Best Earbuds with LDAC or aptX (Hi-Res Audio Codecs)
Bluetooth audio quality depends heavily on which codec your phone and earbuds actually negotiate. LDAC and aptX (including aptX HD and aptX Adaptive) carry meaningfully more data than the SBC or AAC codec every pair of earbuds supports by default, but only when both your phone and your earbuds support the same one.
ATH-CKS50TW2#1ATH-CKS50TW2
#2ATH-CKS50TW
#3TOZO NC20
#4TOZO NC20 Pro
Epic Pods ANC Adaptive ANC Dual-Driver True Wireless Earbuds
#6ATH-CKS5TW
#7AeroFit Pro
Epic Lab Edition ANC True Wireless Earbuds
Tribit FlyBuds C1
#10Epic Sport ANC 3 Dual-Driver Sport True Wireless Earbuds
#11Liberty 5
#12AeroFit
Codec support alone is not enough
Your phone also needs to support the same codec — LDAC is common on Android, largely absent on iPhone, so check your phone before choosing earbuds for this reason alone.
SBC and AAC are not automatically bad
AAC in particular performs well on iPhone. A higher-bitrate codec mainly matters if your source files and your listening environment can actually take advantage of the extra data.
We record what is verified per model
Codec support is stored per model in our catalog rather than assumed from a brand or price tier — some inexpensive models do support LDAC, and some expensive ones do not.