Wired earbuds are trendy again, but don’t throw your wireless ones out just yet.
Inside a desk drawer next to me lives a collection of wired earbuds I can never bring myself to toss out. Although I’ve mainly used Bluetooth wireless earbuds for many years now—usually AirPods Pro—sometimes it’s nice to just plug in a cable and listen, without the fiddliness of a wireless connection. The one thing that’s missing? Active noise cancellation, or ANC.
I check in from time to time on the state of wired earbuds with ANC, and I’m usually disappointed. ANC needs to be powered, and you can’t get that from a 3.5mm headphone jack, so the solutions—like embedding a battery pack in the earbuds’ cable, or adding the feature via a separate USB-C-powered dongle—ditch the battery-free advantage of wired audio. Same goes for using Bluetooth over-ear wireless headphones with ANC as wired headphones. Yeah, you can do it with most wireless over-ears, but they still need power for their sound filtering, and some won’t even work as normal headphones once their battery is kaput.
Finally, in early September, Belkin unveiled almost exactly what I’d been searching for: its $29.99 SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds (USB-C). I previewed them at IFA 2025, where I found them comfortable, lightweight, and they sounded decent, but that was based on using them on a noisy show floor, which wasn’t enough to actually evaluate them. Thankfully, Belkin sent me home with a pair to review.
I’ve always really liked AirPods Pros, from the first generation to the latest AirPods Pro 3. But as good as they are, their wireless connection can still be flaky, especially after years of battery and physical wear and tear, not to mention the occasional mandatory firmware update that makes them act weird. Like when mine identified themselves as “Not Your AirPods Pro” every time I opened the case for months on end, only returning to normal after a firmware update release that coincided with the release of the AirPods Pro 3. It’s been nice to go back to just plugging in a thing and having it work—no recharging, no Bluetooth pairing, no secret, software-breaking firmware updates. Just music or podcasts when I want them.
Belkin’s SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds are chunky—roughly the size of my aforementioned AirPods Pro—but, for me, lightweight enough that I don’t really notice them in my ears. They’re also IPX5-rated, which means they aren’t dust-tight, but they should withstand sweat and splashes of water—AirPods Pro 2 were IPX4 or IP54, depending on whether you bought the Lightning or USB-C version. The SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds come in both black and white color options, and they use a flat cable that’s pliable and tangle-resistant.
Their in-ear tips are made of a soft silicone that’s much more resistant than Apple’s AirPods to the creeping horror that is my earwax. (Sorry if that’s gross to read, but I know this happens for plenty of you, too.) They come with three pairs of tips, and they don’t attach to the earbuds in any special, proprietary way, so picking up a set of universal fit earbud tips is doable if the included ones don’t feel good.
