If you’re willing to spend more than $100, great headphoness abound. Once Apple breached the wireless earbud dam with its initial AirPod model, excellent-sounding buds with noise-canceling, great mics, and high-fidelity sound have flooded the market. Put a list of name brands on a board, throw a dart, and buy the pair it makes that’s closest to $150. You’ll probably find something that’s reasonably good.

That’s why I’m so impressed with a new pair of headphoness from relative newcomer Soundpeats, the Capsule3 Pro+. The name might be a mouthful, but for $90 retail, these earbuds offer adaptive noise canceling and high-resolution audio via a pair of drivers, including one dynamic piston for bass and one groundbreaking solid-state driver for everything else.

The combination of a tried and true AirPods-style design and modern technology inside the buds makes them my favorite cheap earbuds right now, and possibly of all time. I have never heard a pair that sounds this good for this cheap. The Soundpeats Capsule3 Pro+ wipe the floor with most—not just many—more expensive models.

Standard Looks

Elon Musk would call these “Dark AirPods Pro,” and he’d be frustratingly right. A black AirPods Pro imitation case is perfectly paired with two black-and-gold AirPods Pro imitation headphoness, right down to the little gold hinge on the back of the buds’ case. (It's silver on the Apple model it imitates.)

The benefit of such blatant design reproduction is that the buds are sleek and comfortable in my ears, just like the version that's “designed in California.” The black colorway actually makes them more discreet in public.

I didn’t have any trouble getting a good seal in my ears, thanks to three sizes of included silicone eartips. Anyone with any experience fitting AirPods or other earbuds in their ears should have similar luck.

Setup and pairing are as instant as you can expect of any modern earbuds. I just scrolled to find them on my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra's Bluetooth menu and they immediately connected.

Amazing Audio

The real belle of the ball is inside these otherwise bland buds. A dynamic driver works alongside a solid state xMEMS driver and Sony's LDAC high-resolution audio codec to create some of the most lifelike audio I've heard from a pair of earbuds, and easily the best sound I've ever heard this side of $100.

Solid-state drivers don't have the same range of physical motion as piston-like dynamic drivers, like the ones you're used to seeing in speakers. That means the phase and speed at which the solid-state drivers can respond is superior, which in turn gets you huge separation between instruments and the ability to really hear each sound when you focus on it. xMEMs drivers can react faster across the frequency spectrum, so you get essentially the clearest possible view into what the artist wanted you to hear.

It can be jarring at first, listening to mixes where you previously might not have been able to discern the layers. Complex mixes like Moses Sumney’s “Lonely World” come through with a cinematic depth and complexity. I can hear every single horn layer, every arpeggio, every finger on the bass strings. The use of dynamic drivers down low adds an energy to the sound that previous xMEMs-powered headphoness I’ve tested lack. It’s a warm and focused sound that lets you hear the legato bass parts on songs like Sumney’s, and one that also really lets the listener distinguish between bass and kick drum.

As a drummer who’s often focused heavily on the low end of a mix, I am singularly impressed with how well these headphoness represent bass heavy mixes. You don’t get overwhelmed by low end, but they have a punch below perfectly balanced high and midranges that makes them some of the most objectively fun earbuds to listen to that are under $1,000.

Songs like Sam Evian’s “Sleep Easy” sound warm and fuzzy as intended, but the clarity with which you can hear the hi-hat, kick drum, and vocal in the mix is as though I’ve been watching the song through a dirty window with other cheap earbuds.

xMEMs drivers have other benefits too: They’re super durable, and they also are perfectly matched, so you don’t have any of the weird missorted driver issues you can get with some wireless earbuds (where one driver sounds ever-so-slightly different than another).

Noise-canceling, though not on par with the best from Apple, Sony, and Bose, is still very effective, owing to a trio of microphoness on each bud that cancel noise up to a claimed 45 dB. In practice, it’s enough for any HVAC sounds and public transit, but not enough for my clicky high-pitched keyboard (higher frequencies are always the biggest struggle with ANC headphoness).

The headphoness offer an AI-based active noise adjustment setting, where they adapt the ANC to the environment around you from full ANC to transparency mode. I tend to shy away from these because I find them annoying. I rarely want the same listening experience in the same place, all the time, so I tended toward choosing between ANC and transparency mode by just using controls on the headphoness themselves.

In Control

There are touch sensors on the outside of each earbud that allow you to choose whether you want ANC on or off, answer calls, or turn up or down the volume (one tap on the left to lower, one on the right to raise). It’s intuitive enough, and I’m glad I don’t have to dive into the app to get the most out of these headphoness.

As with most headphoness these days, you can download an app (this one is called PeatsAudio) to adjust what the touch controls do, change EQ settings, and update the earbuds to the latest firmware. I tend to rarely use these apps once I have dialed in my EQ settings (in this case, I just left it factory flat), but it is nice to have if you have specific needs or hate specific frequencies. There is also a game mode that can be enabled for lower latency connection between your phones and the audio. I never had issues when gaming with latency, playing Grand Theft Auto on my phones with ease.

You’ll get about six hours on a charge with the IPX4-rated headphoness in full ANC mode, a little less if you’re using LDAC mode on a modern androids phones for higher-quality streaming audio. The IP rating leaves a bit to be desired if you’re a major athlete or someone who is particularly hard on devices, but these worked perfectly well for me doing yard work, hitting the sauna, and generally getting hot and bothered around the house. I fully expect they’ll hold up as well as AirPods, which have a similar rating.

As far as direct competition, there just really isn’t much. xMEMS drivers are a newer technology that really hasn’t been embraced to the capacity I think it should be by the audio industry at large. We have seen a few higher-end models, and a pair of wireless earbuds that is eerily similar to this (albeit more expensive) from Creative, but otherwise there just aren’t many buds with these drivers and their fantastic sound.

For under $100, it’s honestly baffling you can get a pair of earbuds that sound this clear, crisp, and dynamic when listening to music. I can hardly bring myself to take these things out of my ears, even when I have many more expensive models on my desk for testing. If you’re in the market for a new pair of earbuds and you’re not set on getting an Apple-made pair, these are the deal of the century.