Earphone Buying Guide: What to check during buying Earphones?

There are a lot of features and functionalities in earphones that come on the market today. With different combinations of these features and functionalities, there can be easily 100s of types of earphones to choose from in any budget bracket at the moment. 

This makes it difficult to decide what to buy and what not to. Due to this, we often make mistakes and pick up the wrong pair of earphones and we realize it as the time passes. But now no worries!

To make your lives easier, we have decided to write this article on guiding you on how you should buy a pair of earphones. So let’s get started!

Let’s Have a look at the types of earphones before we know What to check during buying Earphones?

1. In-ear earphones
2. On-ear earphones
3. Over-ear earphones

Let’s See them One by one.

Decide the purpose

You should not get over-ear earphones because your friend has got one. You have to define your use cases first. Do you want to use it for work calls on transit or do you want it for good entertainment like movies and gaming? 

Defining your use cases will bring you a lot of clarity about what type of earphones you should buy. 

Let’s see the types of earphones in design and structure along with their pros and cons :

In-ear earphones :

These are the most common form of earphones used. In-ear earphones fit into your ear and deliver the sound directly to your ear channel. In-ear earphones are generally cheaper and easily portable as compared to other types of earphones.

PROS:

• Less Price
• Easily portable 

CONS: 

• Average quality sound due to size limitation
• Can be misplaced easily

On-ear earphones:

On-ear earphones are earphones whose drivers fit on your ear. Understand that they don’t cover your ears completely but the rims of the drivers sit on your ears. These are used by professionals a lot of time for video editing, work calls, and more.

PROS:

• Compact in size
• Cheaper than over-ear earphones

CONS: 

• They sit on-ear thus can put a lot of pressure on-ear and become uncomfortable 
• Sound leaks as it does not cover the ear

Over-ear earphones:

Over-ear earphones are the most comfortable as well as the most expensive of all the categories of earphones. These are mostly used by professional gamers and professionals in the media industry. 

PROS:

• Best sound quality
• Very comfortable
• Highest noise cancellation

CONS: 

• Very expensive
• Not easily portable

After understanding and picking up your choice of design and structure of earphones, now you should be thinking of if you want a wired or a wireless pair of earphones.

Wired or Wireless Earphones?

We already have a published article on this topic and will give you a detailed explanation of why you should buy a wireless pair of earphones. But for a brief answer, in most cases, wireless earphones will be much more comfortable and superior to wired earphones. 

After knowing your choice of types of earphones and whether you want to go with wired or wireless earphones, you should now finalize a budget and start seeing options in the range. 

Finally, you should decide to consider subjective factors like brand, aesthetics, and more as per your choice. This is the proper way of buying a pair of earphones and this way, you will never regret what you have bought.

Earphone Buying Guide: Frequently Asked Questions