The best AirPods Pro alternatives for $100 or less: I tried them all*
There's a lot to like about AirPods (particularly the AirPods Pro 2nd generation). Apple's wireless earbuds sound undeniably great and have good battery life, but they are super pricey — even during the occasional sale, which might offer a 20% discount at most. Luckily, you don't have to make a major sacrifice: There are many other brands of wireless earbuds that can power your beats for $100 or less.
Below, you'll find my picks for the best Apple AirPods Pro alternatives. Each product highlighted here offers solid sound quality without hurting your wallet.
Better than AirPods, for less?
Most of the best wireless earbuds compete directly with the $249 AirPods Pro, as they employ similar silicone ear tips that, for the best audio quality and noise isolation, should nestle into your ear canals to form a snug seal. They also match the Pro's active noise-canceling (ANC) capabilities, and a few offer advanced features like in-ear detection (which pauses/resumes playback when you remove/reinsert an earbud), multipoint connectivity (you can pair the earbuds with more than just one device) and wireless-case charging. One of them even copies Apple's spatial-audio and head-tracking features, which yield pretty remarkable results when you're listening to music and watching videos on your iPhone or other device.
In addition to being both Android- and iPhone-compatible, every product here offers some degree of water-resistance, meaning these are also some of the best wireless earbuds for working out: They can easily withstand any sweat that happens to drip in, and many will hold up to accidental dunks in a pool or puddle. (Look for an IPX rating of 7 or better if you're concerned about such pitfalls.)
So what are you really giving up by choosing less expensive earbuds? For starters, not all ANC is created equal: Less expensive 'buds might not block quite as much noise. There's also call quality, something to consider if you talk on the phone a lot or use earbuds for your Zoom meetings. (Because there are so many variables at play in call quality, it's one thing I wasn't able to test.)
On the other hand, sometimes you actually come out ahead. Some of the earbuds here offer better battery life than AirPods Pro, and some have companion apps that let you toggle different listening modes or use an equalizer to adjust audio levels to your liking. In other words, many an earbud manufacturer is beating Apple at its own game, and giving you a price break at the same time. Let's take a look at how these alternatives fare.
Note: While accurate at the time of this writing, the prices listed below are subject to change.
Ear detection: Yes
Noise canceling: Active
Multipoint connectivity: Yes
Case charging: USB-C or wireless
Rated battery life: 7 hours on a charge
Ear tips included: 4 sizes
Just about perfect. That's how I'd describe 1More's new Aero earbuds, which is why I'm cheating a bit and including them in this roundup. Though priced at $110, just above the threshold, they're currently on sale for $80 with a coupon you can clip at Amazon. If that's no longer available, they're "permanently" discounted to $90 at 1More proper (according to a company rep).
Housed in an admirably compact flip-top case (one that can charge via USB-C or Qi charging pad), the Aero earbuds come in white or black. Unfortunately, although the included instruction guide clearly explains how to pair them with your phone, it offers zero information about the 1More app. It's not specifically named, and there's no link or QR code to help you locate it. The guide merely makes a few mentions of "APP," without detailing any of its features or explaining how to use it.
Thankfully, it's not hard to find it in the Apple or Google Play stores, and it's not hard to use, either. You can use it to check battery status, choose between noise-canceling modes, toggle spatial audio (more on that below) and much more. Delve into the settings and you'll even find "soothing sounds," which are white-noise clips like breeze, waterfall and river. Unfortunately, each one lasts only about five seconds before repeating, and there's a brief pause when that happens. (Thus, get your white noise elsewhere.)
Within this group, the Aero comes closest to matching every AirPods Pro feature — most notably spatial audio, which makes it sound as if it's coming from all around you, but also tracks head movements. For example, if you're watching a movie on your phone and you turn your head, the sound will shift, so that it seems as if it's still coming from the screen. This is tricky to explain but really cool to experience. Same thing with music: It creates a sort of focal point for your listening. AirPods Pro do an amazing job with this; the effect is a little less pronounced on the Aero earbuds, but it's still great to have this feature at this price point.
I also like 1More's Smart Loudness option: It dynamically adjusts bass, mids and highs, the idea being to preserve the full range of sound at all volumes. I was amazed at the difference this made when, for example, I played some favorite tunes at low volumes. Without Smart Loudness, much of the "fullness" was lost. The 1More app also includes a dozen equalizer presets; one of them, "vocal booster," helps amplify dialogue when you're watching videos.
Sorry for burying the lede: The Aero earbuds sound great, too. Some equalizer fiddling is helpful to get music exactly the way you like it, but overall I found audio to be deep, well-balanced and very pleasant. The noise-canceling capabilities were solid and the stock medium-size ear tips were comfortable, at least in my ears. Save for the aforementioned quibbles, both of which are extremely minor, the 1More Aero is one of my favorite AirPods Pro alternatives.
Ear detection: No
Noise canceling: Active
Multipoint connectivity: No
Case charging: USB-C or wireless
Rated battery life: 7 hours on a charge
Ear tips included: 5 sizes
In a field crowded with products that are either black or white (literally), the Soundcore Life P3 stands out with a much-needed splash of color. Yes, the two monochromatic standards are available, but you can also choose Navy Blue, Sky Blue or Coral Red. Whatever you pick, the buds themselves offer a nice bit of extra flair, in the form of chrome trim.
There's another notable feature here: Soundcore's excellent companion app, which allows you to modify the earbuds' touch-control settings, toggle between multiple (!) noise-canceling modes and choose between various equalizer presets (or customize your own). There's also a test for ear-tip seal quality (something I've never seen before) and even about a dozen white-noise sounds you can play to help fall asleep.
All this would be superfluous if the Life P3 wasn't comfortable or sounded poor, but I'm happy to report superb fit and sound quality. The ANC is a bit less pronounced than AirPods', but it works well overall and includes a transparency mode. Plus, you can get really granular within the app and tweak the ANC to block indoor, outdoor or travel noises, depending on where you are. That's something else I've not seen in any other earbuds.
All that's missing is ear detection, a feature I really like. You can get it in many other earbuds, so I'm sad Anker neglected to include it here. What's more, while the "Find my earbuds" feature is great in theory, in practice, it works poorly. When activated via the app, an earbud emits a high-pitched whine — one that dogs might be able to hear, but I couldn't, not even when the earbud was just a few feet away.
Even without ear detection, the Soundcore Life P3 is a top contender among under-$100 earbuds.
Ear detection: No
Noise canceling: Active
Multipoint connectivity: Yes
Case charging: USB-C or wireless
Rated battery life: 10 hours on a charge
Ear tips included: 5 sizes
A relative newcomer to the under-$100 arena, the Soundcore Space A40 earbuds lack the distinctive "stem" design found elsewhere in this roundup — including the aforementioned Soundcore Life P3. Does that matter? It's partially a style choice, but I do think stem buds are a little easier to grip and insert. That said, the Space A40 improves on the P3 in several key ways and costs only $20 more.
If you're looking for earbuds that can last an entire day, the Space A40 is your best choice: Anker promises an impressive 10 hours on a charge, a good 2 to 3 hours more than most. (For additional reference, Apple's new AirPods Pro can manage only 6 hours.) The charging case can supply as many as four full recharges, for a whopping 50 total hours of playtime before you need to revisit a powered USB port (or Qi charging pad, as the case supports wireless charging as well).
These earbuds also feature ramped-up noise-cancelling and transparency-mode capabilities. Activate adaptive ANC, for example, and the earbuds will detect what kind of noise is present and adjust accordingly. (You can also set this manually, but honestly, why would you?). Transparency mode adds a "vocal" option that boosts voices, the better to allow conversation without removing the earbuds. In my tests, ANC proved rock-solid, on par with that offered by the TCL Moveaudio (see below).
It's especially nice to see multipoint connectivity make its way into $100 earbuds; it's great if you routinely want to switch between, say, phone and tablet, phone and computer, etc., without having to unpair and re-pair.
The Space A40 also adds Anker's HearID to the mix: It conducts an in-app test to tailor equalizer settings to your hearing. I found this really fascinating; turns out my left ear doesn't pick up treble quite as well as my right. The end result was an equalizer preset tuned specifically for me. I'm not sure I noticed a huge before/after difference, but for anyone with hearing loss or other issues, this could be a real boon.
Available in black, white or blue, the A40 has only one real flaw, and it's the same one that dings the Life P3: no ear detection. Once you get accustomed to that feature, it's hard to live without it. In all respects, though, these are superb earbuds.
Ear detection: No
Noise canceling: Active
Multipoint connectivity: Yes
Case charging: USB-C or wireless
Rated battery life: 7 hours on a charge
Ear tips included: 4 sizes
In terms of pure bang for the buck, it's hard to beat the EarFun Air S. Already a bargain at $70, it's often on sale for even less.
I've tested a lot of EarFun earbuds in recent years; with rare exception, they've all been well above average. The Air S is no different, offering decent ANC, pleasant sound quality, a robust transparency mode and anti-noise microphones that promise to reduce 30 decibels' worth of ambient sound from your calls.
The bigger news here is multipoint connectivity, a feature found in only a couple other products here. You can pair the Air S with two devices instead of just one. These are also one of the first EarFun products to support the company's new companion app, which lets you tweak various settings and adjust equalizers.
I found the look and feel of the Air S to be on par with previous EarFun efforts — which is to say, stylish and comfortable — and appreciated the Game Mode setting that lowers audio latency for games and videos. (If latency is too high, audio and video can get out of sync.)
What I can't understand is why EarFun chose not to include ear detection here, when it's available in several of the company's other earbuds. What could have been a home-run product is now merely a triple. A solid triple, but still.
Ear detection: Yes
Noise canceling: Active
Multipoint connectivity: No
Case charging: USB-C or wireless
Rated battery life: 8 hours on a charge
Ear tips included: 5 sizes
TCL is best known for making TVs, good ones that appeal to my thrifty nature. But could the company bring that same affordability acumen to wireless earbuds? Turns out yes. The Moveaudio S600 ticks most of the important feature boxes, rivaling Apple's AirPods Pro at nearly every turn, but for a much lower price.
Like AirPods, the S600 offers active noise canceling, transparency mode, in-ear detection and wireless charging. You can use TCL's companion app to configure touch controls to your liking, but unfortunately there's no equalizer option — something that might help these earbuds overcome their light bass response. The sound is well balanced overall, but other earbuds here really drive home that thump, which some listeners crave.
I'm hard-pressed to find any other issues, though I do have this nitpick: The case is larger than most, a bulbous, bulky thing that seemed extra-obtrusive in my pocket.
When I first reviewed the Moveaudio S600, I considered it one of the best AirPods Pro alternatives, period. But newer entries from 1More and Anker have nudged it down a bit in the rankings. Even so, these feature-packed earbuds continue to prove that you can get a lot — for less.
Ear detection: Yes
Noise canceling: Active
Multipoint connectivity: No
Case charging: USB-C or wireless
Rated battery life: 6 hours on a charge
Ear tips included: 3 sizes
Never heard of Wyze? The brand is behind some of my favorite low-cost electronics, including the Wyze Cam, Wyze Video Doorbell and Wyze Noise-Canceling Headphones. Needless to say, I was excited to see how the company's Buds Pro compared with AirPods Pro.
Result: mostly positive. The earbuds boast an impressive roster of features, although a few aren't executed well. I'll start with the good: The Buds Pro fit my ears very comfortably and sounded superb. I liked the bass-boost toggle in the Wyze companion app; it lets me decide whether I want that extra thump or not. (Many earbuds make the decision for you.) The app also allows tweaks to touch-control settings and a choice of voice assistants: the native one built into your phone (Google, Siri, etc.) or Amazon's Alexa.
The latter sounds like a nice perk, but if you're an iPhone user, the implementation stinks: You must keep the Alexa app running in the background and force-close the Wyze app, otherwise it won't work. You're better off using your phone's native assistant.
Another quibble: While Wyze's ANC capabilities proved excellent, the highly touted wind-noise reduction was MIA. In my tests, the earbuds were no better at combating wind than any other. (Even AirPods Pro struggle with this.) I also found them difficult to pluck from their charging case, though if you learn exactly where to put your index finger (dead center between the two), it's easier to dig them out.
Ironically, I think the aforementioned Wyze Noise-Canceling Headphones (around $80, often on sale for less) are a better product. A totally different product, yes, but worth considering all the same. As for the Wyze Buds Pro, they're a solid AirPods Pro alternative, marred only by a few livable shortcomings.
