Major Headphone Brands Ranked Worst To Best – SlashGear

Sort of the opposite of AKG, Anker is a consumer electronics company that’s sometimes punching above its weight in the headphone marketplace. You won’t find the reason in Anker’s frequency response numbers, though, but in the subjective space between consumers’ ears. Anker, like Beats, is a brand that also makes it impossible to really rank headphone brands, or even headphones, in any definitive way because their headphones are greatly appreciated by their customers and even by reviewers, but they’re mediocre if you go strictly by the numbers.

Of 14 headphone models tested by Rtings, none managed a “good” rating in terms of neutral sound quality. Neither are any rated poor. Everything spans the middle, neither terrible nor good enough, But somehow Anker has the 11th best-selling headphones on Amazon and is the fourth most-used headphone brand in the U.S. according to Statista. Rtings puts two Anker models on its list of best wireless Bluetooth earbuds, three models on the list of best noise-cancelling headphones, two models on the list of best earbuds, and two models on its Spring 2023 list of nine best headphones (best upper-mid-range headphones and best budget headphones). You read that right.

In a nutshell, Anker’s headphones are pretty good at everything and very good at some things (like active noise cancelling) and not really awful at anything. The average headphone price in the U.S. is $67.60, but for $79.99 you can get Rtings’ best budget headphones, Anker’s Soundcore Life Q30… and you probably should.