Major Headphone Brands Ranked Worst To Best

Headphones are confusing. It's not just that over-ear and on-ear headphones are different, or that earphones and headphones might be different things, or that "wireless" might not mean the same thing as "true wireless." And sooner or later the audiophiles get involved, and confusion turns chronic.

There's one big issue that seems to make great headphones sound bad, and which makes purists gag when listening to what seem like great-sounding headphones: the neutrality of the sound signature. This problem is all about frequency response, which is the ability of headphones to reproduce a sound exactly as it's presented by the source. This is what "hi-fi" means: a high level of fidelity to the source.

Problems arise when you don't want high fidelity ... and most people don't. Generally, consumers have a preference for boosting bass. To achieve this, manufacturers "color" the sound of the headphone drivers by tweaking the bass, mid, and treble to sound more pleasing, but less accurate. This makes the sound reproduction of studio monitors and audiophile-quality headphones less desirable to many than the tweaked sound signature of typically cheaper consumer options. We're using a flat, accurate frequency response as the ideal against which headphones should be measured, but also giving due credit to companies that are successful with other approaches.

We evaluated 199 brands closely, and narrowed our list to 22 that fit the description of "major headphone brands," give or take. This necessarily excludes quality brands that haven't yet broken through to the consumer market, or which don't offer anything within the $50 to $100 range most common for headphone buyers. There are a few high-profile omissions along these lines, all of which were made after careful consideration and comparison with other brands.

Raycon is a stylish and popular brand with the unusual combination of both a poor reputation and very poor neutral soundscape results. It's possible that the brand's popularity is almost entirely a function of marketing efforts. Those marketing efforts affect not only a product's popularity, but its perception among owners, and it can also include efforts to cultivate positive reviews and weed out negative points of view.

Rtings.com has lab-tested hundreds of headphones, emphasizing neutral listening as the most objective way of evaluating quality of sound reproduction. The line between fair and poor neutral sound is set at a score of six, and of the three Raycon models evaluated, six was the highest score. (The other two were 5.6 and a dismal 4.4.) They tend to be bass-heavy with a poor soundstage, a sort of virtual listening room in which music sound like it's playing when we listen with headphones ... that is, compared with a reference loudspeaker setup.

All three models scored very high on their form factors' appropriateness for sports and fitness use. For a brand that seems more reliant on social cachet than sound quality, it's odd that all of the in-ear Raycon models are similarly designed, but considerable attention has been paid to stability, which is very important for sport and fitness uses. This could partly explain the somewhat homogeneous designs.

It would be reasonable to call 1MORE a budget headphone brand, but that doesn't quite tell the whole story. The brand includes both in-ear and over-ear headphones with fairly good reviews, and occasional accolades like inclusion in lists like "8 best earbuds under $10." If that sounds like a poor recommendation, consider that the same reviewers are prone to using words like "inoffensive" when describing 1MORE's offerings, damning the brand with faint praise. Still, there's a little more going on here than meets the eye because it happens, naturally, in the ear.

1MORE seems to have built its reputation on the gimmick behind its "triple-driver" earbuds. Coming in under the national average price for earphones (they're $58.48 at Amazon), these weren't spectacular, but easily outperformed most of the similarly priced competition. The sound is balanced, accurate in the bass and mids, and has a consistent frequency response. The soundstage was terrible, but that's not unusual for closed back earbuds. Building on this success, 1MORE started putting three drives in everything, from a wireless version and an Apple-compatible wired version to $100 over-ear headphones and $15 Bluetooth neck bands. The next step was to add a driver ... why not? But in spite of being better made and having a few specific advantages over the triple-driver models, their quad-driver offering didn't perform quite as well.

Astro makes good gaming headsets, but sound quality in terms of frequency response can be a bit of a crapshoot. But this isn't unusual in the gaming arena, and we'll get into some of the reasons when we discuss SteelSeries. As dedicated gaming headsets, the Astros tend to be bulky and therefore inappropriate for sport, fitness, and commuting. For the same reason, there's also a bit of emphasis on microphone quality that you won't see in comparably priced competitors.

Models like the A40 TR are capable of great neutral sound reproduction. But the A40 TR in particular has issues with portability among console platforms and both the A40 TR and the A50 models have enough software issues to warn many users off. Some models come in variants that are locked to particular gamine consoles. Even if you manage to plop down $150 to $300 for the higher-end Astro headsets, you can also expect poor noise isolation at best, which seems to be a common failing of the closed-back Astro headphones.

Astro is a division of Logitech, about which we'll see more encouraging stuff further down this list.

This popular brand has brought both mediocre and fairly good headphones to market. Recently focusing on wireless headphones and headsets, the Hesh 2 and Crusher models in particular are often reviewed and well-regarded, though the Dime and Push Active models tend to have better sound quality. In the case of Skullcandy, good sound quality usually means fairly neutral sound with a slight emphasis on bass ... and emphasizing bass a little is probably a net positive, as some audio experiences like gaming benefit quite a bit from the boost.

In spite of being a publication for music producers, ProducerHive says that Skullcandy's offerings are worth considering for anyone not in the music creation game and or hamstrung by the demands and trend-consciousness of the audiophile contingent. The Crusher Evo model gets their nod as the best Skullcandy model, which has 4.8 stars and an Amazon picks recommendation, along with a good neutral sound rating from Rtings, which make it one of the stronger budget-friendly models available.

Perhaps better known for its smart home devices, it's difficult to make the case that Wyze is a major headphone brand. The company is a major brand, and Wyze has shown itself capable of making headphones with very good neutral sound test results and above-average noise canceling characteristics. In the end, we decided not to ding Wyze for having an uncluttered product lineup. The company offers four headphone models, all wireless: earbuds, "pro" earbuds, noise-canceling cans, and a gaming headset. The pro earbuds and noise-canceling over-ear headphones perform very well, and at a considerably lower price (within a few cents of $90 in both cases) than comparable models from more established brands.

Of these limited four, two have a very neutral sound signature ... half a company's offerings being this robust is something that some of the best competitors thoroughout the rest of this list can not brag about having.

AKG is an audiophile mainstay, for good reason. The problem, if there is one, is that the company occasionally accents its line of very good headphones with an under-performing consumer-focused model. This lack of focus isn't unique among headphone manufacturers, and certainly is not among brands that are part of larger companies serving a more general audience. AKG is part of Harman International Industries (as are Harmon Kardon, Mark Levinson, and JBL), which is owned by Samsung. Samsung's reputation is likely hampered by scads of ultra-cheap OEM headsets, but it does produce some high-quality wired and wireless models. As you'd expect, there can be a fair amount of quality variation among Samsung models, such as their Galaxy Buds line. Samsung subsidiaries have a habit of brand cross-pollination, and sometimes this can be counter-productive. For example, the sometimes co-branded Samsung AKG Type-C wired earbuds boast middling sound with overplayed bass, though they're passable for sub-$25 headphones.

AKG's headphones run the gamut from the ridiculous to the sublime. Models like the K72 and K92 are subpar offerings that prevent even that inspire audiophiles to snark or outright derision as cheaply made and not deserving of the AKG name. That AKG brand, for them, is better defined by the spectacular $1500 N90Q, or even the semi-affordable N60 NC ($250). For our money, consider the K52 model, which have very good sound and a $50 price tag.

Sony makes some of the best headphones in the consumer marketplace. The trouble is that it also makes some of the worst, and, perhaps most confounding of all, you can't necessarily tell which is which by price alone. Sony headphones are featured on more "best of" lists than you can shake a boom mic at, and while they don't offer anything absolutely spectacular at a consumer-friendly price point, you can get a great set of noise-cancelling cans for a steep $399 (WH-1000XM5) or a flimsy but great pair of studio reference headphones (MDR-7506), which outperform Sony's classic MDR-V6 studio headphones, for a mere $80.99.

But, as has been the case for as long as anyone can remember, there's also no end of Sony models in clamshell packaging that look and sound as if they were an impulse purchase made while checking out at CVS. Still, there aren't many brands as major as Sony, and even fewer that make a wider range of options but still manage to include world-class sound in at least a few of them.

Based on consumer reviews and ratings, you might expect Apple to be higher on this list. For a company known for giving you what you should want instead of what you think you want, the company has excelled at providing headphones you think are good even if the "facts" don't always bear it out. Apple owns Beats By Dre, and at a glance it looks like the way they've managed not to cannibalize their own market share is by making the AirPods and Beats products as different as possible. While Beats, predictably, emphasize bass, AirPods typically add emphasis to the mids and highs. Their best-sounding offerings, the AirPods Max, achieve accurate reproduction of bass and mids, and generally sound more accurate than bassier models.

Whether anyone wants that accuracy isn't an open question; Apple is the top-selling headphone brand in the U.S. Its wireless earbuds are tailored to perform better for iOS users, which shocked exactly no one, but they perform well enough for enough people to be extraordinarily succesful.

Logitech is sneaky. What you might understandably have viewed as a manufacturer of somewhat ordinary computer peripherals is suddenly making world-class mice and some of the most consistently good headphones in the gaming marketplace. All without over-relying on boosted bass. In Rtings's all-budgets list of best headphones, the Logitech G435 Lightspeed is listed as the "cheap" option at $29.99; the overall best headphones on that nine-item list cost $1600.

Of course, in a sense it's just plain silly to have Logitech in a list of great headphone manufacturers alongside companies like Beyerdynamic and Sennheiser. Logitech only makes headsets, mostly for gaming and office use, under that name, though they have made a habit of penetrating the consumer audio market through acquisition (of Jaybird and, much earlier, Ultimate Ears in the headphone space, and Blue Microphones in the mic arena). But clean sound is clean sound, and any headset that isn't tied to a gaming console will usually work as dedicated audio devices. The bottom line is that Logitech makes a number of headphones and they tend to sound better than most others, and better than all others at their price point.

Somehow, Bose got the reputation for being overpriced and less great than they should be. Price is what it is. If enough people are willing to pay $9000 for wood headphones, then wood headphones are worth $9000. But the sound quality issue is nonsense. For half a century, Bose combined brilliant engineering and arguably even better marketing to make the Bose brand a household name. Can you think of a more successful audio brand in terms of name recognition? No, you can't.

Bose products consistently sound great, with the occasional exception like the Bose Sport Open Earbuds Truly Wireless, which are a little thin on bass. And speaking of bass, in a sense, Bose represents the distillation of the perpetual conflict in the headphone market between audiophile sound quality and consumer preference. "Bose cannot be criticized for not winning a game they choose not to play," says audio pro and former Bose employee Steve Feinstein. "They win the game they're in." And when it comes to headphones, Bose manages to both sound good to consumers and produce great, neutral sound, on par with the top brands. So leave room in your outlook for the fact that the company consistently makes some of the most popular and most critically acclaimed headphones available.

HiFiMan makes the best and most consistent headphones available today. In combination with the "HiFi" in the brand name, reading that first sentence should put one on high alert for the inevitable downside... usually price. And sure, you can buy $8000 HiFiMan audiophile headphones if you want. But there's a $109 dollar option in HiFiMan's HE400SE as well.

Three of the seven headphone models in Rtings's list of best audiophile headphones are HiFiMan models: Edition XS, Sundara 2020, and ANANDA-BT Wireless. Granted, these range from $300 to $800, but that's not unusual. In fact, it's arguably on the cheap side, when headphones of that class typically cost closer to $1500. The Sundra 2020 gives you consistent sound, high quality and comfort, and an expansive soundstage for $299.

For $250, you can dress your ears in a pair of Edition S headphones from HiFiMan. These differ from the normal HiFiMan models, which typically employ planar magnetic drivers, by instead using 50mm dynamic drivers. They have magnetic covers that convert the headphones from open- to closed-back, and an unusual shape that should help call attention to the fact that you have headphones from the best consumer headphone brand in the world.