The best headphone mic we've ever tested

What It Covers

The Vergecast tests headphone microphone quality in a real-world noisy environment — a busy Los Angeles coffee shop on Ventura Boulevard — comparing four headphones across price points from $80 EarFun Air Pro 4 Plus to $400 Sennheiser Momentum 5, with the $170 Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro emerging as the clear winner.

Key Questions Answered

• •Budget mic winner: Wired Apple EarPods (~$20) deliver strong raw microphone fidelity but apply zero noise suppression, making them suitable only for quiet indoor environments. For outdoor or noisy settings, the complete absence of processing means every ambient sound — traffic, voices, machinery — transmits directly to the listener with full clarity and volume.
• •Price-to-mic-quality mismatch: AirPods Pro 3 (~$200) split the difference poorly between voice fidelity and noise suppression, delivering neither clean audio nor effective background cancellation. Listeners can audibly track the beamforming processing. Testing reveals that many people who rely on AirPods Pro for calls are unaware how compromised their audio sounds to recipients.
• •Best value mic under $100: EarFun Air Pro 4 Plus ($80, frequently on sale) outperforms AirPods Pro 3 in call pleasantness despite costing roughly one-third the price. Voice sounds slightly distant but background noise is more consistently suppressed. The headphones also support AuraCast, a Bluetooth broadcast standard enabling unlimited simultaneous device connections, currently used in hearing aids and LG OLED TVs.
• •Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro custom chip advantage: Anker's Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro ($170) uses a proprietary ZOS chip — Anker's equivalent to Apple's H2 — to deliver near-complete background noise elimination with minimal voice compression. The chip will roll out across Anker's full product lineup. An onboard hearing preference test using seven paired audio comparisons fine-tunes EQ to individual listener preference at setup.
• •Why headphone mics lag behind: Manufacturers prioritize features the buyer directly experiences — ANC, sound quality, heart rate sensors, live translation — over microphone quality, which only call recipients notice. The emerging use of headphone mics for AI voice interaction may shift this incentive, since users will directly experience poor AI recognition caused by weak microphone performance.