9 best budget headphones: Cheap earbuds and cans for less than £70

1More might not be a household name, but the company has been slowly eking its way to the top of the budget wireless earbuds market for years now. The latest pair from the brand are the 1More pistonbuds pros – a pair of stylish, full-featured and surprisingly decent-sounding wireless earbuds that can be bought at an affordable price.

These buds have the aesthetic of a pair of sleek Beats, with shiny, round touch-controlled surfaces. They sit in a thin but well-built upright charging case with a nice clicky magnetic lid. There is a little bit of pressurised ear clogging when it comes to the fit, but they definitely stay put, and turning on the transparency mode does help alleviate some of that pressure.

They also sound pretty good for earbuds at this price point – they’re fairly Beats-like, featuring bright highs and moody lows, though this can be adjusted in the 1More app if it’s not to your liking, with 12 EQ presets available. And the call quality on these little things is shockingly good. Really, the only thing missing is a wireless-chargeable case, and you don’t always get that on more premium buds.

Sure, EarFun might sound like something thought up by a seven-year-old, but the relatively new audio manufacturer has really taken the budget earbuds market by storm, and for good reason. The latest pair from the company are the EarFun air pro 2s, and they manage to pack in all the same smart features of Apple’s AirPods pros (£239, Apple.com) at a fraction of the cost.

The air pro 2s sit in a tidy, plastic shell-style case, and feature stems reminiscent of Apple’s AirPods. While the sound quality isn’t stellar, with a messy, unfocused and sometimes muddy sound signature that is a little too heavy on the bass, you won’t find some of these features on true wireless earbuds that cost double, plus those features are implemented superbly.

You get a pretty good level of active noise cancellation, the ambient mode is decent, and you also get a frankly stupid amount of juice out of one listening session. Not to mention, they’re pretty comfy, there’s support for wireless charging, Bluetooth 5.2, IPX5 Waterproofing, in-ear detection for auto-pausing, voice assistant compatibility – the list goes on. The only real downside is the slightly unrefined sound and the sub-par microphones for calls.

If you’re looking for a budget pair of wireless active noise-cancelling headphones, then the JBL tune 660NCs might be the ticket. While they might not look as premium as some of the cans in our round-up of the best wireless headphones – these are definitely more functional than stylish – they sound great for their price tag, with simple controls for playback and the voice assistant and a toggle for active noise cancellation.

Bass hunters will love the tone of these headphones. The low frequencies are punchy and really shine on those deep pop tracks. The active noise cancellation is also pretty solid, tuning out a fair amount of the low frequencies. These over-ear headphones will keep going for a whopping 44 hours... and that’s with ANC turned on. Without ANC, they’ll last for 55. You can get them in black, blue, pink and white colourways.

Sony makes some of the best audio gear around, with both the Sony WH-1000XM4 and Sony WF-1000XM4 models landing the top spots in our round-up of the best wireless headphones and best wireless earbuds respectively. It’s arguably harder to stand out when it comes to the budget end of the market, however.

You won’t find any stand-out features here – there’s no active noise cancellation, no transparency mode and no wireless charging case, for example, but two things make these earbuds a recommended buy for some people: how good they sound and how comfortable they feel in your ears.

The WF-C500s are powered by two 5.8mm neodymium full-range dynamic drivers, which deliver an extremely detailed, albeit neutral-sounding audio experience.

They’re light, come with three different eartip sizes and are easy to control thanks to the physical buttons for volume (yes, you read that right), voice assistant activation and track controls for pausing and skipping.

Trying to find a decent pair of wireless earbuds under £20 should be a fool’s errand. Well call us fools, because we’ve found some from JLab, a company that keeps on delivering ultra-affordable buds year after year. The latest pair of earbuds are the JLab go air pops, a dinky, very light pair of sweat-resistant earphones.

They feature a surprising number of adjustable controls on their touch-enabled surfaces, including volume, voice assistant, play/pause and even EQ adjustment – your choice of bass boost, neutral or JLab signature – though these controls are slightly fiddly.

There’s no active noise cancellation on these buds, but the passive noise isolation you get is pretty decent at blocking out the majority of the outside world when listening to music. While they won’t be competing with buds from Sony or Apple any time soon, they’re mind-bogglingly cheap and will work great as a backup pair or even if you’re after a first pair for kids – though you’ll need to watch out for the flimsy lid on the charging case, which feels ridiculously easy to snap off.

Audio-Technica’s whole bread and butter is affordable, quality headphones. The ATH-S220BTs were released late last year and are the company’s cheapest pair of on-ear headphones for everyday use, delivering just that.

Though these do have a slightly plasticky design and don’t fold up for easy transportation, they’re light and surprisingly comfortable to wear in spite of their firmer ear cushions.

The company really makes up for the ATH-S220BT’s lack of features in two ways – fine audio, with our favourite tunes sounding balanced and neutral, albeit potentially a little clinical for some people’s liking, and that ridiculous battery life. You’ll get an incredible 60 hours of juice, meaning these will last and last before needing a recharge. If we somehow found ourselves needing more battery (which we didn’t when testing), then we only had to plug them in for 10 minutes to get another 3.5 hours of use – pretty great for those in a rush.

Anker was already one of our favourite charging accessory manufacturers, but you’ll be shocked to know that cables aren’t the only thing the company produces. For years, Anker has been wheedling its way into the field of audio gear with the soundcore sub-brand, developing speakers, headphones and earbuds.

For starters, they’re some of the most customisable earbuds we’ve tested. The app gives us 22 different music presets to choose from and you can also adjust the EQ to your liking. Both ANC and transparency modes are excellent, and we were able to hear and hold a conversation from across the room. You’ve also got auto-pause and play in-ear detection and a “Find My”-style feature via the Soundcore app

There’s also a nice warmth to the audio, with music sounding rich and the bass being noticeably thumpy. They do fall a little flat design-wise, though. These stems are super long, dangling just below our earlobes, and they’re not ultra comfortable either, feeling a little firm in the ear. The microphone quality is also a little lacklustre, with our voices sounding a touch muffled on the other side.

The Beats flex are a pretty basic pair of earbuds, boasting none of the active noise cancellation or wireless charging features found in most models out today. But that’s not really their intended purpose. They essentially act as a replacement for Apple’s wired EarPods, which used to come packaged with every new iPhone purchase up until the iPhone 12 in 2020.

They’re a neckband-style pair of earbuds that magnetically click together when strung across your chest and not in use, and also feature auto-ear detection, so music pauses when you take them out of one of your lugholes.

And, of course, they boast the signature bouncy Beats sound, with electric highs and deep lows – a bonus for any V-shaped sound signature fans out there. Plus the 12-hour battery life with Fast Fuel means these earphones will go a long way when you’re using them – far longer than any AirPods.

Belkin might not be the first name you think of for headphones, but since moving into the audio space with the soundform series, the brand has been developing true wireless earbuds for every budget.

Late last year, the company released the cheap as chips Belkin soundform rise earbuds, which are surprisingly good in terms of sound. They aren’t the best-looking true wireless earbuds in the world, featuring a chunky design to match the hefty, squarish case, but they sound good.

The rises are pretty neutral-sounding, crystal-clear earbuds, and worked best with podcasts during our tests. Both the vocals and dialogue come across with complete clarity when listening to music or the news, for example, though there was a slight hiss when using the mics. We did have a few issues with the initial pairing set up as well, with only one ear connecting to our iPhone, which was a pretty bad sign, but a factory reset quickly fixed that.