Our 5 Best Gaming Earbuds & Earphones in 2022

How We Choose

Buying a new pair of gaming earbuds can be a little daunting, they tend not to perform as well as their over-ear counterparts and have been deemed unreliable in the past. All this before having to sift through the wide range of options!

Making sure you get the right gaming earbuds for your needs is crucial, the last thing you want to do is waste your cash on a product that doesn’t fit the bill. This process can often require a lot of research and time but this is where WePC comes in. We will sift through online comparisons, competitor and user reviews to narrow down our search.

Once we have our selections we bring them all into one place to make your life easier.

How We Test

Testing the products we recommend is one of the most important aspects of our best-of-guides, and something we take extremely seriously. We don’t just want to recommend the most popular products; we want to recommend the best products, regardless of reputation or brand. 

How we do this is by physically going out and purchasing the products we recommend. Once we’ve acquired a shortlist of recommendations, we start by doing our independent in-house tests to make sure they live up to our standards. We use gaming earbuds in real-life scenarios, whether it’s gaming or music. We then whittle down our shortlist into a final five, which becomes our best. 

Numerous team members will test each set of earbuds to provide a consensus instead of just one person’s opinion. This will hopefully give a more rounded and accurate representation of what each product offers.

The earbuds get tested in gaming scenarios, music audio playback, microphone clarity, comfort, and price.

You can check out some of our related consumer guides right here:

Things To Consider

It is unfortunate that not everyone can enjoy the comfort and quality of gaming headsets and over-ear headphones but regardless of your needs, we want to make this process as simple as possible. What makes a pair of earbuds the best for gaming comes down to a few, easy to understand factors.

Gaming Earbuds Vs. Regular Earbuds

It is important to know that some gaming earbuds may be marketed as such but they are simply branded earbuds in disguise. There is little to differentiate between the two, with the more established audio brands usually offering higher quality experiences. If you enjoy gaming with your earbuds and need a set that features a microphone then by all means upgrade but if you play with your current earbuds and they work fine, maybe consider saving your cash or going for a gaming headset.

Gaming Earbuds Vs. Gaming Headsets

While gaming headsets are still behind in terms of sound quality compared to audio headphones, they still offer a much more balanced and well-rounded gaming experience over earbuds. Sound and mic quality is better but sometimes they can be a little bulky and less desirable for anything other than gaming.

While gaming earbuds are going to be cheaper and more portable, with wireless technology being as good as it is right now, you could always pick up a wireless gaming headset instead. Of course, for some, a headset is a no-go area, with some favoring the lightweight, compact earbud alternative.

It is worth noting that you may lose some of the immersion and audio quality when using gaming earbuds from the more cinematic games out there but this is all rather subjective to what is important to you.

Drivers

In headphones, speakers, and other sound systems, “drivers” refer to one of two things: the software component that allows the device to be used with a computer and the hardware component that produces the sound in the headphones.

Larger headphones typically have multiple drivers per-ear, each used for different frequency ranges. The more drivers you have, the “cleaner” your sound should be since you won’t have just one driver being over-stressed with too many things to do.

Because of the smaller, cheaper nature of earbuds, though, many units will only come with one driver or two. In general, the larger the driver and the more there are, the better your listening experience will be.

Adapter And Mic

In this context, we’re referring to an adapter that you can use to split your single headphone cable into two; one for your mic, and one for your headphones. This is because most PCs won’t be able to take both of those inputs from just one input, unlike most smartphones.

Having this adapter included is a great feature that saves the user money spent on workarounds or just buying it themselves.

Of course, a mic is also important for the purposes of communications. While you can also look into our collection of best microphones for gaming if you’re serious about that, having a mic in your gaming earbuds is much more convenient overall.

Compatibility

Most, if not all of our earbud selections feature a 3.5mm jack meaning they will work in your console controller, with your Nintendo Switch, and mobile phone. There are Bluetooth options available but they are not latency-free like the wired options you see here.

Sweat Resistance

Generally, earbuds are worn when out and about and generally being active so they are naturally a bit more durable and weatherproof than other types of audio equipment. It’s because of this that they are also sweatproof and can keep your ears cooler for longer when compared to bulky gaming headsets. For the masses, a sweaty head is a bit of a none issue but there are plenty of gamers out there who struggle with comfort from all types of audio hardware.