Fun fact: while checking and maintaining our guide to the best Prime Day AirPods deals, we’ve found that the AirPods 2nd Gen are right near the top of the list of most popular headphones during the Prime Day deals. And that’s wrong.
To be clear, I’m talking about the basic AirPods 2nd Gen, released in 2019, which fell to $69 at Amazon. We’re not talking about AirPods Pro 2 which are a genuine bargain at $169 (was $249) at Amazon in the US, and in the UK you can get AirPods Pro 2 for £179 (was £229) at Amazon UK.
The world has moved way past these earbuds in the five years since their release. In the $70 / £95 region, there are loads of superior, more-recent earbuds that sound far better, and come with extras like active noise cancellation. I get that there are reasons why you might want to specifically buy the cheapest AirPods available, but most people shouldn’t – most people should buy these instead, which we’ve chosen for both the UK and US.
Today’s best cheap Prime Day earbuds – US
Today’s best cheap Prime Day earbuds – UK
These are selected from our picks of the best Prime Day headphones deals, and I chose them because we’ve reviewed them all ourselves, so we know they’re superior to AirPods 2.
Now, these are all earbuds with an in-ear fit, rather than the outer-ear design of AirPods 2, where nothing inserts into your ear canal. Some people prefer that, and that’s fair enough.
AirPods 2 do have auto-switching between Apple devices, but most of our picks have Bluetooth multi-point, which means they’ll switch seamless between two devices anyway, which may be enough for most people (and you can manually connect to other devices, of course).
If you’re buying this Prime Day, I think you’ll be way happier long-term with your purchase if you pick one of these, instead of the AirPods 2. (But AirPods Pro 2 rule, and have a feature that saved my day, and my money).