While wired headphones may be firmly holding onto their particular slice of the metaphorical pie, helped in part by an apparent wired resurgence among some younger users, there’s no doubt that the wireless space is very much the place to be for most modern-day consumers. Such models, be they wireless earbuds or Bluetooth over-ear headphones, have exploded in popularity, becoming the way to listen to music for millions of contemporary consumers.
What that means for the wireless headphones What Hi-Fi? Awards category is a good deal of flux. Last year saw the total domination by Sony across every single price point, and while the Japanese brand continues to enjoy a startling impressive presence across the board, new contenders have emerged to prevent a complete monopoly. We have tested rafts of wireless earbuds and headphones this year, with the likes of – deep breath – Philips, Audio-Technica, Jabra, Beats, JBL, Samsung, Dyson(!), Cambridge Audio, Sonos, Final, Shure, Sennheiser, Earfun, Technics, Denon and Apple (to name but a few) attempting to gain control of what seems to have become the most competitive category in all of consumer hi-fi.
In the end, there could only be a handful of products that made up our list of Best Buy Award winners. As that substantial list above shows, these winners – some new, some established – had to fight off waves of competition to rule supreme. What you have here then is the best of the best… of the best.
The What Hi-Fi? Awards 2024 wireless headphones winners
Let’s start with the newbies, and we’re going straight in at the top end of the market with our brand new choice for the ‘best wireless earbuds over £300’. The Bowers & Wilkins Pi8 are our pick of the premium pairs, really hitting the spot and delighting our in-house reviews team with quite sensational levels of sonic detail and refinement. Once we had got to grips with them and weathered a few signal dropouts from our test sample, we realised that the Bowers buds were just too good to omit from our Awards rundown. With this sort of performance, they simply had to find a place as our luxury pair of choice for 2024.
There are new boys at the bottom end of the price ladder, albeit from the most familiar of familiar faces. Sony’s WF-C510 have arrived as our pick for the ‘best wireless earbuds under £70’, dumping out their wonderfully musical predecessors, the mighty WF-C500. To us, the C510 just have that extra solidity and sonic depth, not to mention a healthier roster of features, to take the crown from the old dogs. No mean feat, that.
For more excellence in the realm of wireless earbuds, Sony continues to thrive. The WF-C700N continue to wow us for the quite breathtaking levels of value they offer, especially now that their price has dropped significantly since last year, while the Sony WF-1000XM5 are easily the best-sounding set of wire-free buds you’ll find for around £200 / $200 / AU$350. Two astounding sets of earbuds that won’t be ousted without one heck of a fight.
If you want budget buys but fancy a pair of over-ears rather than earbuds, the Sony WH-CH720N are our go-to recommendation for a second year running. At a price of around £80 / $100 / AU$200, the value they represent is simply astonishing, and while you might not be wowed by the physical design, which has certainly been built to a price point, the quality of the ANC and sound are unparalleled at this level.
Moving up the price spectrum brings us to the last of our new Award-winners: the quite wonderfully detailed and revealing Austrian Audio Hi-X25BT. No, they don’t offer noise cancelling, but you do get the sort of detail, richness and sheer entertainment value that we thought was all but impossible in the mid-range market. The X25BT have finally filled a gap in the wireless landscape – praise be!
For the ‘best wireless headphones over £200’, the Sony WH-1000XM5 return to bag another gong. Generally retailing at around £260 / $380 / AU$550, they’re pretty much the ideal pair of headphones at this price, blending outstanding sound with flawless features, excellent build and reliable ANC to earn the WH-1000 line yet another What Hi-Fi? Award. We loved the previous WH-1000XM4 and, we love these current XM5, too.
This is, as you may have guessed, an incredibly strong field that just continues to get stronger. We’re deep into the Champions League group stages here, and those boring old clichés about pressure making diamonds do seem to ring true. If a pair of cans or set of buds has made it onto this list, or else doggedly retained its place for another year, one thing is for certain: they truly earned the right to be here.
MORE:
Discover every What Hi-Fi? Awards 2024 winner right here
See our complete list of the best wired headphones
What Hi-Fi? Awards 2024: old favourites return for new glory in the wired headphones category
