With the market being flooded with new headphone brands, and a wide range of headsets, it‘s becoming increasing difficult to determine which headphone brands, and which headsets are worth their money.
At the same time, there are a lot of pundits who claim that they have the answer, based on technical specifications and reviews from various technical sources. We, at HeadphonesCompared.com, strongly believe, that “Customer is King” and thus the best people to advise on the quality of headphone brands and headsets, are ordinary (and extra-ordinary!) people, who have actually purchased and used them. For that reason, we have conducted an analysis, which takes into account 101,489 customer reviews, from amazon.com, the world’s largest online retailer. We have covered 19 brands and 299 models, and we firmly believe that the results are reflective of the quality of the topic headphone brands in the global marketplace. It is worth bearing in mind that these rankings are based on many different models of each brand, meaning that each of the brands below, has some high-rated products as well as some medium and low rated products too.
Starting from the lowest end of the spectrum, you find Creative with a rating of 3.8 (out of 5), followed by Beats and Plantronics, which have a rating of 3.9 and 4 respectively.
20 - Creative
19 - Beats
18 - Plantronics
A lot of fuss has been made around the quality and reliability of Beats. We believe that Beats are not as bad as many people claim, but at the same time, they are not one of the headphone brands according to around 19,150 users (from Amazon.com), who have purchases and used their products.
Moving upwards, you find Klipsch, Philips and SMS audio, with a rating of around 4 (out of 5), which makes them decent but yet not top-notch.
17 - Klipsch
16 - Philips
15 - SMS Audio
A few places higher, with a rating of circa 4.1 are - Skullcandy, a brand famous for producing headphones for a young and adventurous audience, JVC, a Japanese consumer electronics brand, and Koss, and American firm, which has been producing audio products for over 50 years.
14 - Skullcandy
13 - JVC
12 - Koss
At the bottom of the top 10 brands, with a rating between 4.14 and 4.29, and we found Sennheiser, a private German firm that produces audio products since 1945, Sony, of the leading consumer electronics companies in the world, and AKG, an Austrian manufacturer of high-quality audio products.
11 - SENNHEISER
10 - SONY
9 - AKG
In the lower-mid range of the top 10 brands, are Pioneer, Panasonic and Denon, three Japanese companies that specialises in digital entrainment and electronics products, and Shure, an American audio products corporation that was established back in 1925.
8 - Pioneer
7 - Panasonic
6 - Denon
5 - Shure
The top 4 brands, with ratings that range from 4.37 to 4.5, are Bose, a German audio products company, renowned for its noise cancelling classy models, such as the quiet comfort 15, which (as of 14/12/2023) received a rating of 4.5 from 2441 users, Audio Technica, a Tokyo based company that manufactures high quality audio equipment, with its ATH-50 to be one of the best rated models, as has received 4,462 reviews with an overall rating of 4.5. The second position is taken by Ferrari, which has partnered with Logic3, to produce some true impressive headsets.
The number 1 position has been taken by V-MODA, an American firm, which designs its headphones in Milan, Italy, and producing headsets primarily for DJs. Its most popular product, the Crossfade LP, has received a rating of 4.5 from 2398 users.
4 - BOSE
3 - Audio Technica
2 - Ferrari Logic3
1 - V MODA
This was good timing! I was shopping for a pair of headphones for my nephew for his birthday, and had no idea whether one brand was better than another. I appreciate having it all laid out for me - even a graph! Now I can narrow it down to a couple of options and feel good about what I’m purchasing. Does it really matter among the top, say five brands? I’m thinking at that point they’re all pretty good.
This is a helpful article, and I’ve learned a lot from reading it. My question is this. It sounds like this is a survey of consumers and their different opinions on a variety of brands. Would a survey of electronics experts, or sound equipment sales people come out differently? I mean this is the opinion of lay people, who no doubt have experience with the product, but what would the pros have to say?
This is interesting, I have a pair of Bose headphones that I really like, and would highly recommend those, but I wish I’d had this list before I went shopping. This is one of the reasons I really like the internet. You can get the low down on anything before you part with you hard earned cash. Great article. I’ll definitely follow this website.
Having tried a pair of Bose headphones in the past, I can easily understand why they are in one of the top positions on this list! The pair I tried were super high quality and I couldn’t hear anything outside of the headphones. I must admit that I’ve never come across V MODA before, nor their line of headphones, but I will be sure to give them a look when I next look to purchase a pair of headphones.
Not to be one of the many people who hate on Beats headphones, but I’ve gone through about two pairs as of late, and both provided me with little to no comfort and hardly the best sounding experience neither. I think that Beats are a little hit and miss given their reputation, and the fact that they are mostly used as a fashion statement rather than an actual decent pair of headphones. It’s Audio Technica all the way for me!
Plantronics is a company that I’ve come across before. I bought a gaming headset from them not so long ago, and whilst the quality was excellent they broke after 3 weeks of usage. Nothing out of the ordinary mind you, I was simply wearing them and after some time the cord broke from the headset. Since I thought that this would be a rare incident, I decided to purchase a replacement pair as I really liked the sound quality. Alas, I found the same issue with several subsequent pairs of headphones. Thankfully, I’ve learned my lesson and moved onto Bose and Sony for my headphones.