The Audio Archive
Explore our complete collection of curated insights, technical reviews, and buying guides.
Best Bone Conduction Headphones (2026): 5 Picks
Bone conduction headphones send sound through your cheekbones instead of into your ear canal, which leaves your ears completely open. That's the whole appeal: you hear traffic, other runners and your own footsteps while you listen, which makes it the safest way to train on roads. It's also why the sound is thinner than any in-ear or over-ear design — an open ear can't be pressurised, and bass comes from pressure. This list is honest about one thing up front: bone conduction is a category Shokz effectively owns, and every pick here is a Shokz, because nothing else at this level competes on fit, reliability or track record.
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Best Wired Gaming Headset (2026): 5 No-Battery Picks
A wired gaming headset never dies mid-match, never needs pairing, and never adds the latency that wireless can. For a desk — which is where most gaming happens — that isn't a compromise; it's the better choice, and it's cheaper too. These five span $20 to $93 and cover every wired setup from a first headset to a streamer's boom mic, and the pick comes down to your platform, your budget, and whether the microphone is the point.
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Best Noise Cancelling Earbuds Under $100 (2026)
Under $100 is the sweet spot for noise-cancelling earbuds. Below $50 you get real cancellation with a few corners cut; above $100 you're paying for polish rather than the feature itself. In this bracket the corners mostly disappear: adaptive ANC rated to 50dB, hi-res Android codecs, multipoint and app EQ all show up for well under a hundred dollars. These five span the whole range from $27 to $99, and each earns its place for a different reason — so the pick depends less on which is best and more on what you actually want.
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EarFun Air Pro 4 vs CMF Buds Pro 2: Budget ANC
Budget noise-cancelling earbuds used to mean settling. These two don't. The EarFun Air Pro 4 and the CMF Buds Pro 2 both quote 50dB of adaptive cancellation, both do multipoint, both support hi-res Android codecs, and both cost around fifty dollars — a specification that would have been flagship money a couple of years ago. They're close enough that the decision comes down to a handful of specific differences rather than one being better than the other, so this compares them on exactly those.
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Shokz OpenSwim Pro Review: Music Underwater, For Real
This site has said the same thing in two different reviews: you cannot stream music while swimming, because Bluetooth does not travel through water, no matter how waterproof the headphone is. The Shokz OpenSwim Pro is the product that answers that limitation directly — not by making Bluetooth work underwater, which is impossible, but by storing 32GB of music onboard so it doesn't need Bluetooth at all once you're in the pool. It is a specialist device with a specialist price, and this review is about whether that specialism is worth its current price to you.
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EKSA E900 Pro Review: A Budget Wired Gaming Headset
The EKSA E900 Pro is a wired gaming headset that targets budget buyers with a useful set of features — a detachable microphone, two removable cables, virtual 7.1 surround and, unusually for the price, a two-year warranty. Wired is the whole idea here: no battery to die mid-session, no pairing, no latency. This review is about what that feature set offers, and the two things about the surround-sound claim worth understanding before you count on it.
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TREBLAB Z2 vs Soundcore Space One: Features or Quiet
These two budget over-ear headphones sit twenty dollars apart and pull in opposite directions. The TREBLAB Z2 spends its budget on features — multipoint, a wired backup, a gaming mode, 58 hours of battery. The Soundcore Space One spends almost all of it on one thing: cancellation, which is the best you can get under $100. Neither is trying to be the other, so this comparison comes down to a single honest question — do you want the longest list of things a headphone can do, or the quietest commute your money can buy?
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TREBLAB Z2 Review: Features and Budget Tradeoffs
Most budget noise-cancelling headphones cut a feature to hit their price. The TREBLAB Z2 takes the opposite approach: it crams in nearly everything a more expensive pair offers — multipoint, a wired fallback, a low-latency gaming mode, 58 hours of battery, physical controls — at a budget price. The catch, and there is one, is where it chose not to spend. This review is about which corners it kept and which it cut, so you know whether the trade lands for how you'll actually use it.
Read fullKoss Porta Pro Review (2026): A 1984 Design Under $40
Very few products survive four decades essentially unchanged, and fewer still deserve to. The Koss Porta Pro is one: an on-ear wired headphone first sold in 1984, still on sale in 2026 for under $40, and still recommended across this site's roundups on the strength of one thing — it sounds far better than its price and its retro looks suggest. This review is about why that reputation holds, and about the specific things a budget wired headphone does not buy so you know what you're giving up before the nostalgia does the deciding.
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Best Noise Cancelling Earbuds Under $50 (2026)
An earbud has less room than a headphone for a cancellation chip, a battery and microphones, so under $50 is where the format is tested hardest. Three earbuds here get the fundamentals right — real active cancellation, a seal that holds, a battery that lasts a working day. A fourth candidate that showed up in this search claims noise cancelling on the box and does not have any: worth naming so you know what to check before you buy something that isn't what it says.
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