Short answer: Decide how you'll wear them first: over-ears for comfort and sound at home or on planes, earbuds for the gym and pockets. Then pay for the two things you'll actually notice every day — good active noise cancelling and all-day battery — and don't get talked into codecs or driver sizes that won't change what you hear.
Headphone spec sheets lean hard on numbers that barely move the listening experience. Here's what each spec really does, how much it shifts our 0–100 score, and what's normal across the pairs we track — so you can tell a genuine upgrade from marketing. One thing up front: sound is subjective and heavily shaped by tuning and fit, so treat specs as a shortlist tool, not a verdict.
Torn between the top two? See our head-to-head: JBL Live 770NC vs JBL Live 670NC →
If you commute, fly or work in a noisy room, ANC changes the product more than any sound spec. It's now common rather than premium — 74% of the pairs we track have active noise cancelling — so the question isn't whether it's there but how good it is at killing the low, droning frequencies (engines, AC hum) where it matters. Pair it with a proper transparency mode so you can hear announcements or a colleague without taking the headphones off. On earbuds, ANC quality lives and dies by seal: a tip that doesn't fit leaks bass and lets noise in, so try the included sizes before you judge.
Battery is where over-ears and earbuds split. Over-ears we track run a median of 30 hours with ANC on — enough for a week of commutes or a long-haul flight — while earbuds live more like 5–8 hours a charge and lean on the case for the rest. Either way, look for quick charge (a few minutes for hours of playback); it's the feature that saves you on the way out the door. Remember the headline number is usually measured with ANC off and volume modest, so knock some off for real use.
78% of what we track is wireless, and for the vast majority of listeners the codec barely matters: SBC and AAC are fine, and the "hi-res" codecs (LDAC, aptX Adaptive, LHDC) — on 75% of our pairs — only pay off with high-bitrate lossless files and matching hardware. Two features that genuinely help: multipoint (70% have it), which keeps you paired to a laptop and phone at once, and low-latency modes if you watch a lot of video. Don't choose headphones on a codec logo alone.
Ignore the driver-size arms race. Our pairs cluster around a 40mm driver, but a bigger driver doesn't mean better sound — tuning, housing and (for earbuds) fit decide what you actually hear. Frequency-response ranges like "20Hz–40kHz" are effectively marketing; you can't hear most of that. For wired or audiophile use, impedance and sensitivity matter only if you're pairing with an amp. The honest advice: read reviews for tuning and comfort, and if you can, listen before you buy.
The best-sounding headphones are the ones you'll actually keep on. For over-ears, clamp force and earcup depth decide whether hour three is comfortable; for earbuds, it's tip fit and weight in the ear. If they're for workouts, look for a water/sweat-resistance rating and a secure fit. Folding designs and a hard case matter if they live in a bag. None of this shows up in a headline spec, so weight, materials and pad type are worth more of your attention than another codec.
If you take calls, mic quality and wind handling matter more than any playback spec — check a review's call-quality test. A good companion app lets you tune EQ, adjust ANC strength and remap controls, and it's where future firmware fixes arrive. Nice-to-haves worth noticing: wear detection that pauses when you take them off, and on-device controls you can actually use by feel. Skip features you'll never open.
Every figure above is computed from our own catalogue. These independent references — including non-English outlets — back the general technical claims, so you can verify them yourself.
The figures in this guide are computed live from the 46 headphonesin our catalogue and update as it grows — analysis by the Let’s Compare Data Engine.