How to choose headphones: the complete method

1. Start with the use, not the product

Headphones are a compromise between qualities that partly rule each other out: sealing you off or letting the sound breathe, staying light or lasting forty hours, flattering the music or telling the truth about a mix. Your main use, the one that accounts for most of your listening time, settles which way those trade-offs go. An excellent pair of travel headphones makes a mediocre mixing tool, and the reverse is just as true.

If two uses are competing for first place, favor the more demanding one. Headphones chosen for the subway will work at the office; open-back headphones chosen for the living room will be useless on the subway.

2. Gauge the noise around you

Ambient noise is the second filter. In a quiet place, anything goes, open-back headphones included. On the street or in an open office, you need at least closed-back headphones or well-fitted in-ear earbuds. On a train, a subway or a plane, active noise canceling becomes the main selling point: nothing else erases the low, steady rumble of engines.

This is also a health matter: in noisy places, we turn the volume up to drown out our surroundings. Headphones that isolate let you listen at a lower level. The guide to active noise canceling vs. passive isolation details what each technique really does, frequency by frequency.

3. Choose the form factor

There are three main families, plus a fourth that arrived recently:

• Over-ear: the ear pads surround the ear. The most comfortable over long sessions, and the best foundation for sound quality and noise canceling. Bulky.
• On-ear: the ear pads rest on the outer ear. Compact and light, but the pressure gets tiring and the isolation is middling.
• In-ear: the ear tip seals the ear canal. Highly isolating when it's the right size, discreet, ideal on the go.
• Open-ear: bone conduction, or open earbuds that sit in front of the canal. You hear everything going on around you: invaluable for running in the city, mediocre for music.

The full comparison is in the guide to over-ear, on-ear and in-ear headphones.

4. Wired or wireless

Bluetooth compresses the sound and adds a delay; a cable does neither. In practice, the compression applied by modern codecs is inaudible to most people under normal listening conditions. The delay, however, remains a problem for gaming and for playing an instrument. Keep three simple rules in mind:

• On the go, calls, everyday use: wireless, without hesitation.
• Competitive gaming: wired, or 2.4 GHz wireless with its dongle, never Bluetooth alone.
• Studio and hi-fi: wired. No battery to replace, and headphones that will last fifteen years.

To go deeper: Bluetooth codecs and latency.

5. Find your sound signature

Two technically flawless pairs of headphones can sound very different: each has a signature, meaning a deliberate balance of bass, mids and treble. A neutral signature reproduces the recording as it is; a "V-shaped" signature boosts the bass and treble for a more dramatic sound; a warm signature softens the treble and goes easy on the ears.

There is no universally right answer, but research conducted at Harman shows that most listeners prefer a curve close to neutral, with slightly boosted bass. The guide to frequency response and sound signature teaches you to read these curves.

6. Shut out the world or stay aware

Isolation isn't always what you want. Running along a road, walking through the city, keeping an eye on a child or waiting for a coworker to call your name, hearing your surroundings is a matter of safety or courtesy. There are three solutions: the transparency mode of noise-canceling headphones, which feeds in the outside sound picked up by the mics; open-back headphones, for home; and open-ear models, for sports. The guide to open-back vs. closed-back headphones explains what an open design changes about the sound.

7. Rank your priorities

For a given use and form factor, models are separated by secondary criteria. Pick two or three, no more: no headphones excel at everything.

• Comfort: weight (past 300 g, about 10.5 oz, your neck feels it), headband pressure, ear pad material, compatibility with glasses.
• Mic: decisive for calls. A boom mic always beats a mic built into the ear cup.
• Battery life: expect 30 hours from noise-canceling headphones, and 6 to 8 hours from earbuds, not counting the case.
• Durability: an IPX4 rating is enough for sweat and rain; IP57 or IP68 can handle immersion.
• Repairability: replaceable ear pads and a replaceable cable add several years to a headphone's life.

8. Set the budget last

Price follows a law of diminishing returns. Between $30 and $100, you can hear every extra dollar. Between $100 and $300, the gains are mostly in noise canceling, mic quality and comfort. Beyond that, the improvements in sound are real but subtle, and you're also paying for materials, the brand name and extra features.

Two exceptions are worth knowing. Wired studio headphones deliver remarkable sound quality at around $150, because they carry neither a battery nor electronics. And in hi-fi, demanding headphones may need an amplifier, which has to be factored into the budget: see impedance, sensitivity and amplification.

The most common mistakes

• Buying open-back headphones for commuting: they don't isolate, and the whole train car gets to enjoy your music.
• Judging in-ear earbuds with tips that are too small: without a seal, there's no bass and no noise canceling to speak of.
• Trusting frequency range figures ("5 Hz – 40 kHz"): with no tolerance stated, they tell you nothing about the sound.
• Choosing Bluetooth headphones for competitive online gaming.
• Ignoring the volume: listening too loud damages your hearing irreversibly. See volume and hearing health.

The selector applies this method automatically: it asks these eight questions and scores every model in its catalog against your answers.

Sources and references

1. World Health Organization — Deafness and hearing loss: safe listening
2. Bluetooth SIG — LE Audio
3. Olive, Welti, Khonsaripour — A Statistical Model that Predicts Listeners' Preference Ratings of Around-Ear and On-Ear Headphones, Audio Engineering Society Convention 144, 2018