Over the last few years, I've spent a lot of time reviewing the latest and greatest true-wireless noise-canceling earbuds, with premium models like Apple's AirPods Pro 3 and Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (Gen 2) featuring ever more powerful noise-muffling to go along with impressive sound quality. Noise-isolating earbuds with silicone eartips certainly aren't going away, but more of the action right now is around open designs that don't seal off your ear canal and allow you to hear the outside world for "situational awareness."
Market research firms have been reporting that the market for open earbuds and open headphones that use bone-conduction technology is growing rapidly. And the product announcements from CES 2026 reflected that trend. While there weren't a whole lot of new headphones or earbuds unveiled at the big tech show in Las Vegas, the majority were open buds, including sporty ear-hook style models from Shokz, Anker and JBL, as well as some new clip-on designs. Plenty more open buds are on the way, too (I've even been briefed on a few I can't tell you about just yet).
Read more: Best Open Earbuds of 2026
"According to our research, open earbuds have become the fastest-growing earbud style, signaling a growing consumer desire for audio that fits into individual lifestyles," said Carsten Olesen, president of consumer audio at Harman, the parent company of JBL and owned by Samsung.
Baseus, which partnered with Bose late last year on its flagship Inspire XC1 clip-on earbuds (and two other Inspire models), didn't announce any new models at CES, but Jack Liu, Baseus' head of international PR, teased what was coming in an email to me before the show.
"We think the earphone business will have a new wave of growth as the mainstream will continue to transition from normal form factor to open-ear ones," he wrote. "It will evolve from a listening device to an accompanying device that's going to be with you all day long. Especially nowadays, calling and AI assistant interaction have become as important as listening to music and podcasts. The XC1 solved a major issue with open-ear design, which is sound quality. We are about to solve another issue with that form factor: noise cancellation. In 2026, you're going to see more and more good-sounding noise-canceling open earphones, with Baseus being one of the pioneering brands."
Enlarge Image A Shokz illustration of its OpenEar Noise Reduction. Screenshot by David Carnoy/CNET
Maybe so, but it's challenging to equip open earbuds with active noise-canceling, as Shokz found out with its new OpenFit Pro buds ($250). Instead of touting them as a true noise-canceling model, Shokz ended up dialing back expectations and calling the tech inside the ear-hook style buds "OpenEar Noise Reduction." That was the right move considering that in my tests the OpenFit Pro didn't reduce ambient sound nearly as well as Apple's flagship open earbuds, the AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation, which are due for an upgrade in September (whether that will actually happen is anybody's guess).
Adding effective noise canceling to open earbuds is sort of the holy grail because you get the benefit of a more comfortable fit (many people find it irritating to have eartips jammed in their ears) while having the option to choose between leaving your ears open to your surroundings or virtually closing them off (to a certain degree, anyway). While the AirPods 4's noise canceling isn't nearly as strong as the AirPods Pro 3's, you can really tell when their noise canceling is engaged. And presumably the AirPods 5's noise canceling may be slightly better.
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