Best Deals on Earbuds and Headphones: Premium, Budget and Everything In Between

Amazon's 2023 Echo Buds impressed me in a few ways that I wasn't expecting. For starters, they sound good for inexpensive open earbuds, delivering decent clarity and ample bass. They also have a robust feature set, including multipoint Bluetooth pairing, hands-free Alexa and ear-detection sensors that pause your audio when you take one or both buds out of your ears. 

Their sound falls short of that of Apple's AirPods 3, which delivers fuller bass and overall fuller, smoother sound. (They're better at handling more complicated music tracks with a lot of instruments playing at the same time.) The AirPods 3 cost around $150 and offer only about 15% to 20% better audio. In short, if you're looking for open earbuds -- or "semi-open" as these types of earbuds are sometimes called -- the Echo Buds are good value at their $50 list price and even easier to recommend when they go on sale.

Right now, you can save 20% with trade-in of a qualifying device. 

The Pixel Buds Pro are Google's first earbuds to feature active noise canceling. While it's nice that they finally have a feature that a lot of true wireless earbuds have had for a while, what ultimately sets the Pixel Buds Pro apart and makes them worth considering -- particularly for Android users -- is their distinct design and winning fit. That helps enhance their performance on both the sound quality and noise-canceling fronts. While not quite elite for voice calling, they did perform well as a headset for making calls. A couple of features were missing at launch -- spatial audio and a five-band equalizer -- but both have now been added with firmware updates along with some additional extra features.

The Apple AirPods Pro (second generation) have superior sound and are especially great if you're a fan of the Apple ecosystem. They're lightweight, offer a battery life of up to 24 hours and are now $40 off at Amazon.