Readers' Choice Awards 2026: The best headphone and speaker brands

Mashable's Readers' Choice Awards give you the chance to tell us about the products you use and love. With each survey you take, you're potentially securing a Readers' Choice Award for your favorite gadgets and gear. The audio world is saturated with high-quality headphones, earbuds, and Bluetooth speakers. Arguably, it's oversaturated. People also have very strong opinions about the best audio brands and products — us included. We test audio gear all the time and get our hands on all the newest releases. And our experts are great resources to find the best headphones, earbuds, and speakers to buy. We test at home — not in a lab — to simulate real-life use. But our tech-obsessed readers often use their devices over the long term and can experience popular audio products at all their highs and lows. That’s why we periodically poll Mashable readers to see which products they use and love. For this edition of the Mashable Readers' Choice Awards, big names like Bose, Sony, Apple, and JBL were in close competition. But in the end, Bose came out on top for both headphones/earbuds and speakers. Use the arrows on the chart below to toggle through each of the categories from our survey resu