We review products independently, but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use. What wonderful times we live in. Since the last time we surveyed PCMag readers about their headphones and speakers, Americans have become increasingly comfortable walking around wearing wireless headphones like Apple AirPods, which look like the headphone equivalent of the invisible dog leash. Or speaking to Amazon Echoes, Google Homes, and other inanimate objects as if they were oracles, to get answers to life's most important questions: Is it going to rain today? Is the garage door open? Has any presidential candidate received a majority of the popular vote but lost the election? (The answer to the first two questions depends on when you ask. The answer to the third is Samuel Tilden in 1876.) Of course, there are more types of speakers and headphones than just smart speakers and wireless earbuds. In this month's PCMag Readers' Choice Award survey, we asked you about your satisfaction with the various types of devices that bring audio into your life, within your home, and when you're out and about. In the speaker category, in addition to smart speakers, we look at wired speakers for your PC as well as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi speakers. On the headphone side of things, we dive into wired and wireless headphones—including active noise-canceling headphones that help eliminate outside sounds. As with every category we survey, there are a few key questions that provide a reliable base measure of satisfaction, starting with the direct question, "Overall, how satisfied are you with your device?" We also look at factors such as satisfaction with reliability and ease of setup, as well as the likelihood to get a recommendation, a very good indicator of real-world satisfaction. On top of these questions, we layer in several questions specific to the category, such as satisfaction with listening to various types of audio including music and spoken word as well as the audio within games and videos. For the speakers with built-in smart assistants, we asked about satisfaction with the speaker on a variety of tasks from answering general questions to controlling smart home devices. All questions are asked on a scale from zero (extremely dissatisfied) to 10 (extremely satisfied). There are dozens of companies vying for your ears, including many large companies and several niche players. Read on to see which ones our readers tell us will give you the auditory experience you deserve. The PCMag Readers' Choice survey for headphones and speakers was in the field from July 16 through August 6, 2018. For more information on how the survey is conducted, read the survey methodology. Each person who completed the survey was entered to win an Amazon.com gift card valued at $350. You can win! Sign up for the What's New Now mailing list to receive invitations for future sweepstakes. Looking for expert opinion? Read PCMag's picks for the Best Headphones and the Best Wireless and Bluetooth Speakers. Wired Speakers You may remember the old Maxell ad depicting a man in an armchair literally being blown away by the music emanating from his speakers. The commercial perfectly captured the one-of-a-kind experience of enjoying your music by cranking up the volume instead of hiding from the world inside a pair of headphones. Several of our survey respondents have brought that experience to their desktop and laptop PCs by adding wired speakers. For most of these respondents, that speaker setup included a subwoofer and several used full 5.1 or 7.1 surround-sound systems. If you're looking to upgrade your PC's speakers, start your search with Klipsch, which wins our 2018 PCMag Readers' Choice Award for wired speakers. Klipsch received the highest satisfaction ratings on every measure in which it received at least the requisite minimum of 50 responses. Klipsch had overall satisfaction and likelihood to recommend ratings of 9.2 and even higher ratings for satisfaction with listening to music (9.6), listening to the audio in videos (9.4) and reliability (9.3). Last year's Readers' Choice Award winner, Bose, had an overall satisfaction rating of 8.9, the same rating it received last year. While Bose couldn't quite keep up with Klipsch, it was the only other company to receive any satisfaction ratings of 9.0 or higher on any measure. Bose's best rating was 9.2 for satisfaction with listening to the audio in videos and it also earned a 9.1 for satisfaction with reliability and listening to music and 9.0 for listening to podcasts. Bose's rating of 8.5 for satisfaction with listening to audio when gaming tied Logitech for the best rating on this measure. (Klipsch did not have enough responses for gaming.) So, while Bose didn't get the award this year, no one with a Bose speaker set on their PC is disappointed. See all of our survey results for wired speakers. WINNERS: WIRED SPEAKERS KlipschAccording to our readers, if you want to upgrade your PC's audio experience, no speaker company is going to give you a more satisfying experience than Klipsch. The company received the highest overall satisfaction rating and top marks on several other measures. Wireless Speakers and Smart Speakers Possibly the best news if you're shopping for wireless speakers is that several companies are delivering very satisfying experiences to their customers, according to our survey respondents. Five companies received overall satisfaction ratings between 8.7 and 8.9. The best of the best this year is Harman Kardon, which wins our PCMag Readers' Choice Award for wireless speakers for the second year in a row; it shares the spot with Ultimate Ears, which wins again after having last earned the award in 2016. Harman Kardon had the highest overall satisfaction rating in our survey at 8.9, the same rating it received last year. The company also had the highest satisfaction with reliability rating, 9.2, an excellent score but down slightly from last year's 9.4. A few of the company's other ratings dipped somewhat as well. Satisfaction with listening to music dropped from 9.4 to 9.0 and likelihood to recommend went from 9.2 to 8.8, which trailed Ultimate Ears (9.1), Sonos (9.1), and Bose (9.0). Ultimate Ears, Sonos, and Bose are right behind Harman Kardon in overall satisfaction with ratings of 8.8. Anker followed closely behind with an 8.7. Ultimate Ears, Bose, and Sonos also had the same ratings for satisfaction with reliability (9.1) and had very high likelihood to recommend scores. Ultimately, we gave Ultimate Ears the Readers' Choice Award for truly distinguishing itself from the other companies with a very low percentage of respondents needing technical support (3 percent compared to Bose's 5 percent and Sonos' 15 percent). Only 1 percent of Ultimate Ears' wireless speakers needed repairs in the last 12 months, which was very good, although all of the wireless speaker companies this year had repair rates of 3 percent or less except for Apple (6 percent) and Anker (5 percent). There was also very tight competition in the Bluetooth-specific speaker category. Here again, Ultimate Ears wins the Readers' Choice Award. Although it had the same overall reliability rating as Bose and Harman Kardon (8.8), it came out ahead in likelihood to recommend with a rating of 9.1, just ahead of Bose (9.0) and Harman Kardon (8.8). Interpreting our readers' ratings, you won't go wrong with any of these three companies. Wi-Fi speakers have long been the domain of Sonos. The company's speakers are not battery-powered but they deliver excellent sound and are easily expanded into multi-room systems. In recent years, other companies have started trying to take a piece of Sonos' market. Bose is competing most directly with its line of SoundTouch speakers but you can now also create multi-room systems with Apple's HomePod, the Amazon Echo, or even Google's $35 Chromecast Audio plugged into any speaker with a line-in jack. Still, at least for now, our survey respondents continue to put Sonos on top and the company wins our Readers' Choice Award for Wi-Fi speakers. Sonos had the highest ratings in Wi-Fi speakers for overall satisfaction (8.8), satisfaction with reliability (9.1) and likelihood to recommend (9.1). Bose is right on Sonos' tail in these ratings, earning an overall satisfaction of 8.7, satisfaction with reliability of 9.0, and likelihood to recommend of 8.9. In addition, Bose actually beat out Sonos in satisfaction with listening to music, 9.2 to 9.1. When it comes to smart speakers, first and foremost we felt the speaker had to be truly smart and so we placed the most emphasis on the rating for overall satisfaction with the speaker's digital, audio-only (with some video options) smart assistant. At this point, Google has a big lead over its competition, earning an 8.5 for its cleverly named Google Assistant, compared to the Amazon Echo's Alexa, which rated 8.1, and the Apple HomePod's Siri, which finished far behind at 7.1. The HomePod produces excellent sound and beat the other two companies by a wide margin in satisfaction with listening to music: 8.9 compared to Google's 8.2 and Amazon's 8.1. However, until it can improve on Siri's ratings, we have a lot of trouble calling the HomePod a "smart" speaker. We also asked our respondents about several aspects of their smart speakers' capabilities. Google was the only company that rated an 8.0 or better for satisfaction with the speaker's ability to understand requests (8.3), satisfaction with searching for information such as weather and movie times (8.7), and satisfaction with searching for facts such as historical information, math calculations, and unit conversions (8.7). If all you want to do, however, is set timers and create reminders, the Amazon Echo will do you just fine. Amazon and Google had identical ratings of 9.0 for satisfaction with these tasks. See all of our survey results for wireless speakers. WINNERS: WIRELESS SPEAKERS Harman Kardon—Overall For the second year in a row, Harman Kardon wins a Readers' Choice award, delivering the highest overall satisfaction among all brands rated but this Samsung subsidiary is facing very stiff competition. Ultimate Ears—Overall and BluetoothUltimate Ears makes a variety of fun Bluetooth speakers that let you choose the right balance of portability and great sound. No other brand is more likely to be recommended by our respondents than Ultimate Ears. Sonos—Wi-FiSonos has been making multi-room wireless speakers far longer than anyone else in this category and it does its job quite well, according to our respondents. The competition is getting tougher and Sonos has its work cut out for it to stay ahead. Google—Smart SpeakerClearly the smartest of the smart speakers, Google's line of Google Home devices delivers the best interactive experience. Great sound is important but great smarts is what really makes this category and according to our respondents only Google is delivering. Headphones and Earphones We asked our respondents why they don't use the headphones that come with their smartphone or portable music player. The No. 1 reason was that they were tired of cords—they wanted wireless headphones (49 percent). The next two most common reasons were that they wanted better sound quality (37 percent) and noise cancellation (30 percent). No matter your reason for upgrading, our two Readers' Choice Award winners, Bose and Audio Technica, can deliver a very satisfying experience. When looking at the entire ecosystem of headphones in general, Bose's domination was very impressive. The company had the highest rating on every measure, including overall satisfaction (9.2), likelihood to recommend (9.3), listening to music (9.5), listening to audio in videos (9.4), and listening to audiobooks (9.3) and podcasts (9.3). The only rating in which Bose was tied with another company was satisfaction with reliability (9.3, tied with Audio Technica). In wireless headphones, Bose was similarly dominant, but it faces very stiff competition from Apple, whose AirPods are extremely popular. According to NPD Group, the AirPods alone accounted for 85 percent of the wireless headphone market in mid-2017. Market share doesn't necessarily equate to satisfaction, but in this case, Apple is earning very impressive satisfaction scores, rating 9.0 or better on every measure except satisfaction with gaming. Still, Bose is beating Apple in the most important ratings: overall satisfaction (9.4 to 9.0) and likelihood to recommend (9.4 to 9.1) and getting even better ratings than Apple in satisfaction with listening to music, audio in videos, podcasts, and more. When we see a race to the top like this, everyone wins. Bose was also dominant in noise cancellation with ratings of 9.4 for both overall satisfaction and satisfaction with noise cancellation itself. Sony was Bose's closest competition and received very good ratings on these measures (8.9 for both) but the gap between the two companies is still fairly large. Note that it's clear that many respondents still don't understand the concept of noise cancellation since several indicated that their Apple headphones offered active noise cancellation. Apple does not make any headphones with this feature. However, its Beats by Dre brand does offer noise canceling on some of its headphone and it received a rating of 9.0 for satisfaction with noise cancellation. This is the fourth straight year that Audio Technica has received a Readers' Choice Award. Bose performed well in the wired headphone category but Audio Technica had the highest rating in overall satisfaction (9.1 to Bose's 9.0) and satisfaction with reliability (9.3 to 9.1). The two companies tied on every other satisfaction rating in which both companies received enough responses, including ratings of 9.4 for listening to music and 9.3 for listening to the audio in videos. Sennheiser, a past Readers' Choice Award winner, received ratings of 9.3 on both of these measures. See all of our survey results for Headphones & Earphones. WINNERS: HEADPHONES AND EARPHONES Bose—Overall, Wireless, and Noise-CancelingThere are a lot of companies making great headphones of every shape and size but according to our survey respondents, no one can match Bose in so many measures across so many categories. Overall, it's the first stop anyone should make when covering their ears. Audio Technica—Wired The world may be moving to wireless headphones but the trade-off is often lesser sound quality and higher prices. If you don't want to make these concessions, look to Audio Technica for the best in wired headphones according to our survey respondents.

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