Best cheap headphones 2024: budget wireless, in-ear & over-ear models

The best cheap headphones are always getting better. Gone are the days of budget bargains being bitterly disappointing. You can now pick up a pair of affordable headphones and expect to get decent audio quality alongside a few more advanced features that you would never have seen included a few years ago.

The incredible audio advances in the best wireless headphones and the best wired headphones trickle down quickly to more inexpensive models, and you no longer need to spend big sums to get a big sound.

Maybe affordable is a better word than cheap because the latter implies poor quality – and the best affordable headphones are anything but. We're talking high-quality, high-performance headphones from some of the biggest names in audio, and there are some absolutely brilliant options for noise-cancelling headphones, headphones for listening to podcasts and headphones for working out in the gym too.

Some of the best headphones under £100 are so good that you'll find some of them in our other guides where the price isn't a priority: guides to the best wireless earbuds, the best noise-cancelling headphones, and best noise-cancelling earbuds where sound and technology really matter. 

We're not going to exaggerate, though. If you're looking for an audiophile experience that makes your ears tingle as they've never tingled before, you're unlikely to find that here: you'll usually find that the best-wired headphones often but not always outperform their wireless and more affordable rivals. But they cost way more too.

We think you'll be surprised by how much musical bang for your buck you'll find here. Let's discover the best headphones under £100 for you.

The best cheap headphones 2024: The top 3

Say hello to the T3 Awards 2022's Best Value Headphones winner: the Sony WF-C500. These are the best headphones under £100 for most people in our opinion, delivering great sound for a great price. However, there's no active noise cancelling, but for this money we don't think that's a deal-breaker. 

As we said in our Sony WF-C500 review: these earbuds "are fantastic value for money; they sound superb, they're super comfortable and you can adjust the sound to exactly how you like it." Can't say better than that.

Cambridge Audio is well known for its high-end audio kit, and its true wireless earbuds sound as good as you’d hope, they've been some of the best headphones under £100 for a while now. In terms of sound quality they punch way above their price bracket thanks to excellent sound isolation, graphene drivers and high-quality Bluetooth aptX, and include great battery life. 

Because of the unusual design, it's hard to tell which bud is left and which is right, and the fitting them securely takes a bit of practice. Once mastered, you're most unlikely to be disappointed, however, especially at this price – as our full Cambridge Audio Melomania 1+ review explains. 

While their design is rather rudimentary, JBL's on-ears are an incredible choice if you're looking for quality audio under £100, and they're absolutely packed with features. JBL's Pure Bass tuning pushes a warm, rich sound from an audio stage that performs far above its price point, there's your choice of Bluetooth 5 or a 3.5mm jack – oh, and there's some very sharp, reactive noise cancelling.

If ANC is your goal, we can't think of a much better way to get it. In our full JBL Tune 660NC review, we say "you’ll be hard pushed to find a better pair of noise-cancelling headphones for this low of a price", and even though they're on-ears rather than the more all-encompassing design of over-ears they perform remarkably well when it comes to cutting out outside noise. 

Before you buy, make sure you check our JBL discount codes to get the best price.

Best cheap headphones 2024: best of the rest

Not everyone will be so keen on the idea of pushing an earbud all the way into their ear canal and would much rather use a pair of half-in-ear headphones, like Apple AirPods, but those are very pricey. Let me introduce you to the Nothing Ear (stick) - the earbuds are a similar sort of style so you place them in the outer part of your ear. 

Considering the fact that they aren't sealed in, they actually do sound really good, which is partly down to the Bass lock technology which detects leakage and adjusts the sound automatically. The only downside is that you won't get any noise cancelling but that's not always a dealbreaker anyway! Sound like a good fit for you? Read more in the Nothing Ear (stick) review.

Unlike a lot of other cheap headphones, the Panasonic RZ-S500W true wireless earbuds have literally tonnes of extra features to play around with. Not only do they have both noise-cancelling and ambient sound modes but you’ll actually be able to choose how much noise you want to block out. You just need to slide up or down the scale on the Panasonic Audio Connect app. 

The audio quality is impressive no matter what music you’re into - it’s punchy, balanced and precise. But what’s really good is that there are manual equaliser settings as well as two sound enhancement modes, those being Bass Boost and Clear Voice. In the Panasonic RZ-S500W review, we noted that ‘the touch sensors are far too sensitive, the app looks dated and connecting them to your phone can be a faff.’ But if you can get past those flaws then you’ll be impressed by everything else they have to offer. 

If you already have Alexa speakers at home, you’ll love the Amazon Echo Buds (2nd Gen) and the best part is, they cost less than £100. They give you all of the benefits of the Alexa voice assistant, packed into two tiny earbuds. Get the answers to your questions, turn on the lights or switch songs without touching anything. 

When we tried them out, we thought the Amazon Echo Buds (2nd Gen) sound fine, especially for a pair of cheap headphones. They’re not as refined as a more pricey pair but the audio is still dynamic and clear whatever type of music you listen to. You’ll also get ANC here as well as a pass-through mode to hear your surroundings. Read more in the Amazon Echo Buds (2nd Gen) review.

If you want to spend as little as possible on your next pair of headphones, then the JLab Go Air Pop are your best bet. These wireless earbuds barely cost anything at all, in fact, they're about the same price as a takeaway pizza. You might be thinking, if they're that cheap, they must be very basic right? Wrong. 

These still manage to pack in a total of 32 hours of battery life, 3 preset equaliser settings, relatively good sound quality and handy touch controls to adjust the volume and skip through tracks. You can't have it all because the call quality leaves a lot to be desired and there's no noise-cancelling but those are the only significant downsides. In the JLab Go Air Pop review, we thought they were excellent value for money.

JBL's Tune Flex earbuds are some of the only true wireless earbuds in the world that you can transform from open-ear to in-ear - these earbuds can either rest in your ear or be fitted into your ear. 

Granted the former will mean poorer sound quality and less effective noise cancelling but some people will find it much more comfortable. With the in-ear tips, the sound is clear, punchy and you can easily block out outside noise with the ANC. You really do get the best of both worlds! Read more in the JBL Tune Flex review.

The most discreet true wireless earbuds on this list are the 1More Comfobuds Mini. So small that no one will even know you have them in, they only weigh 3.7g. Because of that, they feel comfortable to wear for a long time and thanks to the 3 sizes of silicone ear tips included in the box, they stayed securely in our ears. 

As you’d expect from a pair of affordable headphones, the sound quality is solid but not completely faultless. You won’t get a manual equaliser to tweak it but the 1More Music smartphone app can create a personalised sound profile for you which does help a lot. Keeping distracting noises out, there are a few different levels of noise cancelling which meant we could use these for everything from commutes to workouts. 

To hear more about what makes these some of the best headphones under £100, read the full 1More Comfobuds Mini review. 

The cheapest Beats headphones around, the neckband connected Flex don't necessarily follow the current Beats trend for refinement and subtlety: they have big ol' red logos on each ear and a distinctly old-Beats sound that emphasises the bass and treble while almost entirely forgetting about mids. Honestly, that's not always a bad thing. Sometimes bargain beefy buds are just the thing, and these are that.

In our full Beats Flex review, we call these "a great choice for those who don’t want to splash out on the Powerbeats Pro or Apple AirPods for their iPhone". The Beats Flex are best suited to Apple users since they feature Apple's last-gen W1 chip. you can use them with Android, but all the auto-connectivity, Find My, audio sharing and customisation functions won't work. Given the price that probably won't be such a disappointment, but it definitely adds a little extra value if you're an iPhone user. 

How to choose the best cheap headphones for you

The first thing to think about is what you’re going to be listening to and where you’re going to be listening to it. A modest pair of in-ear headphones with noise cancelling may be better for listening to podcasts on the bus or tube than a giant pair of over-ear headphones, and in-ears are often better for the gym or a run than over-ear headphones. Wireless headphones are brilliant provided you’ll remember to charge them, and true wireless – where there’s no cable connecting left and right – are ideal unless like us, you’re prone to losing things. 

In addition to comfort and cables or battery life, look at the frequency range. The best headphones under £100 typically deliver frequencies from around 20Hz to 20KHz; the lower number is the lowest frequency, which is where the bass lives. Some headphones go lower than 20Hz, which can mean better bass – but quality counts too. Headphones that deliver too much bass without sufficient clarity can sound overly boomy and messy.