Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is my 2nd pair of these headphones - and they are my favorites. I also own an old pair of around-ear bose soundlinks, the soundsport free, and the apple airpods. All have their pros and cons, as I will explain below. The only experience I have with noise-cancellers is with the sony wh-1000xm2 that my wife got as a surprise gift (she loves them). These are my favorite headphones for running or working out, and also watching movies on an airplane. The sound and fit is nearly identical to the soundsport free. They sound like bose headphones - pretty good, you can probably get better sound but there will be compromises in other areas. The soundsport free's have a few strange compromises to eliminate the wire - phone calls only play through the right side, and they have trouble pairing to my laptop (a razer running windows 10)- they would only pair in headset mode and not music mode. I would blame razer or microsoft, but I've never had this problem with any other headphone. These Soundsport have no nonsense with oddities like that, and the reception is a bit better as the antenna is in the wire, not enough to make a difference in practice. But there is, of course, a wire. I consider this a good thing when I run (and I run almost every day) as I tuck it into my headband to keep them from moving. I also have a lot of hair so it can be hard to fit the free's back in on the fly, need to clear all the hair out of your ear first, same with any in-ear. You can also dangle one phone from the wire around your neck without worrying about it. The buttons are much easier to press. The only downside is, they charge using a micro-usb and not the usb-C that my laptop, phone, and nintendo switch use. In fairness, the frees, sony's, and bose's soundlinks use micro-usb, too, so you'll be stuck needing to worry about an extra charging cord no matter what. By comparison, I wanted to also mention how these compare to the airpods and free's. Both of those eliminate the wire, but with the addition of a charging case that has an extra battery. The apple case is quite discreet, whereas the bose free case is hilariously huge. If you keep your phone in an otterbox or it is a panasonic toughpad, you probably won't mind the bose case. It makes quite a bump in your jeans pocket. The airpods have some funky pairing mechanisms that make them difficult to use if you have other apple equipment - For work, my employer has given me an iphone 7 and an older macbook pro from 2015. Switching the airpods between these devices will occasionally require the device be signed out and back into icloud - which is a huge headache. After the 2nd time of hitting the massive icloud reset button in the sky, they have been relegated to phone use only with my xperia. This is where the airpods excel - phone calls play through both ears, you can use both, or either one, or even share one with a colleague for a conference call. The mike is great at noise cancelling, and I work in very noisy environments. Both pods have a mike and the work some voodoo when you wear both of them to cancel out almost all noise. They do a lot of really nice stuff. My personal phone is a sony xperia xz1, and the airpods pair to and work with the sony without any hiccup, never failing to pair. They also pair to my windows laptop fine, but will only connect to one device at a time (They forget the other device and must be re-paired, which is quite painless but still an annoyance compared to the Bose). They also sound really really bad, and don't have any controls other than a play/pause by either 'double flicking' either pod while it's in your ear, or removing one pod to pause. You can find better-sounding BT headphones than the airpods for under $20, and they will have much better controls, but they won't have apple branding. The airpods charging case requires an apple-specific lightning cable, but one comes in the box so it's not a huge deal. The soundsport free's, by contrast, feature the excellent sound quality of the soundsports, IMO they sound even better because they are newer. They are my favorite headphones for just listening to music around the house or taking a quick phone call. Unlike the airpods, they don't really work with just one. The right bud is the "master": it is used for phone calls (there is no mike in the left bud), it also has the +,...,- buttons on the top, which are slightly awkward because they are hard to press. The left bud does not play voice calls, it is used for music only. It also has the BT pairing button on it. You can almost get away with using only the right bud, so long as you don't want/need to switch devices. You can also use just the left bud, but the right bud needs to be kept within range (e.g., in a pocket) and also out of the charging case. However, the soundsport free's have one big advantage, or disadvantage depending on your use case, and there is no wire connecting them. Because I have long and bushy/curly hair, my hair will push the wire around if I'm not wearing a headband or hat (e.g. whenever I'm not running) and it will cause the headphones to come loose. That is a thing of the past with the free's, and the free's are the only headphones I have ever used where I can stick them in and forget them - the airpods are slightly better than the wired headphones included with the iphone (best just left in the box, IMO) but will still fall out and bounce all over the floor if you turn your head even slightly to one side. I have noticed that if sweat gets into the free's they get a bad honky sound to them, and then need to be rinsed out. If sweat gets into the regular soundsports, they just get quieter (muffled) and the volume can then be turned up to compensate. Both versions of soundsport are quite discreet as they stick mostly within the ear area. The airpods have a white stalk that dangles below the earlobe... this contains the battery and antenna so it is necessary for now but it is quite noticable, as they are bright white. Depending on the earrings I'm wearing the stalk can clack against the earring. Right now I'm wearing 4awg glass spirals and I wear them all the time, they definitely clack into the airpods. However, the airpods are still small enough that people will want to talk to you and not realize you have headphones in to ignore them on purpose. For this purpose (e.g. airports, lounges, etc) the Soundlink around-ear's still reign supreme (mine are bright white from 2015, even with my hair they cannot be missed). If you are concerned about price, these soundsports are the least expensive of the 3 (although in such a case it is hard to argue against a pair of jvc or koss gummy headphones for 9 dollars, and live with the wire going to your phone... if the wire rips, it's only $9... I also bought my first soundsport in 2016 and they were 150 even back then - the airpods being 160 and free's being a bit more around 200. Ideally Bose would have introduced the free's at 150 and dropped the regular soundsport to 120 or so, but I don't think any of these brands are competing on price. The IT man gave me the airpods, I would not have spent my own money on them. My first pair died after about 2 years of daily use - early morning runs and then showers. While bose advertises them as waterproof, they are not necessarily sweatproof, dirtproof, chlorine proof, shampoo proof, etc. My 2nd pair I have been careful to rinse them out in the shower after every run, I've had them for about 8 months now and they are still going strong. I sometimes wear the airpods in the shower too and they are holding up fine, but they fall out easily (same reason why I don't run with them) and their sound is really only meant for phone calls and spoken word, not music. I try to avoid getting the soundsport free's wet. I'm sure they are just as waterproof as the regular soundsports, but there's no easy way to dry them off without worry about losing them (don't want to put in case wet, can't be hung from the towel rack because no wire, looks suspiciously like a doggo treat, etc). Long story short, if I only had one pair of headphones, it would be these. If I didn't run and exercise so much, it would be the free's. If I never listened to music and only used them for phone calls and podcasts, it would be the airpods. But, I like to run and I like to listen to music, so... the end!