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Best for Sleep
Loop Quiet
Best for Concerts
NPR Music x Earpeace Pro
Another Cheap Pair for Shows
Vibes High Fidelity Earplugs
Best Adjustable Volume Earplugs
Loop Switch 2
You only get one pair of ears, so it’s a good idea to look after them—and a good set of earplugs can come in handy in all kinds of situations. A proper set is a much better solution for blocking out noise during the night than a pillow over the head and is more comfortable than headphones. What you’re looking for in earplugs really depends on what you want them to do. When you’re sleeping, for example, comfort is paramount. Plus, you need an indiscriminate approach to blocking out snores, traffic noise, or a car alarm down the street.
If you’re watching a band play live, though, you want to maintain as much fidelity as possible and just cut out the frequencies that might be harmful to your hearing. The average concert pumps out about 100 decibels, but if you’ve ever seen My Bloody Valentine you’ll know some bands seem to have a personal vendetta against your ears—and continuous exposure to sounds over 85 dB can cause permanent damage to your hearing. That means it’s not possible to pick out one pair of earplugs that’ll work in every situation. Instead, we’ve picked several that satisfy different needs.
Our current top picks, the Loop Quiet and Earpeace Pro, are both excellent passive pairs of earplugs with slightly different purposes. The Loop Quiet are great for sleep, because they aim to entirely block out the outside world, while the Earpeace Pro are designed to evenly lower the sound of the world around you for when you’re in loud environments but still want to hear.
Be sure to check out our other buying guides, like the Best Sleep Gadgets, Best Wireless Earbuds, Best Wireless Headphones, and Gifts for People Who Need a Good Night’s Sleep.
Updated April 2025: We added the GOB mycelium earplugs, Ozlo Sleepbuds, Soundcore by Anker A20, QuietOn 4, and Apple AirPods Pro.
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Photograph: Loop
Loop Quiet
There are no prizes for guessing where Loop earplugs got their name from—but the circular design is a long way from being purely aesthetic. The Loop Quiet look almost identical to Loop’s similar Experience earplugs, but there are two crucial differences: With no acoustic filter, they’re capable of blocking out more noise—27 dB rather than 18—and they’re made entirely from soft silicone, including the round protrusion that sits almost at right angles to the interchangeable tip. That means they fit right inside the concha of your ear, entirely flush with your head, so when you lie on your side there is very little force applied to the earplug and also less chance of inadvertently knocking them loose. That makes the Loop Quiet the most comfortable earplugs for sleeping.
The loop itself is made of silicone, but it’s still rigid enough that putting the earplugs in or taking them out is easy. They feel nice and snug when in situ without giving you that bunged-up feeling that comes with some pairs. You get four different-sized sets of ear tips (though actually changing the ear tips can be a pain), and the whole thing is washable in warm water. They even come in six colors, so you can match them to your bedsheets.
There is a newer pair called the Quiet 2 which feature a smaller shape and allegedly more comfortable fit. We’ve kept the original Quiet as our top pick until we test those, but they’re like a good option, especially for folks with smaller ears.
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Photograph: EarPeace
Best for Concerts
NPR Music x Earpeace Pro
I recently went to see my wife’s favorite band, and the opener was a doom-metal duo with full stacks of amplifiers. I grabbed some foam earplugs from the bar, but I’d have fared much better if I’d had the Earpeace Music Pros on my keychain.
These NPR-backed earplugs fit perfectly in my ears and come with a small aluminum carrying case. They’re super comfortable and can pull a solid 13 decibels from noisy signals—often the difference between some hearing damage and none—in a way that doesn’t suck all the high end out of the sound. Don’t just take my word for it. Legendary NPR music critic Bob Boilen says he has worn his at thousands of shows.
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Photograph: Simon Hill
Another Cheap Pair for Shows
Vibes High Fidelity Earplugs
I like how slim and easy to fit the Vibes High Fidelity Earplugs are. The clear plastic mushrooms hide well in your ears, so the kids at the venue won’t think you look like a loser for caring about your ears. (You’re not!) They lower sounds by an average of 22 decibels and are designed to lower every frequency relatively evenly, so you don’t lose all the high end when you put them in at a show. Three sizes of interchangeable ear tips mean they’ll fit most ears.
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Photograph: Loop
Best Adjustable Volume Earplugs
Loop Switch 2
These earplugs from Loop look like the brand’s other doughnut-shaped buds, but with a special trick up their sleeve. You can toggle the outside of each bud between three positions for variable sound reduction. You can switch between a lot, a little, and nearly no noise, which makes these great for live festivals, where artists can vary in volume from “just a little loud” to “dear Lord, I might never hear again.” I also like that they’re light and comfortable, with easy-to-clean silicone ear tips and plastic outer shells. You can even get them in cute colors like blue and salmon pink.
Total noise reduction ranges from –20 dB to –26 dB from the noise around you, which I have found to be more than enough to take the edge off of nearly any live music. If taking that much off the top isn’t enough, I’d consider why you’re there in the first place.
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Photograph: Ozlo
Best Electronic Sleepbuds
Ozlo Sleepbuds
If you’ve ever researched sleep earbuds or higher-end sleep earplugs in general, odds are you’ve come across Ozlo. Headed by three former Bose employees (who worked on Bose’s discontinued Sleepbuds), Ozlo launched its flagship Sleepbuds in September 2024, and they were an Innovation Honoree at the CES 2025.
Where sleep earbuds differ from regular earbuds is they’re meant to fit flush to your ear, so you can lay on them, with extra-long fins to keep them in place and interchangeable tips for different ear sizes. Ozlo’s model in particular also has updated Bluetooth LE, a 10-hour battery life, and biometric sensing, but this latter feature was not yet available at the time of our testing. Unfortunately, this eliminates much of the justification for Ozlo’s extreme price point, but the Ozlo buds have excellent audio quality, strong and balanced, and an extremely simple and easy-for-anyone-to-use app interface. You can stream the app’s Sleep Sounds (or anything else you want) from your phone, or disable it and have it play Sleep Sounds you’ve downloaded to the buds themselves. There’s also a feature that will ostensibly sense when you’ve fallen asleep and transition from whatever you’re listening to over to your chosen Sleep Sound (available sounds are what you’d typically expect, from rain and waterfalls to different-colored white noise), though I think this requires the biometrics update to work.
I found the sound perfectly sufficient to drown out cats meowing and my husband’s snoring while still allowing me to hear louder sounds that might require a response, like my kid coming into the room. The metal charging case is heavy and feels high-end, with a lid that slides open to reveal the buds resting on a purple plastic interior. The case is also perfectly round, however, so sliding it open and closed in the dark was a challenge. And I wish it had Qi-enabled charging so it could sit on my beside wireless charger with the rest of my devices—having to remember to plug it in somewhere else each day felt like yet another chore. Otherwise, I had no complaints with these earbuds’ comfort and performance and look forward to testing the biometric features when they become available. —Kat Merck
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Photograph: Simon Hill
Best Value Powered Sleep Buds
Anker Soundcore Sleep A20 Bluetooth Earbuds
Perhaps the most popular entry in the world of sleep earbuds, Anker’s Soundcore Sleep A20s offer an audio quality that isn’t quite at the level of Ozlo’s (it’s both thinner and more mid, so I felt like the volume needed to be louder than with the Ozlo buds), but if you’re just testing the waters of the category, these are probably the best value out there. Though the fins are significantly smaller than Ozlo’s and made of a very thin, lightweight material that didn’t keep them in place quite as well, they also come with a variety of tips and noise-blocking cones to ensure a perfectly flush fit.
I found them to be extremely unobtrusive and comfortable, as did WIRED reviewer Simon Hill when he tested them for his roundup of the Best Sleep Gadgets and Apps. The app and setup were a little more complicated than Ozlo’s, but the A20s also offer the option to stream proprietary sounds (or whatever you’d like) from your phone via Bluetooth 5.3 or download them to the buds themselves. However, more than once during my testing period, while streaming a sound from the phone, the buds lost connection and reverted to a different sound stored on the earbuds, which was startling enough to wake me up.
I ended up just sticking to sounds stored on the earbuds, the library for which is both vast and weird (from “cat drinking” and “boiling soup” to “washing machine” and the as-alarming-as-it-sounds “microfire”). However, my preferred colored noise sounds were still able to drown out my husband’s snoring without being so loud I couldn’t hear larger things going on in the background. Like the Ozlo buds, the case is perfectly round and difficult to open in the dark, and also is not Qi compatible. It is, however, smaller, lighter, and easier to carry around for travel, making these a great first step for anyone wanting to upgrade from a static foam earplug. —Kat Merck
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Photograph: Parker Hall
Best Ear Tip Assortment
Minuendo Live
If you’re the type of person who has a very particular inner ear, it can be really hard to find earplugs that fit right. Getting a proper seal on earplugs is essential for proper sound reduction, which is why I was super impressed with the Live earplugs. These come with foam, single, double, and triple flanged ear tips in a variety of sizes, which makes it really easy to find the Goldilocks shape for you.
These reduce sound by 17 dB overall, which makes them well suited to most live music or performances, but you will want stronger earplugs for using heavy machinery. The brand also sells a more expensive pair ($155) with an adjustable passive high-pass filter, meaning it filters out super bright sounds for more reduction, much like the Loop Switch. But I don’t think it’s worth the extra price.
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Photograph: Parker Hall
Best for Live Musicians
Etymotic MusicPro Elite
I play drums in bands on nights and weekends, which is how I got this job writing about A/V gear, and also why I need to protect my hearing. I always wear earplugs when I play, but I find them (even many of the passive pairs above) annoying as a performer, because they can do well with my snare drum, toms, and kick, but they overdo my cymbals, making it so I can’t hear how bright and ringing they’re being, even when I’m really bashing them. That’s why I’ve fallen in love with this powered pair of earbuds from Etymotics called the MusicPro Elite.
They’re not cheap, but these act like a limiter for your ears; anything above 90 dB gets filtered out to be lower via a pair of mics in the rechargeable buds, or you can even set them to make things louder (but not exceed 90 dB) when they’re quiet, and still soften things up when they get loud, which makes these perfect for acoustic/electric songs, where you go from a gentle intro to something more rocking later on. I like that they come with a robust hard case that easily slips in my drum bag, and that they come with both triple-flanged and memory foam tips. The only downside is that these still recharge with micro USB. What year is it!?
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Photograph: Happy Ears
Best Eco-Friendly Earplugs
Happy Ears Recycled
Just buying a pair of reusable earplugs is greener than using disposable foam ones, but Happy Ears has taken things a step further. The Swedish company offers two different sets of eco-friendly earplugs. The Recycled are made from the brand’s own production waste, while the OP are made from plastics found floating in the North Pacific and North Atlantic oceans. That’s appropriate, considering they look like tiny, flattened jellyfish.
We’ve picked the Recycled ones because they come in black, so they’re less prone to discoloration. But whichever you go for, they’re aptly named. They’re not quite as effective or as comfortable for sleeping as Flare’s Sleeep Pro, but the tiny Happy Ears are more than suitable for slumber and helped me nod off. Happy Ears claims they can reduce volume levels by up to 25 dB. While I didn’t have a decibel reader at hand when somebody with a pneumatic drill started digging up the pavement outside, these earplugs certainly deadened the most ear-splitting tones. It made it slightly easier to concentrate while writing this guide. Did I mention they’re tiny and come with an equally tiny case and arrive in recyclable/compostable paper packaging? They’re available in small, medium, or large, but you’ll have to buy a more expensive Discovery Pack, which includes all three if you’re unsure.
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Photograph: MirageC/Getty Images
Disposable Earplugs
Stick With Reusables
Considering some live music venues give away free earplugs at every gig, you might question the wisdom of forking out $15 or more for a pair of your own. You can even buy whole packets of disposable ones for a few pennies a pair. But if you’re going to be wearing earplugs regularly, there are good reasons for investing in some reusable ones. For starters, it’s better for the environment. The foam used to make most disposable earplugs isn’t biodegradable or recyclable, so they all end up going to landfills. It might seem like you get more for your money, but the cost soon adds up. If not properly inserted, they won’t do their job properly either, and with no acoustic filtering of any kind, they’re no good when audio clarity is important. Disposables are preferable to nothing, but you’re better off with a reusable pair. Just try not to lose them.
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Photograph: Gob
Disposable Mushroom Earplugs
Gob Core Pack
Billie Eilish and other musicians who care about the planet and your ears are big fans of these mushroom-based plugs for the fact that they’re not made of oil. They’re single-use, which means you can only stuff each pair into your ear holes the once, but they are surprisingly comfortable for live shows.
I didn’t find myself having to adjust them like I do similar foam earplugs, and they had a bit more of a balanced frequency response. The downside is that they’re significantly more expensive than foam plugs, but if you find yourself needing foamies only once in a while, they’re nice to have on hand.
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Photograph: Apple
Best Earbuds
Apple AirPods Pro 2 (With USB-C)
Most earbuds work just fine for passively blocking sound, and you can use buds with noise canceling to block out other sounds, but AirPods are the only high-end pair of buds with built-in hearing health features (8/10, WIRED Recommends) that most people might use.
You can use the free software that comes with the bud to adjust the volume of the world around you, as well as to focus on things like conversations. If you’re after a pair of wireless earbuds that can pull double duty, the AirPods Pro—not the leaky standard AirPods—are the best you’ll find. The only downsides? Short battery life of four hours or less and a middling in-app hearing test.
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Photograph: Parker Hall
A Different Kind of Sleep Earbud
QuietOn 4 Sleep Earbuds
Unlike other sleep earbuds that pipe in white noise or other sounds, QuietOn buds rely on active noise cancellation with passive noise attenuation. There’s no app or Bluetooth connection to worry about, and the 4.5-inch oblong USB-C charging case is small enough to fit in a jacket pocket. QuietOn 4 is the next iteration of 2021’s QuietOn 3, with a more ergonomic shape and smaller size. Take the buds out of the case within 15 seconds, the instructions say, so you can experience the noise cancellation kick in.
I admit it was cool to hear loud sounds suddenly become muffled as if a switch were flipped, but I tested these over the course of a week against a background of snoring and a pond full of Pacific tree frogs, and they did not muffle the noise any better than a pair of cheap Moldex foam earplugs. They’re quite small—QuietOn bills them as the world’s smallest active-noise-cancellation earbuds—and very comfortable to wear, with a built-in wax guard and interchangeable foam tips that help you find the best size. For the price, though, I was expecting better performance. —Kat Merck
When Should You Wear Earplugs?
Earplugs are recommended any time sound levels exceed 85 decibels, which is comparable to a noisy restaurant or heavy traffic. Exposure to 85 decibels over 8 hours is the OSHA-approved workplace safety limit for hearing damage, which means you should be fine if you experience fewer than eight hours a that level per day. Many clubs and concert venues peak at 100+ dB, which is much too loud for prolonged exposure to be safe. Hearing loss is permanent in most cases, owing to damage to tiny hairs inside your ears.
If you’re concerned something is too loud, put in earplugs! You can use an app (or smartwatch like an Apple Watch) to tell you how loud the environment is, if you want to be sure. It’s always better to be on the safe side when it comes to noise exposure.
