Belkin’s SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds Are No Threat to AirPods

Inside a desk drawer next to me lives a collection of wired earbuds I can never bring myself to toss out. Although I’ve mainly used Bluetooth wireless earbuds for many years now—usually AirPods Pro—sometimes it’s nice to just plug in a cable and listen, without the fiddliness of a wireless connection. The one thing that’s missing? Active noise cancellation, or ANC.

I check in from time to time on the state of wired earbuds with ANC, and I’m usually disappointed. ANC needs to be powered, and you can’t get that from a 3.5mm headphone jack, so the solutions—like embedding a battery pack in the earbuds’ cable, or adding the feature via a separate USB-C-powered dongle—ditch the battery-free advantage of wired audio. Same goes for using Bluetooth over-ear wireless headphones with ANC as wired headphones. Yeah, you can do it with most wireless over-ears, but they still need power for their sound filtering, and some won’t even work as normal headphones once their battery is kaput.

Finally, in early September, Belkin unveiled almost exactly what I’d been searching for: its $29.99 SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds (USB-C). I previewed them at IFA 2025, where I found them comfortable, lightweight, and they sounded decent, but that was based on using them on a noisy show floor, which wasn’t enough to actually evaluate them. Thankfully, Belkin sent me home with a pair to review.

I’ve always really liked AirPods Pros, from the first generation to the latest AirPods Pro 3. But as good as they are, their wireless connection can still be flaky, especially after years of battery and physical wear and tear, not to mention the occasional mandatory firmware update that makes them act weird. Like when mine identified themselves as “Not Your AirPods Pro” every time I opened the case for months on end, only returning to normal after a firmware update release that coincided with the release of the AirPods Pro 3. It’s been nice to go back to just plugging in a thing and having it work—no recharging, no Bluetooth pairing, no secret, software-breaking firmware updates. Just music or podcasts when I want them.

Belkin’s SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds are chunky—roughly the size of my aforementioned AirPods Pro—but, for me, lightweight enough that I don’t really notice them in my ears. They’re also IPX5-rated, which means they aren’t dust-tight, but they should withstand sweat and splashes of water—AirPods Pro 2 were IPX4 or IP54, depending on whether you bought the Lightning or USB-C version. The SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds come in both black and white color options, and they use a flat cable that’s pliable and tangle-resistant.

See SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds (USB-C) at Amazon

Their in-ear tips are made of a soft silicone that’s much more resistant than Apple’s AirPods to the creeping horror that is my earwax. (Sorry if that’s gross to read, but I know this happens for plenty of you, too.) They come with three pairs of tips, and they don’t attach to the earbuds in any special, proprietary way, so picking up a set of universal fit earbud tips is doable if the included ones don’t feel good.

Belkin’s wired earbuds are clunky in some ways. The volume and play/pause buttons on the small, inline control module work like you’d expect, but it’s awkward as hell to hold down both volume up and down to cycle through the three included EQ presets: bass boost, balanced audio, and Belkin Signature Sound. And I’m not sure I like the way ANC and transparency mode are activated, by long-pressing a button on the side of the module, despite not minding a long squeeze to do the same thing on AirPods Pro. Something about it being a physical button makes me want it to work differently. But those are minor complaints, and I found I didn’t really want to change the EQ preset once I set the bass boost one.

The biggest compromise is right in the name: they connect with USB-C, rather than a 3.5mm headphone plug. That means you can’t use them with older devices like MP3 players or pre-USB-C handheld game consoles. I did confirm that they work with my iPhone 15 Pro, Google Pixel 6, both of my Apple silicon Macs, and my Nintendo Switch 2. Asterisk on Nintendo’s latest handheld: the Switch 2 Pro controller, which has a 3.5mm audio jack that lets you use headsets for GameChat, doesn’t support USB-C headphones. And just so we’re clear, neither does the first-generation Switch, including the OLED model, much to my disappointment.

Still, it’s good to know that of everything I would want to use wired headphones with, Belkin’s earbuds work fine with most. USB-C also introduces another issue: longevity, or the potential lack thereof. The Belkin SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds seem to have a hardy USB-C plug, but I’ve only tested them for around a month. As often as they could be plugged and unplugged over time, the mechanism that clips them into a USB-C port is bound to wear out eventually. I hope Belkin did a good job with these and that they’ll last for years, but only time will tell whether that’s the case.

Testing, testing, 1-2-3

So how do they sound? Belkin outfitted the SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds with 12mm drivers, putting them right between the AirPods Pro 2 and 3. Driver size isn’t everything, and Belkin only charges $30 for these earbuds, so I didn’t expect miracles—and they didn’t give me any! But they did outrun my expectations with punchy bass that’s not too boomy, and midrange and treble that are clear without being muddy or ear-piercingly tinny, respectively. Compared to the AirPods Pro 3, their sound profile is far cooler, with thinner low-end. It’s not a fair comparison, though (the AirPods Pro 3 are pretty widely praised, after all). Overall, they’re quite decent, putting out much better sound than I would expect from similarly priced wireless earbuds.

It’s when you start to pay attention to the details that the price tag shows. The bass gets fuzzy and weak when you turn the SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds up to around 80 percent or so. And they lack definition in songs that need it; Belkin’s earbuds didn’t do any favors for tracks like Tom Waits’ “Green Grass,” overly emphasizing its crackling audio and making it sound more amateurish than an intentionally ragged stylistic choice. The earbuds also have a pretty narrow sound stage, leaving audio you listen to very much confined to the area between your ears. I tend to actually like the intimate feel of that when I’m listening to something like that Tom Waits song, but it’s not ideal for a bombastic track like “Through the Fire and the Flames” by DragonForce. There’s also a lot of cable noise that vibrates its way up into the earbuds. I could hear rustling every time I turned my head and the cable scraped against my facial hair, and a loud thump when I reached up and grabbed the wire or tapped it with my fingertips.

The SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds only mildly cancel noise—they’ll block the small desktop fan I have in my office, but generally speaking, they only deal well with certain droney sounds. Walking around near a busy street in my neighborhood, the ANC quieted other sounds well enough to listen to music and podcasts or take a phone call, but these would be your last resort on, say, an airplane or a city bus. The earbuds also have decent voice isolation. A friend I called while on that walk said that while they could tell there were cars around, my voice came through loud and clear. Turning off ANC compromised the voice isolation, such that my friend could suddenly hear way more wind and car noise. Either way, though, they said I was clear and intelligible throughout the call. That’s not always the case with my AirPods Pro 2, which tend to cut out a lot and require me to constantly repeat myself when outdoors on a phone call.

Worth every penny

I genuinely didn’t expect to like the Belkin SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds as much as I do. My AirPods Pro 3 are in no danger of being replaced by them, but during the testing period, they were my go-to, anytime I was playing my Nintendo Switch 2, and I found I even liked using them while sitting and working at my laptop. I’d still rather use wireless earbuds if I’m up and about, mostly because I find all the noise from the cable bumping or rubbing, well, anything at all is just too distracting.

I liked the experience, which resembled a past time when I never had to mess with Bluetooth pairing and my earbuds worked with anything that output sound. It’s not the exact same, since I couldn’t use these with, say, my Sony PS Vita or my old Apple iPod nano, but most of the devices I use in my daily life have a USB-C port these days, and almost all work with Belkin’s earbuds the way I want them to. The one exception was with my Switch 2 Pro Controller, which only outputs audio through its 3.5mm audio jack. I didn’t actually expect it to do so with the USB-C port on top, but wouldn’t it have been neat if it did?

If you’ve been missing wired earbuds, or you want something that’s close to a modern Bluetooth audio experience but without the tiny, easy-to-lose earbuds and no fear of running out of battery, these are an easy recommendation for less than $30. Belkin’s SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds (USB-C) will be available Oct. 17 on Belkin’s website, and soon thereafter on Amazon.

See SoundForm ANC Wired Earbuds (USB-C) at Amazon