Bose QC Ultra (left); Bose QC Ultra 2 (right) Jada Jones/ZDNET
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Over the years, your favorite pair of headphones or earbuds can become just as essential to your daily life as your smartphone. If you're like me, forgetting your AirPods at home can ruin your day. It's important to consider all your headphone and earbud options, as the right ones for one person may not work for another.
Also: The best headphones and earbuds of 2026
That's why, at ZDNET, we review plenty of headphones and earbuds for all purposes and budgets. Different headphones and earbuds have different use cases, and our testing methods align with those use cases. We often publish long-term reviews and revisit a headphone's performance after continuous use to determine which features excel and which ones fall flat.
How we test headphones and earbuds in 2026
Jada Jones/ZDNET
Our experts sleep, work, run, swim, hike, watch movies, and listen to music to test headphones and earbuds. During testing, we place our daily drivers in their carrying cases and use the review unit in our everyday lives to see how the devices perform in real-world situations.
Usually, we receive review units from manufacturers before they are available to the public. We use the period between receiving the product and publishing our review to spend as much time as possible putting the review unit through daily use and wear-and-tear. We also test the product's software features and follow up with manufacturers if needed.
Here's a general overview of our headphones and earbuds testing methodology, so you can better understand how a pair of headphones or earbuds makes it to one of our lists of recommendations.
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