Choosing the best wireless earbuds for a remote Christmas

In an age of subscription services, wireless earbuds make listening to music easier and more portable than ever. These are not to be confused with the earlier generation of Bluetooth headsets favoured by taxi drivers and delivery people; the latest models sound as good as full-size headphones but they’re far less cumbersome.

They’re not expensive, either, especially if you plump for the semi-wired variety. These consist of two earpieces wired to each other but to nothing else. The wire goes around the back of your neck so the buds will remain secure even if they pop out of your ear.

They start from as little as £12 but you get what you pay for, and a set by an audio specialist like AKG or Sennheiser will reward you with far better sound. AKG’s Y100 earphones can be had for around £40 currently and Sennheiser’s CX150BT buds for £20 more. Both come with ear cups in a variety of sizes but neither has a hook that fits into your outer ear to prevent them falling out.

Selecting the right size cup is important for sound quality as well as comfort, since anything less than a tight fit will result in external noise cancelling out the bass frequencies produced by the headphones.

“True wireless” earbuds are, as the name suggests, free of cables altogether. This means they need to be paired with each other as well as with your phone, and the cheaper the model the more fiddly this tends to be. With these earphones a snug fit is more important than ever since if they fall out they’re likely to be lost for good. They need charging more often than semi-wireless types but they are usually supplied with a pocket-size case capable of topping them up. JBL’s Reflect Flow earbuds cost around £70, which is a good balance between the cheapest models and those carrying an Apple badge. They come with both cups and hooks in a variety of sizes.

The other popular type of headphones are those that cancel out external sound to let you hear the music better, but read the description carefully to make sure they’re going to do what they say. The term “noise cancelling” can be applied to any headphones that fit over your ear to muffle the sounds around you, but only those that are specifically advertised as having “active noise cancellation” do it properly. They work by incorporating a microphone which listens to ambient sounds and electronically filters them out of the audio stream it sends to your ears. The effect can be switched on or off at will – it serves no purpose in a quiet room – and on the best models the difference is stunning. The extra circuitry will drain the battery faster, though.

JBL’s Tune750 headphones are currently £50, which is the least you should expect to pay for a respectable pair.

As for the music itself, the market is saturated with rival streaming services, and their popularity has made the MP3 files which you download and store on your phone almost obsolete. The monthly cost of a subscription to Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube or Amazon varies according to the number and type of devices you are using, and there are special offers for families and students. But in a year in which remote gift-giving is likely to be more fashionable than in the past, a voucher for any of these services is likely to go down a treat. And since all of them can be purchased and redeemed online, there is no need to worry about delivery.

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