Noise-canceling headphones are an essential piece of kit during regular life when commuting to work, traveling, or if you’re trying to dull distractions at the office. But they’re also important as we continue to tally yet more weeks spent at home. It’s always nice to get a reprieve from the people you live with and be in your own private, serene bubble for a while — and noise-canceling headphones are a good way to find that peace and quiet. Since they envelop your ears, wireless headphones will always do better at erasing surrounding distractions than noise-canceling earbuds like the AirPods Pro or Sony WF-1000XM3s.
The criteria for picking the best noise-canceling headphones hasn’t changed: the most important measures are how well they can eliminate outside noise, sound quality, battery life, whether they support simultaneous pairing to multiple devices, and comfort. Aside from one general pick that does a lot of things really well, I’ve also gathered together some…