The saddest sound coming from your wireless earbuds isn’t Billie Eilish’s song, What Was I Made For? It’s the low-battery warning tone, especially when you’ve just sat down for your commute home. After a day of music, calls and the occasional TikTok video (on your break, ahem), can you reasonably expect to have some juice left for the ride home? The answer should be yes. Or it could be, depending on a few things.

Most active noise-canceling, or ANC, wireless earbud manufacturers publish battery life specs with varying degrees of specificity, ranging from basic playback time with and without ANC to a virtual dissertation on battery life using different codecs and features. Some also provide talk-time specifications, but none offer guidance on what to expect from mixed-use scenarios or using all the latest advanced features. So which of those features is depleting your battery the most?

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Real-world battery life

Most common battery drainers: 

• ANC and transparency modes
• Listening volume
• Hi-res audio streaming

Less common but potential battery drainers: 

• Distance between phone and earbuds 
• Spatial audio processing/head tracking

The average mid- to top-tier earbuds, such as the Apple AirPods Pro, are rated for 8 hours of ANC-powered audio streaming, with some models from Samsung and Bose claiming far less (4 to 5 hours). Talk time with ANC for the AirPods is also less, around 5 to 6 hours. That means if you’re doing a combination of media streaming and phone calls, with many models, you’re looking at about 5 to 7 hours of battery life at best per charge while ANC is on. 

The most common battery-draining features are ANC and transparency modes, as well as listening volume and high-resolution audio streaming. These are the places to start squeezing some extra life out of the batteries. 

Turn off ANC or transparency, and you’ll see a noticeable increase in listening/talk time. For example, if a spec is 8 hours with ANC on, it’s usually 10 to 12 hours with it off. Other strategies include keeping your volume below 40% (for both battery life and your hearing), and if your earbuds support multiple codecs, choosing a lower-quality one can help. This may not be possible with iPhones, which have more limited codec options compared to Android devices.

There’s also an ever-expanding universe of other power-hungry features out there, including pulse monitoring, fitness tracking, spatial audio, live translation, sound equalization (EQ) and Find My (or the equivalent). These can add up to a death by a thousand cuts for your earbuds’ battery life. You’ll need to take a little tour through various settings to manage all of these, but if you’re running low on juice, you can turn some of them off to avoid being banished to the land of silence.

TL;DR: Turn the volume down, turn off any features you don’t absolutely need and keep your phone nearby.

Fast charging to the rescue

If conserving power by compromising on features isn’t your style, your other option is to take advantage of fast charging via your earbuds’ charging case. Most earbuds offer an extra hour or two from just 3 to 15 minutes of charge time. Hopefully, this will help you finish out your commute or long flight. 

Earbud cases generally give you two to four full charges, but what if the case’s battery is low, too? If that happens to you regularly, and assuming wall charging or connecting to your laptop isn’t feasible, consider a small portable power bank. We have recommendations for Android and Apple products. For your next pair of earbuds, some models have cases with enough capacity to charge your phone as well. We like the Anker Soundcore P41i, which has a 3,000-mAh battery in its case.

One last note: To preserve the long-term health of your earbuds’ battery, avoid letting them reach 0% before recharging. Keeping the charge level between 20% and 80% is generally considered best practice for battery longevity over the long term.