Although open earbuds share the common characteristic of sitting on the outside of the ear, they come in a variety of shapes and sizes, from clip models to ear hook models. Some are more geared toward exercise, while others are better for everyday use. The Bose Ultra Open earbuds are a particularly popular choice due to their sound quality and multiple colors, but they’re far from your only option (or most affordable, at $299).
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Below, we’ve compiled some of the best open earbud models available in 2025. For each of our picks below, the best time of year to score a good deal is during Black Friday. As sales begin to ramp up, the Bose Ultra Open earbuds are $100 off, and the Anker Soundcore AeroFit 2 earbuds are priced at $77.99 for Amazon Prime members.
Note: This guide is a work in progress, so we’ll likely change (or expand) our recommendations as we continue to test pairings.
What are open earbuds?
Open earbuds allow you to get as close as possible to the feeling of not wearing earbuds. Unlike in-ear earbuds, which sit in your ear canal (as the name suggests), open earbuds sit right outside your ears. Some models house the speaker component with ear hooks while others opt for ear cuffs.
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People generally choose open earbuds for three main reasons:
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They provide a private listening experience while keeping you almost completely aware of the world around you. It’s like the best transparency mode you’ve ever used.
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For some people, not having earbuds in their ears is generally more comfortable.
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The hooks and cuffs (along with general awareness of your surroundings) make them a great option for keeping them in place and keeping you alert while working out.
What are the disadvantages of open earbuds?
As you might have understood from the above section, open earbuds generally do not come with active noise cancellation. This is mainly due to how much sound they let in (by design) and the difficulty of canceling out sound without the device covering your actual ear canal.
Plus thanks to the perfectly open ear-canal position, these won’t be earbuds for audiophiles. That’s not to say open earbuds sound bad – if you’ve never tried them, we promise they sound better than you imagined – but you’ll miss some of the nuances of songs when the earbuds aren’t actually in your ears.
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That said, many couples still have equalizers on their partner apps to help you make the best of them. Our upgrade pick, the Bose Ultra Open earbuds, also have a spatial audio feature that works surprisingly well.
Most open earbuds will also have some type of special technology that prevents them from leaking too much sound. Although these pairs do a great job of keeping the sound just for you, most pairs (including our choice) are prone to some leakage, especially at higher volumes.
Finally, some open earbuds – mainly ear hook ones – have cases that are a bit bulky. If you like to travel light, this is something to be aware of.
What about bone conduction headphones?
Bone conduction earbuds work exactly as the name suggests – they use your skull to conduct sound waves instead of projecting sound into your ear like most of the picks on this list. Typically, a band runs from either side of the user’s head to help keep the headphones in place.
Shokz, the brand of our top pick, is a popular manufacturer of these types of headphones. Although we consider them open earbuds, we haven’t tested any bone conduction earbuds yet – keep an eye out for that update in the future. On that note:
What’s next in our testing pipeline?
The market for open earbuds is growing rapidly, so we’ll be testing more as we can get our hands on them. Ahead, we’ll try out budget pairs of open earbuds under $100, as well as more pairs from Shox.
In addition to the earbuds that made up our final guide in May 2025, we tested the Nothing Ear (Open) Earbuds ($149), Sony LinkBuds Open ($199.99), Anker Soundcore AeroClip Earbuds ($169.99), and Shox OpenFit Air ($119.95). Although none of the above were bad earbuds by any means, we found our picks to outperform them in terms of comfort and sound quality, especially when considering their respective prices.