Noise-Canceling Earphones are a popular choice for many people, but if you want to hear the world around you or feel that in-ear designs are uncomfortable, there is a better option: open earphones.
After extensive testing, we found the 9 best headphones of 2025
Open earphones share the common characteristics of sitting outside the ear, but come in many shapes and sizes, from clip models to ear hook models. Some are aimed at workouts, while others are suitable for everyday use. Below we have compiled some of the best open earphone models available for 2025. This guide is an ongoing work. So you may shift (or scale) your recommendations as you continue to test your pairs.
What are open earphones?
With open earphones, you can get as close as possible to the feeling of not wearing earphones. Unlike earphones that sit in your ear canal (as the name is stated), the open earphones will sit just outside your ears. Some models hold the speaker components in place with ear hooks, while others select the ear cuff.
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People usually choose open earphones for three main reasons.
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They provide a private listening experience while keeping you aware of the world around you almost completely. This is like the best transparency mode I’ve ever used.
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For some people, not having physical earbuds in their ears is generally more comfortable.
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Hooks and cuffs (along with the general perception of your surroundings) make a great option to place them and keep you vigilant while you exercise.
What are the drawbacks of open earphones?
As you may have gathered from the above sections, open earbuds usually don’t come with active noise cancellation. It’s mainly due to how much sound they gave (by design), and the difficulty of canceling the sound without having a device covering the actual ear canal.
Also, thanks to the skin condition of the open ears, these are not earphones for audio files. That’s not to say that open earphones sound bad – if you’ve never tried them, we promise to sound much better than you imagined – but you’ll lose some of the nuances of the song without actually having the ears in your ears.
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That said, many pairs have equalizers in their companion apps. Upgrade pick, Bose Ultra Open Earphones even have spatial audio features that work surprisingly well.
Also, most open earphones boast in some way a special technique that prevents too much sound from leaking. These pairs work pretty well in keeping your own sounds, but most pairs (including our picks) tend to leak easily, especially at more volumes.
Finally, some open earphones – mostly those with ear hooks – tend to have slightly bulky cases. If you want to travel through the light, that’s what you need to know.
How about bone conduction headphones?
Bone conduction earphones work exactly the same way as the name suggests. As most picks are listed, instead of projecting sounds into your ears, they use the skull to perform the sound waves. Typically, the band runs from both sides of the user and helps hold the headphones in place.
The brand behind the top picks, Shokz is a popular manufacturer of these types of headphones. We are considering earphones that open them, but have not yet tested bone conduction earphones. Be aware of that update in the future. About that note:
What’s next for the test pipeline?
The open earphone market is expanding rapidly, so we can get them, so we test more. Next, try a budget pair of open earbuds that are under $100 and try more pairs from Shokz.
In addition to the earphones that created the final guide in May 2025, we tested No Note Ear (Open) Earbuds ($149), Sony Linkbuds Open ($199.99), Anker Soundcore Aeroclip Earbuds ($169.99), and Shokz OpenFit Air ($119.95). None of the above were bad earphones, but we found our picks out that outweighed them in comfort and sound quality, especially considering the price of each.
