 The AirPods Pros are, in my opinion, the gold standard for in-ear wireless earphones, but that doesn't mean that you should buy them. Let's expand our horizons today and take a look at seven alternatives from the industry's top brands to find the best option for those of you who just can't bring yourself to join the Apple Zombie Army, but who also want something slightly better than $20 AirPods knockoffs. Today's video was brought to you by Smart Deploy. Are you supporting remote workers? Smart Deploy can help. Deploy Windows, apps, patches, and driver updates to remote PCs over the cloud. Get your exclusive free software worth over $800 at smartdeploy.com slash linus. All of our options here share some common features, so before we pit them against each other in a battle to the pain, let's talk about their similarities. Every one of these buds has some sort of way to play and pause music, skip and reverse tracks, activate an AI assistant of some sort, and some of them can even adjust their volume. They also all support at least Bluetooth 5.0, so you shouldn't have any concerns about either bandwidth or range when considering one over the other. Lastly, they all go for at least four hours on a charge and feature some kind of quick charging where a few minutes docked in the case nets you an hour or so of listening time. Surprisingly, the model with the worst battery life in the bunch was actually the AirPods Pros with four and a half hours of music listening time with ANC enabled, which... Wait... Are they not the gold standard? Our first challenger then is... This one. The Pixel Buds. The true wireless version, not that first-gen thing with the cord. Yeah. Google's second attempt has got great sound isolation and a full sounding mix, and their in-ear feel is almost as good as the AirPods Pros. The one thing that sours the feel is the rubber support. Sometimes you can kind of feel it tickling your earbud, and it kind of seems like someone's trying to get your attention in a way that is, quite frankly, inappropriate. Unless it's my wife. Their on-device controls are awesome, incorporating both taps and swipes for controlling volume, but they can also be customized via the Pixel Buds app or directly in Bluetooth settings on Pixel devices. And there's also some Google perks like, okay, you know, you know, support, and instant translation that is definitely not quite as good as in a sci-fi movie. But hey, at $179, they're cheaper than second-gen AirPods non-Pros with the wireless charging case. On the subject of the case, it's still mini-pocketable, but it is thicker, longer, and girthier than the AirPods Pro case. And folks, the cases only get worse from here, so strap on. Samsung launched the Galaxy Buds Live earlier this year, receiving much praise for their unique bean-like shape, and that's mostly what they've got going for them. I mean, okay, look, it's not like they're horrible. The sound quality is fine. It's just that the main issue is how the sound quality fluctuates, depending on how you position them in your ears. So they sound more tinny when they're loosely placed, you know, kind of flat, and then more bassy when you push them into the ear canal more, but that's clearly not what you're supposed to do because they quickly get uncomfortable. The beans do not use an in-ear canal design, so they don't achieve the same noise isolation as our other options, but, and this is weird, Samsung went and built in active noise cancellation, which sort of helps level the playing field, except there's no physical seal, so obviously a lot of outside sound still gets in. Time for our case pocket test, and I don't know, it's okay. A bit thicker than I'd like, that's what she said. Fortunately, the Galaxy Wear app is where the beans make up some lost ground. There's a lot of great options here, including customizable controls, a few EQ presets, and a Find My Earbuds feature. But $169, nice, an extra $10 for the Pixel Buds looks like a pretty good deal if the metallic bean ear look isn't your thing. Hey, look, I'm gonna grow a stalk to get the giant, all right. Or, you know what, you could do, is stick with Samsung and just get their older, cheaper, and in my opinion, universally better option, the Galaxy Buds Plus. They've got an in-ear design and the highest single charge battery life out of our whole lineup at 11 hours of music playback, wow. The mix has a good amount of bass and mids and can also be tweaked in-app, and while they don't feel as great in the ears as the AirPods Pros, and there's no active noise cancellation, at $149 or even less, depending on where you find them, they range anywhere from solid value to that's a freaking good deal. But challenging the Buds Plus at the same MSRP is, of course, Samsung's eternal Korean rival, LG. LG's tone-free earbuds, which they built in collaboration with UK hi-fi company Meridian. Now, normally I wouldn't mention that kind of cross-branding marketing wank, but in this case, the combined effort really shows, because I was impressed with these in my short-circuit unboxing. The design is very similar to the AirPods Pros, and sure enough, they also feel great in the ear. Now, there's no active noise cancellation and the mix can be a bit muddy, but thankfully, LG's accompanying app not only has EQ presets, but also an 8-point custom EQ tool with the ability to save two custom profiles, which should be absolutely standard. In fact, Android should just have this built in, how's that not a thing at this point? The kicker for the tone-free buds is that the wireless charging case also disinfects the earbud tips with UV light when the case is plugged in. Now, these came out during the pandemic, but like right away, so I'm not sure whether they were planning this feature already, or whether they just like plunked it in there right before they launched it. Either way, it's definitely a plus in these trying times and the case fits nicely in my special pocket. So far, all of these buds have been pretty fancy feast though, costing over a hundred US dollars each. Maybe what you're after is a flagship bud killer. Well, that is not what the OnePlus buds are, but they do only cost $79. OnePlus's approach here was to apparently take the Pixel Buds case and then fill it with an AirPods clone that frankly is much bigger than a regular AirPods and doesn't sound that great. Noise isolation is about what you'd expect from a non in-ear design, and it also borrows the OG AirPods other weakness of not fitting great in everyone's ears. On top of that, they do have an app with some customization, but right now it's only available on OnePlus phones. The hell were you guys thinking? But on the other hand, they're only $79, which isn't really that cheap. So, okay then, let's try going the other way in price, all the way up to the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 2s, at $299 US dollars. These brought some big improvements over the first gen model, including active noise cancellation and improved battery life. Unfortunately, the case still doesn't support wireless charging, and they didn't make it or the earbuds any smaller. Woof. When I unboxed these, what I had to say about the sound quality was, yeah, they're decent out of the box, but they're held up by the EQ customization in the app that was frankly unusable. Apparently though, Sennheiser listened, because now there's a true slider style UI, which really unleashes the quality of Sennheiser hardware, making this a great sounding, but expensive option for the Apple avoiding audio file. Of course, if avoiding Apple based on some kind of weird reverse fanboyism isn't your thing, hey, Apple is still an option, and maybe still the gold standard. The AirPods Pros have excellent noise isolation, while still managing to feel super light in your ear, and even if their design sensibilities really rub me the wrong way sometimes, see exhibit A and B. Other times, Apple gets it just so right. So many in-ears have thick tips that make you feel like you have to jam them into your ear canal, but the Pros are so light, they just hang there naturally, and there's almost nothing you could do to remove them if you don't want to. Beyond that, they have a great neutral sound that isn't going to blow you out of the water with its awesomeness, but it also won't draw your attention because there isn't, say, a gaping hole where the mids are supposed to be. Furthermore, especially under noisy conditions, the active noise cancellation, which can be toggled by long pressing the stem, helps that sound profile out a lot. As for the controls, on iOS, customizability is great, and on Android, well, it can be okay with the Assistant Trigger app. And last, but certainly not least, in fact, it's one of the most important features to me, the case is a great size. It's not as small as the regular non-Pro AirPods, but it's still small enough to effortlessly slip in and out of my little baby pocket. You're safe now. Just dream sweet dreams of lttstore.com. If the Pros price is a problem, of course, you can stay in Apple land with the regular AirPods, and they're fine, I guess, but at 199 or 159 without the wireless charging feature in the case, almost all of our alternatives, except you, OnePlus, not you, give us better bang for the buck, so... Now, the keen-eared among you probably noticed that we forgot to record part of each product segment with its integrated microphone, so check out the link in the video description where we'll have little microphone samples. That's so that you can be the judge of which version of your voice you wish to transmit to your friends and family. It's possible you're not gonna look at it because you just don't care about the audio quality on the other end of the line, but hey, at least it's there if you are one of those considerate people. But wait a second. The video's pretty much over and you didn't mention......wondering what that means. You're right. There are a ton of other fine options out there, like Soundcore's Liberty Air 2s and Sony's WF-1000XM3s, but we selected these models because we felt they were a good representation of what we consider to be a solid combination of price and performance, reliability, and extra features, and then we also included the OnePlus buds. So which one should you get? Well, if you've made it to the end of the video and you still don't know, I'm sorry. Sorry that I haven't yet told you about our sponsor. Privacy is a free service that allows you to generate virtual credit cards for online purchases and subscriptions. By using the 12 cards that you can get for free, you can make sure that you keep track of what you're subscribed to. Remember that time when Chase forgot to cancel his subscriptions? Well, now with privacy, he doesn't need to loop through the cancellation process and remove his credit card information. 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