Best running headphones

Jabra’s top-of-the-range Elite Sport headphones are like a super-sporty version of Apple’s AirPods. Like the AirPods, they’re completely wireless, consisting of just two small earbuds that sit inside your ears without any connecting cables at all. However, they’re packed with additional features designed to help you make the most of your workout sessions.

They’re so sturdy that Jabra provides a three-year warranty against sweat damage, so you can really go to town. To ensure that you get a good firm fit Jabra includes three sets of silicon ear-tips for the your inner ear, along with another three sets of foam tips, and three sets of ‘wings’ to hold them in place in your outer ear.

They sound great too – lively and energetic on the higher frequencies to help get you going, but also clear and detailed too. The bass is impressively firm and full for such a small set of headphones, and they can boom when they need to, but without overwhelming or obscuring the higher and mid-range frequencies.

Battery life for listening to music is around 4.5 hours, but Jabra also includes a charging case that can fully charge the headphones twice, giving you a total of 13.5 hours if you’re using them away from home. The earbuds are a little on the chunky size, admittedly, but that’s because they also include a clinical-quality heart-rate monitor and a motion-sensor to monitor your performance during exercise.

The Jabra app throws in a few extra features as well, such as the ability to calculate VO2 – your body’s oxygen absorption – and it can count reps and give you audio tips and advice while you’re working out. It can even help to keep you safe, with a ‘hearthrough’ option that allows you to listen out for traffic and other background noises when you need to.

Neckbuds make for great fitness headphones and Adidas, as you might expect, has made various pairs dedicated to the purpose.

First and foremost, the design ensures a good fit so the headphones don’t fall out during use and you can hear what’s coming out of them. This is achieved with three different sizes of tips and separate wings meaning you can mix and match to get the right combination.

The silicone coating makes the headphones flexible and durable, with an IPX4 sweat and water-resistant rating. They’re available in three colours: Light Grey, Night Grey and Green Tint. Media controls aren’t the best we’ve tested taking a little longer to locate than some, being places on the neckband itself rather than in-line. You will get used to it over time, though.

Sound quality is excellent with 6mm neodymium drivers and good noise-isolation thanks to the snug fit. You’ll find them well-suited to bassy electronic dance music favoured for workouts but they can also handle more mellow tunes when needed. Anyone that wants to tailor the sound can do so via the Adidas Headphones app.

Battery life is also solid with the advertised 12 hours playback an accurate figure in our testing. You can get three hours of use from a 15-minute charge over USB-C but a full charge will take two hours. Better battery performance and faster charging can be found in the Adidas FWD-01 buds if you don’t mind spending more. 

However, the RPD-01 are excellent value for money at under £70/$70.

Read our full Adidas RPD-01 review on Tech Advisor.

We really liked the Bose SoundSport Wireless headphones that we reviewed last year – and that model is still available at the lower price of £130/$150 if you don’t mind putting up with their little neckband cable – but this year’s SoundSport Free earbuds go the whole hog and ditch the wires altogether.

They might not be the most elegant earbuds we’ve seen – they look like some sort of valve that a plumber might use to fix your boiler – but they’re actually quite comfortable to wear and they sound terrific.

Like most in-ear headphones, the SoundSport Free includes three sets of ear-tips in small, medium and large. However, Bose’s ‘StayHear’ design gives the tips a conical shape that allows them to rest comfortably in your ears without having to jam them in like a cork on a bottle.

The conical design also helps to form a good seal and maintain sound quality – and that’s where the SportSound Free really justify their high price tag. With the earbuds resting lightly inside the ear they still manage to produce a really rich, detailed sound, with a clean, crisp bite to the percussion and attractively firm bass.

They earn their keep in other ways too. One of the problems with completely wireless earbuds is that it’s easy to lose them if they accidentally fall out while you’re charging along at full tilt. However, the Bose Connect app has a ‘Find My Earbuds’ feature – just like Apple’s Find My iPhone – that uses the Bluetooth connection to help you locate the headphones when you need to. They’re also sweat- and water-proof, and the chunky design does at least mean that they’re sturdy enough to cope with life in the great outdoors.

Battery life is around five hours, and the tough little charging case can fully charge the headphones two more times if you want to listen to music at other times when you’re not working out.

Sennheiser’s wired OCX 686 headphones are still available, with a price cut to £43/$35 that makes them really good value for money. But it makes sense to go wireless for sports headphones, so the company’s  CX Sport model provides a Bluetooth option as well.

The CX Sport hasn’t gone completely wireless, as the earpieces are still connected by a short cable that goes around the back of your neck, and which also houses the battery, microphone and playback and volume controls. However, the headphones still only weigh 15g, so you’ll barely notice them when you’re out running. They feel quite sturdy too, and are splash-resistant and waterproof for outdoor use.

I always have trouble getting in-ear headphones to actually stay in my ears, but the CX Sport provides three different sizes of ‘fins’ that fit into the outer ear to hold the earphones in place, along with three sizes of tips for the inner ear, so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding a combination that gives you a comfortable fit.

Sound quality, as always with Sennheiser, is very good, with a clear, detailed sound, especially on higher frequencies. The bass isn’t as strong as it is on some headphones, but that’s more a matter of taste than anything else.

The relatively low price of the CX Sport means there’s no charging case included, but the six-hour battery life should still see you through your workouts for 2-3 days at a time, and there’s a fast-charge option that allows you to add an hour of battery life after charging the headphones for just 10 minutes.

Libratone is best known among Mac users for its AirPlay-compatible Zipp speakers, but the company makes headphones as well, and the Track+ is its first shot at designing Bluetooth headphones specifically for sports use.

The designers have done a good job too, as the thick rubber neckband of the Track+ feels really sturdy, and the headphones are rated IPX4 water-resistant, so they’ll be right at home in the great outdoors. They’re slightly heavier than some of their rivals, at 28g, but that means they have room for an eight-hour battery that lasts longer than most sports headphones, and will allow you to continue using them as general outdoor headphones even when you’re not exercising.

You can wear them comfortably for long periods too. Libratone includes three sizes of ear tips, and we were pleased to find that the headphones manage to produce very good sound quality without being jammed right inside your ear. Even when resting quite lightly inside the ear they produced an attractively clear and detailed sound.

The bass could, perhaps, have been a little stronger, but that’s very much a matter of personal taste, and we like the fact that we didn’t have to keep jamming them back into our ears every few minutes the way we often have to with some in-ear headphones.

Another feature that will help the Track+ headphones earn their keep is the CityMix feature, which provides four different levels of noise cancellation. On the highest level, the headphones attempt to block out most of the background noise, which will be useful when you’re travelling on a train of plane. The other levels gradually allow more noise in so that you can hear traffic when you’re out on the streets, or the sound of people talking in a coffee shop.

There’s also an ‘ambient monitoring’ option that pauses your music and actually amplifies background noise so that you can quickly get your bearings and hear what’s going on around you.

There’s a trade-off with the bone-induction technology used in the AfterShokz range of headphones, including their new top-of-the-range Trekz Air model with Bluetooth.

Instead of inserting the headphones directly into your ear and channeling sound waves into the inner ear, the Trekz Air headphones actually rest just in front of your ear and create vibrations that travel through your cheek bones to your ear drum.

The advantage of this design is that your ears aren’t blocked at all, so you can still hear everything that’s going on around you while you’re working up a sweat. That’s a useful safety feature if you’re jogging near traffic, or if you still want to be able to chat to people at the gym. The downside is that the sound quality isn’t as good as you might get from a conventional set of headphones in this price range.

That’s not to say that the Trekz Air sound bad – they’re definitely an improvement over the Trekz Titanium, with a fuller, more satisfying sound that is perfectly fine for listening to a few tunes while you’re exercising. A little more bass and volume wouldn’t go amiss, but that might distract you too much, detracting from the all-important safety aspect of the headphones.

Battery life is better than some of their sporty rivals too, lasting for up to 6.5 hours on a full charge, and they’re rated IP55 for water and dust protection.

The Urbanista Boston headphones have had a bit of an update, replacing the original ear-pieces with a new ‘winged’ design that helps to hold them more firmly in place when you’re moving around. They’ve also got an IPX5 rating for water-resistance – more than enough to cope with a bit of rain if you’re out running in the park – so they’re a good choice for exercise. They’re available in a variety of colours, and our only minor complaint is that the inline controls are a bit high up towards your ear, which sometimes feel a little awkward when you reach up to use them.

Like most sports headphones, the Bostons use Bluetooth for wireless connectivity. Urbanista’s website skirts around the battery life a bit, but Urbanista says that this new model should provide six hours of music playback time. That’s pretty good for a set of headphones in this price range – it’ll see you through a long session at the gym with no trouble at all, and they’ll keep going on the train back home too.

The Bostons will help you along too, as they provide a good, strong bass sound that will really drive you along the pavements. There are other sports headphones that provide strong bass – such as Apple’s own Powerbeats (£170) – but they tend to be pretty pricey. If you shop around you can find the Bostons online for less than £50, making them a good choice if you want some headphones that can get you motivated without spending a fortune.

If your exercise headphones are going to take a beating then it might be worth just buying a basic set for your workout sessions and having a separate set for normal day-to-day use. You can find the Philips SHQ6500CL headphones online for as little as £24.99 (we’d suggest Amazon, but it’s the same price at time of writing on Argos), so they won’t break the bank, but they’ll still provide good sound quality to help get you through your exercise sessions.

The design of the headphones might not suit everyone, though. Rather than inserting them right into the ear-canal for a firm fit, the moulded ear-pieces – shaped a bit like a big comma – sit quite lightly on the outer ear, relying on the large rubber fin to hold them in place. This is intentional, though, as the headphones are designed to let in ambient sound so that you remain aware of traffic and other possible catastrophes while you’re running around outdoors. That makes a lot of sense, although some people do prefer ear-pieces that fit more snugly and block out background noise more effectively.

Sound quality is good, though, despite the low price. The way that the ear-pieces sit over the ear means that the bass isn’t as penetrating as it could be, but it’s fine for listening to a few rock and pop tunes while you’re exercising. It’s a clear, detailed sound too, and coped equally well with gentle acoustic songs and some of Queen’s multilayered epics. The 4.5 hour battery life is a bit underwhelming, but the SHQ6500CL headphones will see you through your workouts without costing a fortune.