Inside a desk drawer next to me lives a collection of wired earbuds I can never bring myself to toss out. Although I’ve mainly used Bluetooth wireless earbuds for many years now—usually AirPods Pro—sometimes it’s nice to just plug in a cable and listen, without the fiddliness of a wireless connection. The one thing that’s missing? Active noise cancellation, or ANC.
I check in from time to time on the state of wired earbuds with ANC, and I’m usually disappointed. ANC needs to be powered, and you can’t get that from a 3.5mm headphone jack, so the solutions—like embedding a battery pack in the earbuds’ cable, or adding the feature via a separate USB-C-powered dongle—ditch the battery-free advantage of wired audio. Same goes for using Bluetooth over-ear wireless headphones with ANC as wired headphones. Yeah, you can do it with most wireless over-ears, but they still need power for their sound filtering, and some won’t even work as normal headphones once their battery is kaput.
Finally, in early September, Belkin unveiled almost exactly what I’d been searching for: its $29.99 SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds (USB-C). I previewed them at IFA 2025, where I found them comfortable, lightweight, and they sounded decent, but that was based on using them on a noisy show floor, which wasn’t enough to actually evaluate them. Thankfully, Belkin sent me home with a pair to review.
Belkin SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds (USB-C) Belkin’s new SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds don’t have the best noise cancellation, but they’re convenient, cheap, and sound great for what they are. See at Amazon Pros They’ll never run out of battery
Decent, balanced sound
Comfy
Great for phone calls
Cheap!
Cons Weak ANC
Wires make a lot of noise when bumped
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