisingly solid.

If you can stretch your budget, other brands do clip-ons well. The Soundpeats Clip1 are currently our top sub-£100/$100 clip-on pick in our best open earbuds guide.

If you’re set on ear hooks, the Anker Soundcore V20i buds will deliver satisfactory sound with a fairly reliable fit, as long as super intense workouts aren’t your thing.

There are many other cheaper options on Amazon, but I think being aware that there are trade-offs at this level, and deciding which you’re willing to accept, will get you the best possible buds for your budget.

Noble Audio Vanguard review

Right out of the box, the Noble Audio Vanguard look and feel unlike any other in-ear monitors (IEMs) that I've tried before. Their medieval-like outer casework, their shield-shaped ear tip case, and their ink-black cable all caught my eye in a way that few rivals have in my years testing audio gear.

The striking visuals are undeniable. But what of their sound? Well, Noble Audio says that the Vanguard are “designed for control, clarity, and balance,” aiming to deliver excellent clarity across the frequency range through their triple driver configuration.

But are the Vanguard actually able to compete with the very best wired earbuds around? Here’s my verdict after extensive testing and many an hour of listening.

Let’s start by taking a look under the hood. The Noble Audio Vanguard make use of three drivers — all of which are focused on specific roles. For the low frequencies, there’s a 10mm dynamic driver, but there are also two custom balanced armature drivers on board — one for the mid-high frequencies, and another for the ultra-high domain. You can connect to an audio device with the standard 4.4mm connector, although there’s also a USB-C adapter included if you want to listen to tracks on your phone or desktop PC, for instance. Unfortunately, there’s no 3.5mm option out of the box, so you’ll need to use an adapter if you need access to that.

The Vanguard also come with a shield-shaped case filled with an outrageous number of extra ear tips, including gel and foam options. And with the right seal, the Vanguard are able to offer very solid noise isolation, with sounds such as typing and chatter in my office subdued to great effect. As well as the shield case for ear tips, you also get a fabric pouch for the IEMs. It's a neat addition, although it's incredibly susceptible to picking up fibers from a pocket or bag.

One thing that I have to discuss is the actual shape of the IEMs. They’re very chunky, and stuck out from my ears a fair bit, creating a slightly odd feel in-use. Their broad construction meant that they weren’t the most comfortable wired in-ears I’ve ever used, but I still felt that they were secure and fine to keep in for an hour or so at a time.

From a purely aesthetic perspective, the Vanguard fare a bit better in my eyes. They appear to be inspired by medieval-style fantasy, with a shield on each bud containing a splash of gold deep black outer casing. The buds are also constructed from aluminium and a “precision-machined shell,” and they feel highly premium — perhaps even more than their price would suggest. The black, intertwined wire is also a thing of beauty, and I was never subjected to distracting cable noise.

But you want to know how they sound now, don’t you? Well, I’ve kept you waiting long enough. And it’s good news, because for the price you pay, these IEMs sound exceptional.

In All'Acqua Ghiacciata by Marco Castello, the Vanguard performed brilliantly across the board. Acoustic guitars occupied a distinct pocket, and came through with gorgeous tonality. They were well separated from the vocals, which sounded textured and natural. The real highlight, though, was the energetic drums, which came through with incredible clarity and precision, and sounded tastefully prominent without feeling overly bright. Smooth bass was also perfectly balanced in the mix, communicated with impact and warmth without overstepping.

More generally, bass is well-balanced on the Vanguard — though it can hit hard if needed. For instance, on First Night by Vitess, the kick came through with tremendous impact and power, really immersing me in the cosmic house banger. And this was never at the expense of spacey synths or animated drums, which were perfectly weighted in the mix.

As you may expect from the driver configuration — with one specifically tailored for upper treble, and another for mids-highs — the higher frequencies sound excellent on the Vanguard. I’d say they sound a little forward, but tastefully so, emphasizing excitement and detail in the upper echelons of the frequency range. This may not be ideal for those who want the most neutral monitoring solution, but for sheer music-listening enjoyment it’s a welcome decision.

While the Vanguard perhaps don’t provide the enveloping, super-expansive soundstage that some listeners may like, I personally love their dynamic, tight, and detailed approach. And they still provide impressive instrument separation, enabling each component of your favorite tracks to breathe. The dynamic drivers provide weighty yet controlled bass, and the duo of balanced armature drivers are fantastic at supplying textured vocals and clear mids, and especially talented in plating up expressive highs. So the Vanguard are a hit as far as sound quality is concerned.

At $325 / £299 / AU$467, the Noble Audio Vanguard feel well worth the outlay. Sure, they’re a bit chunky, and could be a bit more snug in-use. But the level of detail and precision they supply is spectacular at this price-point. With high build quality and multiple connectivity options, the Vanguard are an excellent affordable-to-mid-range option that audiophiles are sure to love.

Noble Audio Vanguard review: price & release date

• Priced at $325 / £299 / AU$467
• Released in July 2026

At $325 / £299 / AU$467, the Noble Audio Vanguard sit in the affordable-to-mid-range section of the IEM market. They were released in July 2026, as something of a successor to 2025’s Noble Audio Knight IEMs.

For this money, their closest competition might be the Activo Q1, at $349 / £299 (about AU$600), from audiophile staple Astell & Kern's affordable sub-brand. And while the ethereal aesthetic of those wired buds is very different to that of the Noble, the star-rating is just as competitive.

One thing: they may be a little hard to find online, with no planned availability on Amazon or other big third party retailers. But that does not mean I encourage you to stop searching — in fact, the opposite is true.

Noble Audio Vanguard review: specs

Should I buy the Noble Audio Vanguard?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

Noble Audio Vanguard review: also consider

How I tested the Noble Audio Vanguard

• Tested over the course of multiple days
• Mainly tested using Tidal
• Paired with Astell & Kern A&ultima SP4000

I tested the Noble Audio Vanguard across multiple days and spent hours upon hours listening to music. Typically, I had the Vanguard hooked up to the Astell & Kern A&ultima SP4000 media player, though I did also try them out with my Windows laptop and Xiaomi 17 phone.

To begin with, I sifted through tracks in the TechRadar reference playlist, which features tunes from a wide variety of genres, but I also bumped a bunch of songs from my personal library. I also made sure to compare the Vanguard to affordable IEM rivals like the Sennheiser IE 200.

More generally, I’ve spent years testing audio gear here at TechRadar, where I serve as an in-house Senior Reviews Writer. I’ve covered everything from portable DACs through to premium wireless headphones such as the Sony WH-1000XM6, and have reviewed a number of IEMs, meaning I know exactly what it takes for a model to stand out in a competitive market.

• Read TechRadar’s reviews guarantee
• First reviewed: August 2026

Apple’s big September event is under two weeks away at the time of writing, with invites having been sent out for a ‘Surprise and shine’ event on September 9.

So what surprises can you expect? Well, given how extensively Apple’s products and services tend to leak, there’s a chance there won’t be any major surprises at all. But there certainly will be some big announcements — likely to be headlined by the first foldable iPhone, which could be dubbed the iPhone Ultra.

That’s probably going to be joined by other iPhones, Apple Watches, and an assortment of other devices, so there could be lots to see even if none of it comes as a complete surprise. Below, we’ve detailed the most likely Apple announcements.

1. The iPhone Ultra

The iPhone Ultra is likely to be the biggest announcement at Apple’s ‘Surprise and shine’ event, as this is set to be the company’s first foldable phone — something we’ve heard rumors of for many years at this point.

In fact, it’s been so long now that it’s almost hard to believe it’s actually about to land, but all signs suggest it is.

Leaks point to the iPhone Ultra having a roughly 7.8-inch foldable screen and around a 5.5-inch cover display, with an overall design that’s somewhat similar to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 — so more of a passport shape than the book-style Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra.

This will likely have a dual-lens camera and top-end power, and reports suggest the screen might not have a visible crease. It could be the phone you’ve been waiting for if you want an iPhone and an iPad mini all in one. But it’s also sure to be very expensive, with leaks pointing to a starting price of at least $2,000 (around £1,470 / AU$2,785).

2. The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max

The iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max will almost certainly launch here too, for anyone who doesn’t want — or can’t afford — Apple’s foldable.

Based on leaks, these will probably sport broadly the same design as the iPhone 17 Pro series, complete with the same 6.3-inch and 6.9-inch screen sizes — though the back glass might be closer in color to the aluminum frame, leaving them with less of a two-tone appearance than the current models.

You can of course expect a chipset upgrade, with the as-yet-unannounced A20 Pro chipset likely to be featured, and the Dynamic Island might be smaller this year.

These phones are also rumored to have a variable aperture on one of their cameras — though it’s possible that only the iPhone 18 Pro Max will get this — and they could have higher capacity batteries than their predecessors.

Though they’re likely to also cost more, with estimates putting the starting price at anywhere between $100 (roughly £75 / AU$140) and $300 (around £220 / AU$415) more than the iPhone 17 Pro line.

3. New Apple Watches

That’s all the iPhones we’re expecting — with the base iPhone 18 reportedly not arriving until 2027 — but Apple is also likely to unveil some new wearables.

Specifically, we’re expecting the Apple Watch Series 12 and the Apple Watch Ultra 4. The main upgrades for the Apple Watch 12 could be Touch ID on the side button, and a new S12 chip, likely delivering a noticeable performance improvement. But — other than the new software coming with watchOS 27 such as a dedicated Siri app — this might otherwise be similar to the Apple Watch Series 11, complete with a largely unchanged design.

As for the Apple Watch Ultra 4, this could similarly have a new chipset and gain Touch ID, but it might additionally have a slightly larger screen and a slimmer build than the Apple Watch Ultra 3. Some reports suggest the upcoming model could also have new sensors, which might increase its accuracy at tracking health and fitness metrics.

4. New AirPods

Apple could also unveil some new AirPods at its next event, with talk of the AirPods 5 and AirPods 5 with ANC landing at the September event. Sadly we probably won’t see the rumored AirPods Pro with cameras yet though.

Details on the AirPods 5 are slim so far, but they might prove a tempting — and more affordable — alternative to Apple’s AirPods Pro line.

5. Apple’s first smart home display

Apple might finally launch a smart home display this September, as it’s rumored to be working on a home device with a seven-inch screen, and some reports suggest it will land this year — though don’t be surprised if we don’t see it until 2027.

This device — which might be called a Home Hub — will probably primarily be interacted with via Siri of course, and it will apparently use facial recognition to tell who is looking at it and serve up personalized content accordingly.

6. Other new devices for the home

Apple might also launch a new HomePod mini and Apple TV 4K box at its September event. The former will probably support some Apple Intelligence features and is rumored to work with Wi-Fi 7 and have improved sound quality over its aging predecessor.

The latter could support Siri AI, Wi-Fi 7, have an improved chipset, more RAM, and come with an upgraded Siri remote.

7. New software

That’s probably it for hardware, but September is also when we’ll see the launch of Apple’s new software, much of which is currently in beta.

This includes iOS 27, iPadOS 27, watchOS 27, macOS 27, and tvOS 27. The biggest feature on most of these will be Siri’s AI overhaul, bringing it more in line with the capabilities offered by the likes of Gemini and ChatGPT.

But you can expect tweaks to their interfaces and various other new and improved features too. So even if you’re not planning to buy one of the products above, your existing Apple devices should get a bit better soon.

• Accessory brand Dbrand has made a rugged Tank Case for the AirPods Pro 3
• It follows the Tank Cases for phones, which users didn't particularly like
• The company has been known to get into trouble, most notably with Sony and the PS5

If you’ve been wondering what Dbrand has been up to following its Sony and PS5 controversy, it’s now ventured into accessories for AirPods.

The Canadian company, which specializes in accessories across devices for Apple, Samsung, Google Pixel, and more, has just unveiled its new Tank Case for the AirPods Pro 3, which even the brand itself agrees is far from the best-looking tech accessory out there — but attractiveness isn’t what it was going for.

At $29.95 (about CA$40), the AirPods Pro 3 Tank Case is bulky to say the very least, because even owners of the best earbuds out there can be clumsy and prone to accidents.

This was intentional; in contrast to Apple’s accessories, which often puts design above protection, the Tank Case puts texture and grip first, designed with deep ridges and grooves so it doesn’t slip from between your fingers. With 10 different textures across its surface, the Tank Case is a piece of architecture, providing immunity to scratches and other damage.

In fact, it has such a tight and secure grip around your AirPods that Dbrand built a removal tool to help you remove the ear buds from the case. That’s how you know it means business, but despite its snug fit it, doesn’t lock you out of using your AirPods altogether.

Impressively, the case’s ruggedness doesn’t get in the way of wireless charging — it "defies compromise", as Dbrand puts it. There’s also an opening to access the touch sensor for uninterrupted passthrough when pairing with devices.

Dbrand's decision to expand the Tank Case range into audio devices is surprising, since the Tank Case for mobile wasn't exactly popular when it launched last year. The original Tank Case was mocked for its bulky design and dull colors, but Dbrand has expressed a blatant disregard to the backlash. The company really said ‘whatever, we’re doing it anyway’, which a bit of a risky choice considering its past.

Dbrand has a history of getting itself into hot water with users and tech companies alike, its legal battle with Sony being one example. In addition to phone cases, Dbrand is a popular third-party gaming accessory retailer, and started selling its own ‘Darkplates’ for the PS5 back in 2021. However, it was forced to pull them from the shelves following a cease-and-desist threat from Sony.

Refusing to listen to and learn from user criticism is a bold move, but it’s pretty much part of Dbrand’s DNA at this point. Its owners must get a thrill from taking their own path with things, but the company often finds itself in the midst of some sort of drama as a result.

• Plaud One records and transcribes calls and conversations, but its broader agent capabilities will arrive in a future update
• High-stakes actions require approval, while recording is manually triggered, and users are responsible for obtaining consent
• It features built-in 4G connectivity at no additional cost

It’s certainly an interesting time for AI wearables, with smart glasses in particular attracting a lot of attention — and raising privacy concerns around the potential for users to video people without their permission.

Announced for pre-order today, Plaud One Explorer Edition is a new wearable AI device, primarily aimed at professionals, that's designed to capture your conversations, so that it can produce actions and reports based on the discussions you’re having during your working day

Worn as earbuds or used through its standalone case, Plaud One can capture calls and in-person conversations. Recordings are uploaded automatically for transcription and summarization as they happen, so (in theory at least) you’ll never need to write anything down again.

Plaud One also has agentic capabilities that Plaud says can take actions across tools like Gmail, Google Calendar, Notion and Slack based on your conversations. However, when we quizzed Plaud about exactly what will be available at launch it told us: “Explorer Edition is the complete Plaud One hardware, but broader new Plaud Intelligence agent capabilities will be available in a future update.”

That caveat pushes the agentic features further into the future. So what agent abilities will work at launch, rather than arriving later in App 4.0? I spoke to the Plaud team to find out.

They told me that, “At launch, users can press and hold the Agent Button and speak to the agent. Hands-free 'Hey Plaud' activation through the earbuds is coming in a future firmware update.”

Privacy concerns

Given the obvious privacy concerns, I asked the team if recording is manually triggered, and how other people know it is happening.

“Yes, recording is manually triggered with the press of a button,” they told me. The team didn’t mention any audible or visible indication that recording is taking place, instead placing responsibility on the wearer to inform the people around them: “Plaud encourages users to follow local laws and best practices for recording consent," they added. "Where consent is required, users should inform participants before recording.”

Plaud Agent uses the context of your conversations to identify possible actions, such as preparing a follow-up email after a client meeting or producing a finished report based on a discussion. But can it actually send an email, post to Slack or create a calendar event without confirmation from the user?

“It depends on what the action is”, said the Plaud team. “Anything that changes something or leaves your environment, the agent pauses and asks you first. For example, editing or deleting your files, sending an email on your behalf, pulling in outside data — those always need your approval. Reading and querying your own data inside Plaud is different. That's a closed, trusted environment, so the agent can do that on its own. That's what makes it actually useful. If it had to ask permission to look something up in your own notes, it wouldn't feel like an agent at all.”

What happens when the agent misunderstands a decision?

“The design assumes a misunderstanding can happen, so it's built to be caught before it turns into a wrong action," the team told me. "All higher-stakes actions — changing or deleting internal files, sending an email externally, or calling external data — require the user to approve them manually. So if you spot something the Agent got wrong, you can fix it yourself before it goes anywhere, or ask the Agent to revise it. Nothing high-stakes acts on its own

"On top of that, the Agent's outputs are grounded, not guesswork — they're built from the context the user actually provides, the real transcripts and recordings, so they trace back to what was genuinely said and a misread is easy to spot.

"And as with any AI, we're clear that important outputs should be checked before they're used — the same principle behind the 'AI can make mistakes, please verify' note you see across these tools. The point isn't that it never misunderstands; it's that the user stays in control, and the work stays grounded, reviewable, and correctable.”

That approval system is only one part of how Plaud says the agent will work. To handle different kinds of tasks, Plaud Agent draws on a library of workflows known as Skills, alongside curated collections designed for particular professional roles called Plugins. As well as agentic actions, Plaud Agent can also generate finished work products, from emails to documents and presentations.

Independent of your phone

Interestingly, Plaud One is designed to work independently of your phone thanks to a built-in eSIM and 4G LTE connectivity. That immediately raises another question: will the eSIM require a separate subscription?

The Plaud team told me it will not: “No, Plaud One comes with a built-in eSim, which is provided at no extra cost to the consumer.”

I also asked whether users can inspect, correct and delete the information Plaud retains about them, and the team told me: “Users retain full control over their data. Plaud processes user data to deliver core product functionality, and users can access, correct, export, and delete their data — and withdraw consent — at any time through the Plaud App.”

Finally, I asked if these are fully functional music and calling earbuds, or primarily recording devices, and the team explain that, “The earbuds are recording devices first, capturing what you hear and say, so they can be used for calls. The earbuds also have High-Res LDAC audio, however, Plaud One is first and foremost an AI notetaker.”

Availability

Plaud One is priced at $249.99 / £229 and includes $200 / £150 in Plaud credits; pricing and availability for Australia is TBC. That made me wonder exactly what those credits buy — and how much continued use will cost once they've been spent.

The team did not disclose the ongoing costs, but explained that, “credits are used for the new Agent capabilities across Plaud Intelligence: agent tasks, Routines, Skills and Plugins, and the Artefacts the Agent produces. Everything else about Plaud One works out of the box.”

Pre-orders are open now in the US and UK with shipping of the Explorer Edition expected in Q4 2026.

• Report points to AirPods 5 launching in September, in two models
• A cheaper version and a pricier option with noise cancellation
• We're expecting the big iPhone 18 Pro event to happen in early September

Despite all these news stories about AirPods with cameras, we've been hearing that 'normal' AirPods are set to release before the end of the year — and a brand-new report paints a much clearer picture of what we're about to see.

According to a report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, a prolific Apple tipster, the brand is teeing up to release AirPods 5, consisting of a standard pair of buds and an ANC-toting model.

It's suggested that these buds could come in early September — Apple's regular late-year launch is expected to bring iPhone 18 Pro models, Apple Watch 12 and a folding iPhone Ultra — but, by the sounds of it, there's wiggle room for them to release a little later. Still, it's often Apple's style to have one big event with lots of products.

Back in 2024, Apple expanded its non-Pro AirPods line two have two versions. We received the standard AirPods 4, and also the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation, the latter of which received a slightly more positive review from us. It was a similar model, but with a slightly higher price and ANC. It seems that Apple is continuing that trend.

AirPods that are really 'new'

Apple's standard AirPods see fewer leaks and rumors than the Pro model, and so there aren't any serious reports as to what we could expect. But we weren't glowing in our review, and there are a few tweaks Apple could make to improve them.

The main thing is simply the value. The AirPods 4 weren't expensive, but they just didn't offer as good value for money as the competition — the likes of the Nothing Ear (a) were cheaper, offered features such as ANC, and sounded better.

They stood in contrast to the AirPods Pro 2 (which were current when AirPods 4 launched) and later the AirPods Pro 3. The premium buds are excellent value compared to the competition, packing in more features, impressive sound, and a comfortable and light design.

Apple had the same problem I saw in Samsung's Galaxy Buds 4: a brand not making its cheaper options cheap enough. I'd like to see AirPods 5 either cost less (unlikely in today's tech world…) or have more features to give them a reason to cost more than the rest of the budget earbuds world.

I also think fit reliability is an area that needs to see changes too. It's a common problem in semi-open buds like the AirPods, that they don't grip in your ears as well as those with in-ear tips — I've lost count of how many AirPods runners I've seen lose their buds mid-jog. Apple's done good design work in this area, but I want to see improvements still.

Apple improved the battery life of its earbuds last time, and I hope it can do that again — they actually outperformed Apple's claimed figures, but it's normal to see earbuds hit close to 10 hours without ANC on, so it'd be great to see Apple get closer to that.

When it comes to audio, I hope they'll improve the way they handle detail. As we said in our AirPods 4 review, they lose fine resolution, which can affect the enjoyment of some tracks. Of all the upgrades I've listed, I'd imagine sonic tweaks are the ones most likely to come to fruition.

If Apple wanted to make some serious changes, it could make AirPods truly accessible to Android users (at the moment, most AirPods features require an iPhone, though they will function for basic audio with any Bluetooth device). I don't see the brand making this change, but it'd certainly shine a needed light on Apple's lesser-bought buds — however, Android support seems to be Beats' role in Apple's portfolio.

It's hard not to treat 2026 as a fallow year for AirPods. The fifth-generation models will likely be iterative updates, as the AirPods Max 2 were, and the camera-toting AirPods are expected to launch next year. But a few tweaks could help make the AirPods 5 feel like more than water-treading from Apple, even just two years after the previous models.

• More details on these rumored AirPods have emerged
• It seems they'll be capable of taking 1MP photos
• The earbuds may also be able to use environmental context

Rumors of Apple working on a pair of camera-equipped AirPods have been doing the rounds for years now, but it seems their arrival could now be close. A fresh leak has given us some more details of the specs to expect, as well.

As MacRumors reports, data hidden away in macOS suggests that these earbuds will be able to capture synchronized color images up to 1 megapixel in size. That backs up the idea that they'll primarily be for AI sensing and processing, rather than to snap photos of your vacation or kids.

The code also points to photo capture but not video capture, and there are mentions of context in the environment that are used by the AirPods: these potential contextual clues include nearby speech and sounds, and changes in the user's posture and head position.

There are also indications that these AirPods-with-eyes will have a capture light on them to show when the camera is active, and that all the necessary visual interpretation will be done on device — potentially assuaging privacy concerns around how they might be used.

Negative pushback

Of course none of these details are guaranteed to appear in the final product, which those in the know say will be making an appearance next year. Apple might decide to change certain aspects of the device's configuration, or cancel it altogether.

In recent months, we've seen a lot of conversations and consumer pushback around the covert recording that smart glasses are capable of, and Apple will know that it's going to have to work hard to avoid the same negative chatter in regards to these AirPods.

Going off one Reddit thread at least, users aren't sure about these extra capabilities, with one contributor saying "this is going to get AirPods banned from all workplaces". However, other commenters seem more positive about the possibilities here — while also insisting that Apple will have to put privacy protections like on-device processing in place.

The leaked video that we saw a few days ago shows the AirPods-with-cameras being used as a sort of visual bookmarking system, where users can ask to save an item like a book cover to reference again in the future.

JBL Live Beam 4 review

JBL is back with its new generation of touchscreen-equipped earbuds, and the JBL Live Beam 4 may just be my favorite of the bunch.

These in-ear wireless earbuds come with a number of improvements over their predecessors, including enhanced active noise cancelling capabilities, new “fidelity drivers” for more advanced audio, and better call quality to boot. That’s not to mention an updated UI for the smart charging case, which is packed with more features than ever before.

But are these changes good enough to cement the JBL Live Beam 4 as some of the best wireless earbuds that money can buy? Here’s what I think after weeks of testing.

Let’s start by talking about the smart charging case, which is the Live series’ unique selling point. Although it certainly borders on gimmicky, the revamped UI is actually pretty responsive, and is packed with plenty of functionality. You can adjust the ANC mode, equalizer, spatial sound settings, and playback settings, for instance, and 'favorite' certain settings for speedier access.

But that’s not all. You can also access tools such as a timer, flashlight, and a Find My Buds application, and also set a background — including a custom photo, which I loved doing. Gaining access to these instruments without needing to remove your phone (or other source device) may be handy in certain situations — like when your device is in a bag or on charge.

As chic as the touchscreen case is, though, I still found myself gravitating towards the JBL Headphones app on my phone — the ease of a larger screen, and the full control available in the companion software made it a more natural choice for me.

The feature-set available is pretty comprehensive just on the case though, and marks a vast improvement on the suite of features to be found in JBL's past screen-toting buds. On top of what I’ve already mentioned, you can activate a smart talk option — similar to Sony’s speak-to-chat feature. You can also customize touch controls, and alter how your voice — and the person on the other side — sounds on phone calls (there’s a natural, powerful, or bright version).

Given that JBL has also included ‘Perfect Calls 2.0’ tech, which harnesses an AI-trained algorithm, you may expect primo call quality here, but unfortunately, I found it to be a touch underwhelming. It was by no means bad, but during a call, my colleague noted how my voice lacked the clarity and definition they’d expected. When making a voice recording I found this to be accurate — my speech was clear enough, but there was a fair bit of sibilance, and background noises were pretty prominent too.

But let’s talk about arguably the most important feature of all — active noise cancellation. You can choose to have this on, off, or use a transparency mode, all of which are easy to cycle through in-app or on the smart charging case.

But just how good is the ANC on these earbuds? Well… it’s decent. We weren’t blown away by noise the cancelling on the JBL Live Beam 3, and despite some improvement, I still found them a little prone to letting external noise creep in. Whether it was passing by traffic, typing in my office, or chatter on buses, I could still hear a fair bit, even when listening at around 70% volume. The Beam 4 still dulled sounds effectively, and kept me focused on my tunes, but if you’re expecting the silence-inducing ANC of the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds Gen 2, for instance, then you may be disappointed.

Anyway, I think it’s about time I started giving the JBL Beam 4 their flowers, because they impressed me in almost every other area — including what is arguably the most crucial of all: sound quality. These are a fantastic-sounding pair of wireless buds, especially with LDAC activated for higher-resolution Bluetooth streaming.

Right out of the box, the Live Beam 4 offer exciting, impactful, yet detailed audio. As is usually the case with JBL audio gear, the bass is fairly forward, but not to the point that it’s distasteful or ‘boomy’.

For instance, tuning into Soul Mass Transit System’s Feel Da Vibe, I was struck by the deep, hypnotic bassline, which rippled throughout the track effortlessly, never sounding lethargic or unrefined. In addition, synths in the mid-range and drums up high never sounded drowned out or obscured by the hard-hitting bass.

More stripped-back, acoustic tracks sound great on the Live Beam 4 too. For example, in 78 Rotações by Jards Macalé, fingerpicked guitars sounded expressive and vibrant, and the natural tonality of the raw playing was replicated with finesse. Sure, vocals could have been separated in the mix a bit more effectively, but I still really enjoyed the listening experience overall — subtle percussive elements and guitar licks sounded were positioned brilliantly, and the buds’ broad soundstage made for a surprisingly immersive presentation.

All in all, I’d argue that these are some of the best-sounding earbuds in their price range. Treble is controlled yet vivid enough to capture the excitement of more energetic tracks, mids are detailed and clean-sounding, and bass is impactful yet disciplined. One thing, though: keep Spatial Sound off. This setting only made my music sound compressed, and vocals sound artificial and shrill. You also have to turn LDAC off to use it, so I’d steer clear, personally.

Something else I really liked about the Live Beam 4 is their design. Their stems make them easy to remove from your ears, and the glossy finish on the exterior is pretty enticing. The case itself is pretty neat-looking too and is built to a very high standard. The display itself is fairly bright, and although the case is on the bulky side overall, it’s still small enough to slot into just about any pocket.

In the ear, the buds also feel phenomenally comfortable and secure. I never felt the need to take them out, even when listening to music for hours on end — something I honestly can’t say about a lot of competitors. They’re also IP55 dust and waterproof-rated, meaning I was able to use the Beam 4 even if it was pouring with rain outside.

So are the JBL Live Beam 4 worth their £179.99 / AU$269.95 (about $240) asking price? For me, it’s a resounding yes. They offer genuinely sophisticated sound, a really comfortable in-ear fit, and plenty of features to play around with. The smart case — though admittedly a bit of a gimmick — is responsive and a fun inclusion, and I enjoyed setting a custom background, using the built-in applications, and having swift access to EQ settings, for example.

The battery life — although unchanged from the previous gen — is still plentiful too, 12 hours for the buds, and up to 48 hours with the charging case is better than you’re getting from Apple and Bose’s flagship earbuds.

So, even if the ANC and call quality could be better on the JBL Live Beam 4, they still earn my hearty recommendation, and if you want wireless earbuds that come with a unique twist, they’re well worth checking out.

JBL Live Beam 4 review: price & release date

• List price of £179.99 / AU$269.95 (about $240)
• Revealed in May 2026

The JBL Live Beam 4 were revealed in May 2026, about two years after their predecessor, the JBL Live Beam 3. They come in at £179.99 / AU$269.95 (about $240), meaning they cost the same as the previous gen model did at launch (in the UK). We’re yet to receive any information about pricing or a launch in the US, but we’ll update this review if and when we hear more.

They’re priced competitively, coming in at a lower cost than top-tier rivals like the AirPods Pro 3 and the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds Gen 2.

JBL Live Beam 4 review: specs

Should I buy the JBL Live Beam 4?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

JBL Live Beam 4 review: also consider

How I tested the JBL Live Beam 4

• I tested over the course of multiple weeks
• Mainly used Tidal when assessing audio quality
• Took with me on walks, public transport, and to the office

I spent multiple weeks testing the JBL Live Beam 4, and took them with me just about everywhere I went. This meant that I was able to test the buds’ noise cancelling in a wide variety of environments, including buses, the office, and while on walks in my city.

When assessing audio quality, I mainly used the music streaming app, Tidal, which supports higher-resolution streaming. I did also dip into Spotify from time to time, however. During my time with the Beam 4, I made sure to cycle through the TechRadar testing playlist, which features tracks from a wide variety of genres, but I also bumped a ton of tunes from my personal library as well.

More generally, I’ve spent years testing audio gear here at TechRadar, and have reviewed everything from hulking party speakers to audiophile-friendly wired and wireless headphones. I’ve also tested several pairs of wireless earbuds from the likes of LG and Sony, so I know exactly what it takes for a product to stand out in this competitive segment of the market.

• Read TechRadar’s reviews guarantee
• First reviewed: August 2026

• Sennheiser has announced the Momentum True Wireless 5 noise-cancelling earbuds with a completely redesigned enclosure
• New features include Bluetooth 6.0, Dolby Atmos and replaceable batteries
• Available to buy from September 3 for the same price as the previous generation in the US, but more expensive in the UK and Australia

Hot on the heels of the launch of the much-anticipated Momentum 5 Wireless over-ear headphones, Sennheiser has announced their flagship earbud sibling in the Momentum True Wireless 5.

While there was a five-year gap between generations of the over-ear cans, we’ve thankfully had to wait less than three years for the sequel to a pair of earbuds we’ve previously awarded 4.5 stars to — and this is speedy indeed considering they’re a complete revamp over the fourth-generation true wireless buds, including design and features.

The fifth-gen earbuds introduce a “barely there” fit, by way of a newly streamlined silhouette. The audio brand promises that the new design is more comfortable than the previous generation, and I’m certainly keen to test that claim, especially since the previous model was “comfortable enough to keep wearing” even “after several hours of continuous use”. Four ear-tip sizes are included to help users achieve the perfect seal, ranging from extra small to large.

Ensuring customers get a similar experience whether they go buds or cans, Sennheiser says the Momentum True Wireless 5 benefit from the “same sound-first DNA” as their over-ear sibling. To achieve that goal, the new in-ears are fitted with the brand’s 7mm TrueResponse dynamic driver that claims to balance “remarkable detail with full-bodied, bass-driven tuning”, alongside “exceptional precision, clarity and dynamics”.

Another headline feature is the use of Bluetooth 6.0 with aptX Adaptive, giving them the ability to support hi-res wireless audio up to 24-bit/96kHz from compatible sources.

While Bluetooth 6.0 is still very much a rarity in the world of headphones, it has already found its way into a range of devices, including the iPhone 17, Google Pixel 10 and 11 and Samsung Galaxy S26. While they’re not the first set of headphones to integrate the latest standard (the JBL Tune 530BT and 730BT also boast Bluetooth 6), they’re certainly part of a minority group at present. Sennheiser is evidently keen to champion the latest wireless connectivity, as the Momentum 5 Wireless over-ears have also been promised Bluetooth 6.0 via a future software update.

The active noise-cancelling system in the fifth-generation flagship earbuds have also been revised. This sees a redesigned ear tip working in tandem with a four-mic array (per bud) to "maximize noise cancelling performance”. The company has placed an emphasis on crystal-clear quality during phone calls too, and as a result, there are eight system sensors — six microphones, two bone-conduction voice accelerometers — that work alongside an AI speech-extraction algorithm to isolate voice in busier environments. Like their over-ear sibling, the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 5 are fully optimized for Dolby Atmos, complete with head tracking.

Sennheiser has also made improvements to battery life. This latest generation claims up to 12 hours on a single charge (up from 7.5 in the previous model) and a total of 40 hours including the case (up from 30 hours). These figures are with ANC turned off and our friends at What Hi-Fi? have cited Sennheiser as saying they drop to 6 hours and up to 25 hours, respectively, with ANC turned on.

They also gain the advantage of a replaceable battery system in both the earbuds and wireless charging case, which should considerably extend their usable lifespan, something that can't be said of many pairs of the best earbuds we've tested.

The Momentum True Wireless 5 are IP54-rated for dust, sweat and splash resistance, while a perforated microphone plate promises to keep wind interference at bay during voice calls.

The Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 5 will be available from September 3 in Graphite, Cream, Copper, Denim and Lavender finishes for $300 / £250 / AU$499.

The flagship earbud frontrunner?

The biggest names in consumer audio all have a flagship pair of earbuds. You’ve got the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds Gen 2, Apple AirPods Pro 3, Sony WF-1000XM6 and even the Bowers & Wilkins Pi8.

All of these have performed well under review with our team of audio experts, but this new pair from Sennheiser has several advantages that could see it become the flagship earbuds to beat.

Bluetooth 6.0 is certainly one of them. As mentioned, the new standard is still in its infancy when it comes to headphone adoption. Hopefully that changes soon, as Bluetooth 6.0 brings a number of improvements over previous generations, including the potential for lower latency, greater efficiency and more reliable connections. In other words, it lays the groundwork for wireless headphones to respond faster and maintain a more stable connection to your source device.

While combining Bluetooth 6.0 with aptX Adaptive doesn’t guarantee they’ll sound better than their flagship rivals, it gives them some impressive wireless credentials on paper — I, for one, am definitely keen to see how they manage to outperform the competition.

Just look at the specs sheet and it appears to be the complete package, promising improved active noise cancellation, Dolby Atmos with head tracking, superior battery life and, importantly, one you can potentially repair with a screwdriver rather than replacing after a few years of use.

Battery degradation remains one of the biggest limitations of true wireless earbuds, so being able to replace them rather than the entire product could give the Momentum True Wireless 5 a considerable longevity advantage over some of their premium rivals.

Again, none of these improvements guarantees they’ll outperform the best from Bose, Sony, Apple or Bowers & Wilkins, especially when sound quality and noise cancellation will ultimately need to be put to the test. But, on paper, Sennheiser has given its latest flagship practically everything it needs to compete at the very top.

As someone who ultimately prefers an in-ear style of headphone — save from my beloved and uber-comfortable Sonos Ace over ears — I can’t wait to hear what the Momentum True Wireless 5 are capable of.

• A WH-1000XM4C leak suggests successors to the WH-1000XM4 are coming
• They could have a similar design, Bluetooth 6.0 and a 34-hour battery life
• They're expected to cost around $290 / £215 / AU$410

Sony appears to be bringing back its multiple-award winning WH-1000XM4 headphones in a new and more affordable incarnation. The new model, leaked via a data sheet seen by Winfuture-de, is designed to compete with affordable ANC headphones from the likes of Bose, Sennheiser and the growing number of impressive Chinese audio firms.

We gave the original Sony WH-1000XM4 ANC headphones five stars in our original review, calling them the best headphones ever made at the time, and they topped our best noise cancelling headphones recommendations for many months after their successor, the Sony WH-1000XM5, launched.

The new model is seemingly designed to be more affordable — and while it looks almost identical, there are some key differences between the new WH-1000XM4C and the original. The price is expected to be around $290 / £215 / AU$410, which is significantly lower than the previous model: at launch it was $349 / £349 / AU$549, and even now it's commanding prices of around $249 / £199 / AU$399.

Sony WH-1000XM4C vs Sony WH1000XM4: what's the difference?

The most important specifications appear to be unchanged: Winfuture reports that the new WH-1000XM4C headphones have the same frequency range of 4 to 40,000Hz and a similar weight of 253g (8.9oz). The looks are identical too, but if you look closely you'll see that the NFC logo on the left earcup is no longer there. Presumably that's one of the changes made to keep the cost down.

Battery life is seemingly shorter too, but not awfully so: the leaked spec sheet says 27 hours with ANC on and 34 hours with it off. That would be four hours less than the original, but it'd still be decent enough for commuting and casual listening.

The leak suggests the drivers will once again be 40mm, so the sound quality should be very similar to the originals. Bluetooth has apparently been upgraded to 6.0.

Those are all the details we've got so far, but a previous leak suggested a planned retail price of €250, which is about $290 / £215 / AU$410.

That's a lot less than before, but it still prices the new Sonys above key rivals such as the Bose QuietComfort Ultra headphones, the even more affordable second generation Bose QuietComfort headphones, the typical deal price of the Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless, and the ludicrously good value 1More Sonoflow Pro HQ51.

The new Sonys are likely to sound better than the Sonoflow — I've never heard a Sony headphone that didn't sound great for the price tag — but Bose's ANC headphones rule the roost right now and they're going to be tough to beat.

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Great headphones don't need to cost the earth. If you're heading back to school and in need of a budget-friendly pair of cans or earbuds to help you block out distractions while you study, I'm here to help.

At TechRadar, we review dozens of pairs of headphones every year, and while we've tested some superb premium models, we've also been blown away by a few budget-friendly options. Below, I've rounded up the affordable headphones we rated most highly in our tests, and the ones we'd recommend to any student seeking maximum auditory bang for their buck.

If it's over-ears you're after, our top pick is the CMF Headphone Pro, which our tester commented "could easily cost twice as much", after being impressed with their "surprisingly zealous and bass-hungry sound quality" and "outstanding battery life". For in-ears, the Nothing Ear (a) are our #1 recommendation — they earned a perfect five stars in our tests.

Read on for more brilliant, budget buys — and hit the 'Read more' button for a rundown of what we thought of each one.

Affordable audio

Here's something I never thought: What if my ears could see? The very idea of it conjures visions of earlobes with clusters of tiny, spider-like eyes.

Of course, now we're all considering this possibility thanks to what appears to be a stunning crack in Apple's typically rock-solid dome of product secrecy.

As we reported earlier this week, MacRumors dug into one of the macOS 27 release candidates and unearthed a short bit of video featuring a man wearing AirPods Pro earbuds but somehow using them with Apple Intelligence to save an image of a book for later.

The guy isn't wearing glasses, so it's not the rumored Apple iGlass or Apple Vision Wear at work here. Instead, everyone believes this is the first confirmation that Apple is working on AirPods with cameras or "AirPods Vision," a pair of Bluetooth earbuds also equipped with vision sensors that, in concert with your connected iPhone, can use Apple Intelligence to recognize objects and then store information about them for retrieval later.

I spent some time staring at the bud in the guy's ear, and it looks, from this angle, exactly like the current AirPods Pro 3 I currently wear. I assume that whatever sensors the buds are using live on the opposite side, facing out so they can "see" what you see.

I also got caught up in the book the guy is memorizing. Could, Should, Might, Don't, is a real book by former design head for Google X, Nick Foster. In it, he dives into four mindsets of, I guess, future ideation and innovation:

• "Could" revolves around the wild possibilities (probably why we watch and love Star Trek).
• "Should" is sort of the realist's approach to what we should do based on on-the-ground facts and data.
• "Might" appears to combine elements of the first two.
• "Don't" is the risk-averse part. It's all the reasons people don't want Artificial General Intelligence or robots running AGI living with, working with, and maybe ultimately controlling us.

While not anti-tech or anti-innovation, the book has a point of view and seems an odd choice to include in what might be an iPhone and AirPods tip video.

I look at the overall image and that book and think:

"Yeah, we Could do this, have AirPods that can see, but we Should think about the consequences of another sensor on our body, and while it Might be cool to have an always-aware system memorizing things for you, we Don't want other people to freak out when they see cameras in our ears."

Smart Glasses is a lesson

Usually, I would remind people that these are all rumors and Apple is always working on oddball stuff that will never see the light of day, but we have a tip video. Apple doesn't create tips for products it's never bringing to market.

I think there's a good chance we will get these "seeing" AirPods Pro this year. I understand the system probably isn't collecting and storing images of everything you see forever. It appears to be on demand, and the use of Apple Vision should mean that it takes the image, sends it to Apple's Private Cloud Compute, matches it with available data on the internet — "What is this book?" — and stores that data without the need for the actual photo or anything else the AirPods Pro's sensors detected.

Even with those assurances, consumers are in no mood for more wearable sensors. Just look at the growing negative sentiment around smart glasses, which some are now calling "creep glasses."

The difference, of course, is that such smart wearable cameras are meant to both analyze the world you see and to capture and store photos and videos. The "creep" factor comes in from people circumventing the onboard privacy controls (trying to hide the LED lights) so they can surreptitiously capture photos and videos.

The problem with camera- or vision-equipped AirPods, though, is that people will have similar concerns. If they see cameras on your AirPods, they will surely recoil and demand to know what they're for and if you are capturing images and video of them. You might say no, but also secretly wish you had. The chance to document at least their face and name so you don't forget it the next time you see them would be too hard to pass up.

AirPods Vision, if that's what they're called, might not allow you to capture images of living things, something that could seriously limit their utility except for use in quiet, windowsless, and people-free rooms like the one that guy is standing in. Oh, wait, that has a window. What if someone walks by? Does the AirPods' vision system stop working?

In a few weeks, Apple will have a new CEO, John Ternus, who will want to put his stamp on the company. This could be his first opportunity. I know Tim Cook loved the idea of AR glasses and was definitely all in on sensor-filled wearables, especially ones that could improve your health and safety.

Ternus could recalibrate, though. I'm sure he'll continue to support the health and safety aspect, but maybe he pumps the brakes on glasses and these AirPods with cameras until he has a better understanding of public sentiment and the privacy implications. There's a lot to discover, and given the challenges in these markets, there's no need to rush into anything.

Baseus Bowie MC2: Two-minute review

I’ve tested a fair few of the more expensive options we recommend in our best open earbuds roundup, such as the Cleer Arc 5 and, more recently, the Shokz OpenDots Air.

But a new release has me wondering why you’d spend much more money on a form factor which, honestly, hasn’t changed that much.

When I tested the Baseus Inspire XC1 last year, I thought they were a great affordable alternative to the best on the market, but the brand said “hold my beer” with its newer, even-cheaper buds.

These are the Baseus Bowie MC2, which cost much less than the XC1; they’re some of the lowest-cost open earbuds I’ve tested to date, but you’re not getting too much of a feature or audio downgrade with the greatly-reduced price.

Is that because these are secretly super-buds, or because, at the end of the day, there’s really not much scope for variation in any earbuds of this form factor? I’m starting to come down in the latter camp, and the Bowie MC2 is a good example of why I’d personally pick a cheap pair of cuff-style buds over a premium proposition.

The Baseus do what you’d need for sports-targeted clip-on buds, and throw in precisely nothing you won’t need. The battery life is respectably long, netting you over 11 hours of listening on a single charge, and at least 55 hours when you factor in the charging case. Perfect.

The buds are comfortable to wear for long stretches, with the harder plastic arch of the XC1 swapped out for softer silicone, and a little soft pad around the bud making sure these don’t rub or scratch at all. They’re also pretty light, at 5.1g each.

While audiophiles won’t be impressed by the sound here, which emphasizes a hefty low-end over neutrality and sonic nuance (unusual in an open design, but it’s what you’d expect from workout-focused buds), I imagine many buyers will be happy with what they hear. The sound doesn’t match the XC1 though; there’s no Bose tuning or dual drivers.

One gripe I have is with the charging case. It’s a little bigger than I’m used to with clip-style buds, but it also has magnets that only let you use the right bud in the right gap, and the left bud in the left recess, which makes returning the buds a little finicky (unlike 'regular' wireless earbuds, most clip-style buds let you put 'em in either side to charge). Said case is also a serious fingerprint magnet, which might not annoy many people, but it quickly made my review sample look a bit grubby, and to me it matters.

A fingerprint-gathering charging case? Is that really what I’m complaining about here? The fact that that’s where I’ve gone suggests these are pretty decent for the price.

Baseus Bowie MC2 review: Price and release date

• Launched in early July, 2026
• Sells for $79.99 / £89.99 (about AU$180)
• Only a few more affordable options

The Baseus Bowie MC2 were released in early July 2026, less than a year on from the release of the XC1. I’m going to keep comparing these products, because that’s my reference point, but the Inspire line is slightly different to the Bowie lineup, so these aren’t direct siblings — more like cousins, if you will.

You can buy the Bowie MC2 for $79.99 / £89.99 (about AU$180, but they’re not available in Australia yet). In the US, I’ve already seen discounts on the buds, down to $59.99, a mere month after their launch.

The price makes the buds pretty affordable, sitting well below the $/£100 line that I usually to denote budget options. Their only serious budget rival is the Soundpeats Clip1, which go for $69.99 / £74.99 / AU$79.99.

Baseus Bowie MC2 review: Specs

Baseus Bowie MC2 review: Features

• Fantastic 11+ hour battery life
• Baseus app has EQ and presets...
• ... but not much else

As someone who rarely remembers to charge tech, I love the battery life of the Baseus Bowie MC2. The buds are great for longer exercises; the case is great for longer holidays.

Baseus puts the buds battery life at 11.5 hours, but that’s if you use its bass boosting tech. Turn that off, and you get at least an hour more. That’s a surprisingly great stamina flex for these little buds. The case also has a fantastic life: 55 hours, or 60 if you’re not listening with super-bass. Those numbers are all much higher than average for this kind of product. You love to see it.

Your battery might drop quicker than expected, though. I found that putting the earbuds in the case didn’t turn them off, as with the vast majority of other buds out there. I had to manually stop the music playing for them to time out.

The features section is where we’d normally discuss ANC… except for open earbuds, which generally don’t include the tech. So why am I bringing it up? Well, call me crazy, but I feel like the ear cushion here does muffle surrounding sound a little bit. Not a huge amount, but as someone who’s tested ANC (and, more relevantly, bad ANC), I feel like it mutes a little sound.

You can use the Baseus app for some extra features, if you want — saying that, I don’t remember the last time I used a companion app for earbuds that feels this janky, with oddly-translated phrases and a layout that doesn’t cater for various phone sizes.

It’s a little barebones, as these apps go, but it has the basics. There’s an equalizer, with eight presets or an eight-band custom mode, a low-latency mode, set-up for multipoint connectivity, the ability to change what the on-ear controls do, and a few other small tweaks. The main one is toggling of Bass Boost, not that you’d ever want to turn that off.

I’d recommend downloading the app if you don’t like the Baseus Bowie MC2’s default sound profile, but if you’re happy, there’s not much need to take up the phone space.

• Features score: 3.5/5

Baseus Bowie MC2 review: Design

• Lightweight and comfortable
• Ear cushions bring some benefits
• A few minor charging case quirks

Let’s start with the case, shall we? It’s a 52g pebble which charges via a USB-C port and comes in white, black or blue (like the buds themselves).

I’m not sold on this case. It feels like it’s made from cheap plastic, and the lid feels a little fragile when you open it. I feel like I could snap it off if I'm not careful. The case is also a real fingerprint magnet, which admittedly won’t annoy many people, but I’d have liked something cleaner-looking.

The real annoyance of the case is in its magnets. You see, most cuff earbuds don’t assign one as the left and one as the right bud; they’re identical, after all, so you can put whichever bud you want in whichever slot. Not on the Baseus, though. Magnets stop you putting the wrong bud in the wrong gap, so when you return them to the case, it’s a game of trial and error to get the right one in the right slot. A game which only takes a matter of seconds, admittedly, but it’s a minor annoyance that I’ve not found in alternatives.

Now, onto the buds. They’re pretty light, at 5.1g each, and thanks to the soft material making up the arch, they’re more flexible than many alternatives I’ve tested. They’re IP67-rated too, so they should survive full immersion in shallow water for a limited time, along with a healthy dose of dust.

Like all cuff-style open earbuds, they consist of a large-housing counterweight which sits behind your ear, the arch, and a bud which rests in your ear well (never into your ear canal). But there’s something novel: the bud comes with an ear cushion, to stop it rubbing when you run. Admittedly, this is a problem I’ve never personally faced, but it’s good to see there are innovations yet to be made in this form factor. Like the case, the cushion picks up dirt, though. Swings and roundabouts.

There are touch controls on the earbuds, including a physical button, but I found it incredibly hard to press while on the go. I’d invariably end up twisting the bud or pulling it off my ear, instead of triggering the function.

• Design score: 4/5

Baseus Bowie MC2 review: Sound quality

• Single 11mm driver per bud
• Bass tech gives low-end heft
• LDAC support, but only if you deactivate bass

Baseus has loaded the Bowie MC2 with a custom-built 11mm dynamic driver, so you’re not getting the dual-driver system of some alternative Baseus open-ears. Instead of using a dedicated low-end driver, the brand is using what it calls ‘SuperBass 3.0’ to solve the ear problem.

What ear problem? Well, while all open-ears use directional audio to beam sound into your ear, it’s a little harder with lower frequencies which aren’t conducted as well by air (and remember, there's no seal betwixt ear tip and ear canal in this design). Different brands use different solutions to ensure their open earbuds still offer some level of bass in playback, and Baseus has gone for something it calls SuperBass. This ramps up the power of the low-end frequencies, while trying to retain some clarity.

As you can imagine, then, the sound profile of the MC2 heavily favors the lower-end. Bass is prominent, and fairly well-rounded too, offering a reasonably energetic rhythm to accompany your workout.

I won’t pretend that bass doesn’t sit above other instruments here. In something like Michigan Rattlers’ Time to Move On, the bass guitar is audible above the acoustic guitar it’s meant to accompany. Kasabian’s Superpowers sounds like a duet between a man and his bass guitar. These buds aren’t for people who like a neutral sound profile.

Whether or not you use the EQ to remove some bass, you’ll be surprised to learn that there are no significant audio trade-offs in the mid-range or high-end. Both retain more detail and clarity than you’d expect from bass-heavy buds… mostly. They can sometimes struggle with dissonance from hi-hats or twangy guitars in certain songs, but for the most part, I was impressed.

If you have a good Android phone, you can listen via LDAC, but this’ll drop the battery life somewhat. However you can’t use it if you’ve got that bass-boosting mode enabled, so you’ll have to make a choice about which you opt for.

• Sound quality: 3.5/5

Baseus Bowie MC2 review: Value

• Undercut key rivals from Shokz and Bose
• A few alternatives cost even less though…

These are some of the cheapest open earbuds I’ve tested, and they do all the same things that premium options do. They’re comfy, they last for a while, the play music. Tick, tick, tick. Why shell out twice as much for a name-brand model?

Honestly, there’s not really much reason to pay more for other buds. However that goes both ways: there’s a more affordable version of these called the Bowie MC2 Air, which is even cheaper, and it’s worth checking that model out too (though I haven’t tested it).

• Value: 4/5

Should I buy the Baseus Bowie MC2?

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

Baseus Bowie MC2 review: Also consider

Looking for other affordable clip-style earbuds? Here are a few we've tested and would recommend.

How I tested the Baseus Bowie MC2

• Tested for two weeks
• Paired with Android phones for music, podcasts, movies and games
• Used during multiple activities, including sports

I tested the Baseus Bowie MC2 for just over two weeks to put them through our paces. That's the minimum time we'd take to test out an audio product like this.

Over this period I tested them for a range of activities including gym sessions and runs, as well as on walks around my local area and trips further afield on public transport.

The earbuds were paired to two different Android phones over the testing process, and were mainly used for Spotify and Tidal tracks. I did conduct some calls, play some games and watch some TV using them though.

I've been reviewing tech for TechRadar since early 2019, and have tested countless open earbuds in that time. That includes past models from Baseus, and some of the rivals I cite in this review.

• First reviewed in August 2026

• Read TechRadar's reviews guarantee

• Sonos Ace Ultra spotted in FCC listings...
• ... and leaks, and rumors, and more
• Upcoming launch sounds imminent for the second-generation over-ears

It's been two years since the release of the Sonos Ace, the inuagural premium over-ear headphones from the well-known wireless multi-room audio pioneer. And it sounds like a new follow-up pair are on the way... with a linguistic upgrade in stock.

We know a Sonos launch event is happening in September, and now, FCC listings point to a new pair of wireless headphones. It doesn't take a genius to put two and two together to deduce that Sonos' second stab at wireless cans are the product cleared for launch?

And if that wasn't obvious enough, a pair of headphones called the Sonos Ace Ultra have been leaking left, right and center. Winfuture recently published a suite of pictures and details about them, which ensure (if the images prove genuine, of course) there's very little mystery left to uncover.

These images of the headphones look pretty similar to the original Ace, but with bigger ear cups and a slider on the body. In terms of design, then, they still look closer than most to Apple's AirPods Max, albeit with more pill-shaped ear cups.

Ultra by name, ultra by nature?

By all accounts, then, Sonos has some AirPods Max 2 rivals, ready to drop on us at a moment's notice (or competitors to the Sony WH-1000XM6, Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2nd Gen, Dali IO-8, take your pick from one of the many premium headphones out there).

The real question is, what does the 'Ultra' in the name mean? Will these cost even more than the original Ace? Perhaps an advanced multi-driver set-up? Maybe some extra features, as in the Sony 1000X The Collexion? Or, most pertinently here: will they work within Sonos' multi-room ecosystem, for true audio hand-off to and from the grouped Sonos speakers in your home? The original Ace could do this only to your Sonos Arc, via the TV Audio Swap feature, which made many fans disappointed.

So far, the leaks don't really explain what's Ultra about these headphones, so that's something Sonos will have to sell us on when the new headphones arrive.

TechRadar's Audio Editor Becky Scarrott suggests that anything other than proper audio hand-off to the Sonos wireless speaker array in your home would be a misstep for the company. It's something fans really want — and that rival Bowers & Wilkins has been offering for quite some time in its headphones and earbuds, including the Bowers & Wilkins PX8 and five-star Pi8 earbuds. Both are controlled by B&W's Music app, which enables audio hand-off from your buds/cans to your home system when you walk through the door, to any speaker in Bowers & Wilkins’ own Formation range, including the Formation Wedge and newer Zeppelin Pro.

Hopefully, we will see this though; the name suggests that these headphones aren't a sequel to the Sonos Ace (which gained mixed reviews and a four-star review from this publication), but a 'pro' version. And the features will need to match.

For now, watch this space… 

• Samsung unveils hearing test and hearing aid-like features
• Coming to Galaxy Buds 3 Pro and 4 Pro by end of year
• Similar to the existing hearing health suite found in AirPods Pro 2 and 3

Hearing health is becoming an increasingly important earbuds trend — just yesterday I covered ear-friendly IEMs designed to protect your listening — and now (perhaps predictably) Samsung is getting in on the action.

The brand has announced that its new Hearing Aid earbuds feature has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.

The "holistic hearing health experience" tool, according to Samsung's missive, comes in two parts. First, there's a five-minute Hearing Test mode which analyzes your hearing to categorize whether you have any hearing loss. It'll label each ear individually as mild, moderate, severe or profound (or, of course, 'normal' if you have no hearing loss).

Part two of the tool is the Hearing Aid mode, which uses the test's learnings to amplify sounds you might otherwise struggle to hear. It can also eliminate certain noises, such as background rumble or low-level voices in a busy bar, using the buds' ANC.

The aim is to let the Galaxy Buds act as medical hearing aids, without requiring a prescription or visiting a health center; the FDA has approved the Hearing Test results as medical-grade.

From bud to bud

Samsung's press release confirms that two of its flagship models will get the feature: the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro, and Galaxy Buds 4 Pro. You'll also need a Samsung smartphone running One UI 8 (or later).

Apparently, it'll be coming to the US "and select approved markets" towards the end of the year; "Q4" to be precise, which should be October, November or December.

However, you don't need to wait to use a set of earbuds as hearing aids, because Apple has been offering this tool for nearly two years now, depending on where you reside (it gained approval for its UK release much later, for example). The AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods Pro 3 can carrying out a hearing test and amplify certain sounds around you, just like the Galaxy Buds.

You can even control them from your Apple Watch, MacBook or iPad, or use your hearing aid test results to influence the EQ of your music or videos.

So, Samsung isn't offering anything groundbreakingly new hear, but it's a still a useful feature to have if you're ensconced in a Samsung ecosystem — and it's yet another way in which Samsung's AirPods Pro rivals emulate the world's most popular buds.

• New Beats headphones teased during 2026 World Cup...
• ... and Beats has been silent for following two months
• Reddit fans think they'll come some time after iOS 27, in September

It's been two months since the sporting event of the summer began: the 2026 World Cup kicked off on June 11. That means it's also been two months since Beats started teasing its new headphones, putting them onto footballers like Lamine Yamal and Lee Kang-in to drum up some publicity.

"Publicity for what?" you may well be asking, and it's a fair question. Since then, we've heard neither hide nor hair about these cans, even though we infiltrated Beats impressive HQ to see what was going on, last month.

However, if you were hoping for an imminent release, Redditors have some bad news.

In a post on the r/beatsbydre subreddit, which is currently awash with question regarding these headphones, one forum mod has a theory about when they'll come. User jforsander points out that every previous pair of Beats headphones had iOS support added months prior to their release.

Of course, this new pair of headphones hasn't, suggesting that they're still a long time away from an official launch. In fact, the user thinks that we won't even see this software support until September, because that's when iOS 27 will come.

It follows that the headphones will be released a few months later; perhaps even up to six months later. Gulp. Unfortunately, that tracks with what we heard when we visited Beats HQ — or rather, what we didn't hear. Clearly, Beats is in no rush to strike while the iron's hot.

Will we have to wait that long?

It's worth taking this missive with a slight pinch of salt. If there's no existing software support for the Beats headphones, how were those footballers using them? Surely they weren't just decoration — not at such an important sporting event, where the right pre-match playlist would surely be of paramount importance?

The cynics among you might rightly point out that the players weren't ever photographed listening to the headphones, just wearing them around their necks or attached to their bags. And it's also possible that Apple found a temporary solution for their headphones, rather than a full software rollout.

But it still stands to reason that Beats would give them a way to sporting stars who could actually listen to the headphones, and so it's possible that software support exists and online sleuths… missed it?

Something that the Reddit poster points out is that Apple might simply have become better at hiding its updated software support for new Beats devices (Apple, of course, owns Beats). They call it unlikely, but feasible.

If we are waiting past September to hear any more about these new headphones, all the money spent on soccer players might have been wasted; the buzz garnered by the move is already dying down (that is, in most places beyond the r/beatsbydre subreddit). Hopefully Beats will shift into action sooner than that.

• 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.