Dr. Amanda Foster

The best wireless earbuds for running in are the ones with a real over-ear hook or wing and an IPX7 or IP68 sweat rating. Our overall pick, the bmani T16, pairs adjustable ear hooks with 80 hours of total playtime and physical buttons. Sealed buds isolate better; open-ear models keep traffic audible. Every pair on … Read more

Swimming is the one sport where your phone stops working, your usual fitness band turns into a wrist ornament, and the number you actually care about sits at the bottom of a pool. If you have ever finished a set and still not known how far you went, you have already felt the problem this … Read more

Most shower speaker guides still point at models that have been superseded for years, which is why the same names keep showing up in reader comments. We went back through the current waterproof bluetooth speaker for shower options and sorted them by the three things that actually decide whether a unit survives a bathroom: a … Read more

A subwoofer is the single most audible upgrade most home theaters will ever make. Spend a few hours with a system that has no bass module, then spend an evening with the same system after adding one, and the difference is not subtle. Explosions stop being a sound effect and start being a physical event. … Read more

Most of the words you hear in a film come out of one speaker: the center channel. Mixers put dialogue there and keep music, gunfire and engine noise out of it, which is why a good center channel speaker for dialogue clarity changes the whole experience rather than just adding volume. If you have ever … Read more

In-ceiling speakers are flush-mounted loudspeakers installed inside a ceiling cavity so that only the grille shows, filling an entire room with music, TV sound and surround channels without adding a single speaker to the furniture layout. For living rooms, they are the rare audio upgrade that improves the room instead of occupying it. That is … Read more

Outdoor speakers fall into three very different lanes, and almost every buyer picks the wrong one first. A permanent wired wall-mounted pair gives you the best sound but needs an amplifier and a cable run. A high-end landscape system is built for a whole yard and is a different purchase entirely. A flexible portable Bluetooth … Read more

Short version: the best Sony headphones for travel are the Sony WH-1000XM4, because they combine class-leading noise cancelling with a chassis that still folds flat into a hard case, and they carry a 30-hour battery that outlasts even the longest realistic flight leg. Sony has since released the XM5 and XM6, and both improve on … Read more

Sennheiser has been building studio tools since 1945, and that heritage is the whole reason audiophiles keep coming back to the brand. The 600-series open-backs are cited in more mixing rooms than any other headphone family, the HD 800 S remains the reference many critical listeners measure everything else against, and nearly every model uses … Read more

Most earbud roundups rank listening quality. This one ranks how you sound. The best earbuds for phone calls at work are the ones whose microphones separate your voice from the room, not the ones that block the most noise at your ears. I compared 12 pairs over six weeks of daily stand-ups, client calls and … Read more