The Audio Archive
Explore our complete collection of curated insights, technical reviews, and buying guides.
Avantree Ensemble Review: Check Your TV First
Most product listings open with a benefit. This one opens with a warning, in brackets, before anything else: your television must have an optical or 3.5mm output, HDMI-only sets will not work, and soundbar passthrough is not supported. That sentence decides the purchase for a large number of the people who will read it, because televisions have been quietly dropping optical outputs for several years. Everything else about the Ensemble — and it is a thoughtfully built thing — only matters once you have gone and looked at the back of your TV.
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Logitech G Pro X Review: The Features Need Windows
The listing says it twice, in a sub-clause both times: the microphone processing and the surround sound each require the included USB sound card, a Windows PC, and Logitech's software. That sentence is the whole review. Plug this into a PlayStation controller and you get fifty-millimetre drivers, a steel headband and a detachable microphone — a good wired headset at ninety-odd dollars, and none of the two things the box is actually selling. Which of those two products you are buying depends entirely on what you plug it into.
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Soundcore Space One Review: ANC, LDAC and Multipoint
Choose Space One for over-ear ANC, app adjustments and two-device use if its settings fit your routine. Check the first-source playback rule, leave LDAC mode when setting up multipoint, and use the ANC-on battery claim for planning.
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BlueParrott B450-XT Review: Built for the Cab
The accessories tell you what this is before any specification does. In the box: a vehicle charger, two microphone windscreens, and a spare set of ear cushions. Nothing about that list is aimed at a desk, a commute, or a gym. The B450-XT is built for people who spend their working day in a vehicle cab with the window down and the engine running, and almost every decision in it — mono, over-head, twenty-four hours, three hundred feet — follows from that. Judged as headphones it is poor. Judged as the tool it is, very little competes.
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Shure SE215 Review: Isolation Without Electronics
Almost every set of earphones this site has reviewed this year blocks noise the same way: microphones listen to the room and a processor generates the opposite waveform. The SE215 does none of that. It has no battery, no app, no chip and no cancellation, and it blocks more of a noisy commute than most of them — by sealing your ear canal shut. That is a different mechanism with different limits, and the difference decides whether this is the right purchase or completely the wrong one.
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JBL Live 770NC Review: Fifty Hours, Flagship Money
At two hundred dollars the Live 770NC sits in the most uncomfortable price bracket in headphones: close enough to the flagships that people compare it to them, far enough below that it cannot win on the things flagships are bought for. It answers that by not competing where it would lose. The cancellation is good rather than exceptional. The battery is not merely competitive — it is longer than anything Sony or Bose sells at any price, by a margin large enough that it changes how you use the headphone rather than how you read the box.
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JLab JBuds Lux ANC Review: USB Audio and Multipoint
JBuds Lux ANC combines cancellation, two-device Bluetooth and USB audio on compatible sources. Check the data cable and app routing, distinguish multipoint from LabShare, and plan around the battery claim for the ANC mode you use.
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Jabra Evolve 65 Review: A Generation Behind
The Evolve 65 makes most sense when you want a familiar headset for a workplace that already uses it. Check the exact variant, included Link adapter, seller and return terms before ordering. Compare current offers for alternatives rather than assuming an older model must be the less expensive choice.
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Labor Day Headphone Deals 2026: Which Are Real
This is an archive of our Labor Day 2026 price check. The deal assessments and historical observations refer to that event. Dated prices beside the Amazon links may be refreshed later; they do not mean the original promotion is still available. For current offers, use our deals page.
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Sennheiser HD 560S Review: Accuracy Is Not Enjoyment
Nearly everything else on this site is a consumer product: sealed, wireless, tuned to sound impressive in a shop and forgiving of a bad recording. The HD 560S is none of those things, deliberately. It is open at the back, so it leaks your music to the room and lets the room in. It is wired, so there is no battery, no app and no cancellation. And it is tuned to be accurate rather than pleasing, which means a badly mastered track sounds badly mastered. Every one of those is a reason most people should not buy it, and together they are why some people will not use anything else.
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