Being able to block out the background noise and just concentrate on what you want to listen to is a real boon. This premium set of cans gets high praise for their noise cancelling technology, but also boast a battery life of 30 hours, and can integrate seamlessly with Alexa so you can play music, skip tracks, control your smart home, and even get a weather or news update, just by pressing a button, making them as appealing to homebodies as high flyers. Most sports headphones don’t need a particularly long lasting battery, but if you’re a marathon runner who frequently trains in all weathers, you’ll want something that can see you all the way through to mile 22, and won’t flinch when it starts to rain. These will do the job, with two ear hooks to ensure they stay in place, IPX7 waterproof rating, and six hours of continuous playback on a full charge. You can actually get a further 30 hours of use (in six hour stretches) by popping them back in the portable charging case for 90 minutes, meaning even if you’re trekking and camping for the night, you can still have tunes the next day. If you’re a barely-there minimalist, you might find that you have to compromise on something when it comes to headphones—after all, it can be hard to fit the same number of controls and battery life onto a set of barely-there earbuds, right? Well, mostly, yes. But somehow Cambridge Audio have managed it. Their earbuds weigh in at under 5g each, but have technology that allows you to just tap or hold one of them to skip tracks (backwards and forwards), adjust the volume, and even answer a call. They’ve also got an impressive nine hours playback time, and case that will charge them a further four times, as well as integration with voice assistants including Google and Siri.
