Battle Royale (with Cheese): Earbuds Round-Up

The Best Buds of 2022

Joshua Beck
31 min readJan 15, 2023

It’s been a little while since I’ve done a Battle Royale regarding headphones. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been trying new ones out; on the contrary, I’ve tested a ton of headphones in the last year, and though I didn’t really write about any of them, I think it is time to give all of them their due.

This Battle Royale will be a bit different from my usual ones; instead of comparing these buds extensively in different categories, I’m instead going to write a mini-review of each one, highlighting their features, what I liked, and what I didn’t. At the end, I won’t be crowning a single victor; instead, I’ll list my top three picks from the buds I looked at.

On that note (if you’ll pardon the pun), let’s get started. Ready? …….FIGHT!

AirPods Pro 2

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I might as well get this one over with. Yes, I’ve tried the AirPods Pro 2. Yes, I absolutely love them. If you’re an Apple user, they are probably the best buds you can get on this list (maybe that will save some of you some time). But they aren’t perfect. Let me explain.

I’ve had the original AirPods Pro since about when they were released, and I liked them a lot. But I stopped using them, mainly because their flavor of ANC was constantly giving…

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