With so many wireless earbuds promising extra features like spatial audio, heart rate tracking, hearing enhancement, and live translation, it can be easy to forget that most of us just want the best possible sound for the lowest possible price.
Which wireless earbuds give you this magic combo? I’m sure there are endless opinions, but as of today, the triple-driver Soundpeats H3 are easily in my top five. If you're looking for awesome sound but don't have a ludicrous budget, these are some of the best around.
Don’t worry if you’re unfamiliar with the brand. Like EarFun, 1More, and Baseus, Soundpeats doesn’t have much of a marketing budget (or much of a retail presence outside of Amazon). Nonetheless, over the past six years, it has created some of the best values in the wireless audio world.
Photograph: Simon Cohen
Clean Details
For the H3, Soundpeats has tackled the sound quality challenge from two directions. On the Bluetooth side, they have an impressive array of high-quality codecs. Most of the time, you’ll see a company offer either Sony’s hi-res LDAC codec or Qualcomm’s rival, aptX Adaptive. The H3 support both, including aptX Lossless, giving Android users the ability to maximize sound quality based on their phone’s capabilities. iPhone users will have to make do with AAC.
On the acoustic architecture side, the H3 have triple drivers: One 12-mm dynamic driver paired with two balanced-armature (BA) drivers. It’s a very common approach in wired in-ear monitors (IEMs), but still somewhat unusual in the wireless universe.
The belief is that multiple drivers deliver better sound. By divvying up audible frequencies via a crossover circuit and sending them to drivers that have been tuned to render them, you should get a cleaner, more detailed performance than with a single driver doing all of the lifting.