There's little more irritating than dodgy controls on a pair of headphones (apart from maybe a wasp at a picnic). When you go to pause your tunes and accidentally touch a panel slightly wrong, and end up changing the sound mode. Skipping a track when you wanted to activate transparency. Annoying.
Some of the best headphones make sure it's not a massive pain to control your music and podcast playback without reaching back into your pocket to retrieve your phone. I've tested loads of headphones this year, and found some great options that feature reliable controls.
I've narrowed it down to two pairs. One has amazing physical controls, and the other has some of the best touch controls I've ever experienced.
Best physical controls: Bowers & Wilkins PX7 S3
If you're looking for the best way to control your headphones, then the Bowers & Wilkins PX7 S3 are easily the best around. The clicky buttons on the exterior of the headphones' earcups are my favorite headphone controls, thanks to some clever design decisions.
See, unlike with the keyboard I use to type things out, I am not able to look at the controls on my headphones. They need to be easy to learn without looking at them, and placed in such a way that I might get confused as to what button I'm about to click.
The PX7 S3's controls are placed perfectly. The playback controls are on the outer edge of the right earcup. There are three: a textured play button, and volume up and down buttons that double as skip and rewind. That textured play button makes sure that I can tell which button is which, so I'm not fumbling around the back of my ear.
They're all nice and clicky, but there's enough "click" that a double press doesn't register as a single press, as I've found with some other clickers.
On the other ear, there's the power switch and ANC button. Other headphones I have to turn on before putting them on my head because the button is in an annoying place, but the power switch here allows me to find it easily without looking. The ANC button is large and feels completely different from the power switch — no accidental powering down here.
Look, the PX7 S3 are excellent headphones already. Excellent sound, stunning comfort and a wicked hard case. But we don't care about any of that right now — even if the rest of the package sucked, the controls would still be epic. The best controls you can buy.
Best touch controls: Sony WH-1000XM6
If you're after touch controls, then Sony's headphones are still your best bet. The firm has perfected its touch panels over the many years of the WH-1000XM series of headphones, and the latest WH-1000XM6 cans are the brand's latest example of touch control dominance.
The trick with touch controls is to avoid overcomplicating things. Many companies realize that with a touch panel, there's the opportunity to add a multitude of different gestures to control more than just the music. But just because you can, doesn't mean that you should.
Sony has nailed down the blend of useful and simple when it comes to touch controls. The extra flexibility afforded by touch panels comes out in neat features like the "palm over the earcup" for transparency mode as opposed to "tap tap hold tap" for some esoteric noise canceling mode.
The touch controls are useful. Swipe up and down for volume, forwards and backwards to change track, and tap for play/pause. They're well thought out and easy to use without looking at your headphones — and most importantly, they're reliable. While I've had the occasional hiccup when a gesture is confused for a different one, they've been bang on the money for the most part.
The power and ANC buttons are the only physical controls on the headphones. The power button is round, so you don't confuse it with the ANC key. No accidental power-downs when you want to change the ANC mode.
If you love touch controls, then the Sony WH-1000XM6 are your best bet. They're good headphones, besides, of course, but they show every other manufacturer how touch controls should work.
Physical or touch controls — which are better?
That's trickier to answer than you might realize. There are pros and cons to both types of controls. Physical controls, for example, are more reliable in wet weather and when you're wearing gloves, making them fit for a wider range of use cases. They can be fiddly, however, given the small amount of space there is to work with on headphones.
Touch controls, on the other hand, can be more flexible than physical controls. Touch panels can have more inputs programmed in. However, they can also be more unreliable, and don't work as well in the wet or when you're wearing gloves. They are also easier to accidentally activate when you manipulate your headphones for a comfier fit.
Personally, I prefer the reliability and tactility of physical controls. Your mileage may vary, though. If you want more options and a potentially greater number of features, you might prefer touch controls.
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