You don’t need to spend $500 to get the premium headphone experience. At the Good Housekeeping Institute Tech & Engineering Lab, we’ve tested dozens of headphones over the past few years to find the best ones. Through that testing we’ve found brands offering headphones in the $100 to $300 price range that offer the same features—top-quality sound, impressive active noise cancellation, comfortable wearing experiences, and in-depth customization—as premium ones, with some of them even outperforming the high end.
To help you find a pair that delivers premium features without the premium price tag, these are the four headphone brands that consistently impressed our experts in testing.
Nothing
A new entrant to the consumer audio space, Nothing has repeatedly impressed our engineers with their thoughtful approach to headphone design both in terms of aesthetics and functionality. The Headphones (1) were our best overall headphones in our latest roundup, and other models like the Ear 3(a) and also performed well in our tests.
What separates Nothing from competitors is the amount of customization packed into products that cost considerably less than flagship alternatives. Across multiple products we've tested, features like detailed EQ controls, shareable sound profiles, and intuitive physical controls consistently delivered an experience that rivaled significantly more expensive headphones. In our testing, sound quality was equally impressive, with several Nothing models earning higher scores than premium competitors costing substantially more.
Skullcandy
Skullcandy once had a bit of a reputation for making low-quality albeit cheap headphones. I’m happy to report that while the latter is still true, the quality of their headphones now rival some of the best we’ve tested. The Method 540 ANC, for instance, received the second highest score for in-ear headphones per our testing, only bested by the $100-more-expensive Apple AirPods Pro 3. The Aviator 900 ANC also performed particularly well in our tests for active noise cancellation and frequency response.
Skullcandy’s headphones are notable for long battery life, unique skater-style informed designs, and accessories that transform the products into style items (like the carabiner case for the Method 540 ANC or the cross-body bag for the Aviator 900 ANC). These products aren’t just for show either, packing performance and customization (via the Skullcandy app) that rivals premium headphones.
JBL
JBL has consistently made some of our best-tested speakers, and their headphone offerings are serious contenders as well. JBL headphones consistently get high marks for comfort and durability in our Lab tests, with lightweight chassis and IP ratings that give peace of mind when taking headphones on outdoor adventures.
Beyond durability and comfort, JBL has a habit of incorporating touchscreens onto the cases of their earbuds, which can be useful when you don’t want to pull out your phone to change a song or quickly adjust settings. While sometimes JBL headphones don’t test the best in our listening tests, they typically perform very well for the price.
CMF
Originally a more affordable sub-brand to Nothing, CMF has spun out into its own independent company that stands on its own for innovative, cost-conscious designs. Though much of their audio products are below the $100 threshold, they’ve consistently come out with scores that topped much of the competition in our Lab evaluations. The Headphone Pro is our fourth highest scoring over-ear pair of headphones in according to our tests—an impressive feat given it’s one of the cheapest headphones we’ve ever tried. The Clip Pro was also our best value pick for open-ear headphones because of their unique on-case controls and full-bodied sound (which can be a rarity with clip-style open-ear headphones).
CMF stands for Color, Material, Finish, which is a reference to the brand’s unique color offerings and stylized designs for their tech products. What makes the brand stand out is that they produce some of the cheapest yet most performance audio products we’ve tried. Their other signature is physical buttons, dials, and switches on their headphones—something we love in a marketplace that seems to prefer tapping, swipes, or unintuitive button combinations for operating a headset.
Why trust Good Housekeeping?
GH Data & Product Operations Manager Nikolas Greenwald has been testing headphones at the Good Housekeeping Institute’s Tech & Engineering Lab for over four years. When he’s not in the Lab, you’ll find him in the studio producing music or DJing in nightclubs across Manhattan and Brooklyn. Songs he’s written or produced over his decade-long music career have amassed millions of streams.
