Best cheap headphones for great sound at a low price (2024)

JBL

Best for: over-ear noise cancellation

With adaptive noise cancelling, a wired or wireless connection, as much as 70 hours of battery life and some bassy sound, these are the ideal budget buy.

A lightweight pair of over-ear headphones, the JBL Tune 660NC offers reasonable sound quality out of the box, which can be further improved to your taste by tweaking in the app, from where you can also adjust noise-cancellation strength and set up voice assistant support.

There's quite a lot of padding on the earcups, meaning they’re comfortable to wear for long periods (though note there's no water resistance), and the battery life is impressively long.

Sony

Best for: ergonomic design

A comfortable and straightforward pair of wireless earbuds from Sony, the WF-C500s are light, water-resistant (IPX4) and an ideal shape for your ears. There's no noise cancellation, which helps keep the price down, but you do get three choices of tip size in the box so you can ensure they fit securely.

The charging case doubles the earbuds’ battery life of 10 hours - it’s a small case, so you’ll need to top it up yourself if you need more. There are easily found buttons on the back of each earbud, and an app that allows you to tweak the sound balance.

JLab

Best for: super cheap earbuds

At just £25 or thereabouts, you may not expect much from the JLab Go Air Pop earbuds. You may think they’re more like earplugs, not actually designed to make a pleasing noise. But, you’d be wrong, as despite the price these are surprisingly competent.

You’re not going to get the bass-heavy sound and effective noise-cancellation (there’s none) seen elsewhere, but they do detect when you’re wearing them so they can pause your music if you take them out, and the on-bud controls are easy to use.

The charging cable is an oddity, being attached to the case with a slim Type-A USB plug on the end, so you can’t leave it at home, but as a basic pair of music-listening earbuds for a reasonable price, you won’t go far wrong.

Soundcore

Best for: noise-cancellation on a budget

Given the list of features the Soundcore Q20i headphones come with, you might expect them to sell for a higher price tag. But no, these are bargain-priced and sound pretty good too. There are 40 hours of ANC-enabled playback to be had from the battery and a rather bass-heavy default sound that can be tweaked to your liking with the accompanying app.

You can switch the Bluetooth connection between two devices without having to re-pair, and if you connect using the 3.5mm cable they’re capable of hi-res audio playback too.

Audio-Technica

Best for: pure sound quality

These are wired headphones that don’t come with a built-in mic for taking phone calls. They’re a bit of a throwback, and have no wireless connectivity, meaning you’ll need an adapter to use them with the recent crop of smartphones that don’t have a built-in headphone socket. Do that, though, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how good a £50 pair of headphones can sound.

Sony

Best for: on-ear comfort

These wireless on-ear headphones from Sony don’t have noise-cancellation or hi-res audio support, but still sound great. On-ear headphones like these may not be to everyone’s taste, as they fit directly on your ears and depending on the shape of your lugholes will either feel great or deeply annoying, but thanks to some upgraded padding around the earpads they’re largely comfortable to wear.

They use the standard Sony app, which is a great place to start for sound balance and equalisation, and there's multipoint pairing too if you’ve got multiple devices. One thing you don’t get is the ability to use a 3.5mm cable, meaning they’re completely dependent on their internal battery, which will give you around 50 hours of use from a charge.

Austrian Audio

Best for: home listening

More expensive than the other wired headphones on this list but still reasonably priced, these headphones from Austrian Audio - a company formed in 2017 after veteran audio manufacturer AKG closed its Vienna office - sound very good indeed.

The headphone cable terminates in a standard 3.5mm jack, but there's an adapter in the box for the 6.3mm standard too, depending on what your playback equipment uses. Made of plastic but with a metal hinge to enable them to be folded up, the Hi-X15 headphones look great, but it’s the sound quality you get for your money that really makes them stand out.

Sennheiser

Best for: long battery life

More expensive and larger than other earbuds on this list, Sennheiser’s CX True Wireless offering gives you nine hours of battery life that’s boosted to 27 hours by the charging case, so you won’t have to charge them too often.

You don’t get noise cancellation, but the 7mm drivers inside the earbuds produce a great sound, and there's enough codec support to enjoy high-res recordings. There are touch controls on the earbuds themselves, allowing you to change volume, skip tracks, answer calls and invoke a voice assistant.

You can also rearrange these in the Sennheiser app, along with applying some equalisation to the sound to get it just to your liking. While their size may not endear them to all listeners, the sound quality and features surely will.

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