The 11 Best Headphones For Skiing 2025
Whatever kind of music you enjoy, there’s one thing everyone can agree on – skiing or snowboarding is even more fun with your favourite music and the best headphones for skiing will make that happen!
Don’t be the guy blasting a boombox on the chairlift. Nobody likes that guy. Pro riders know a good set of headphones is the way to go.
Check out this in-depth roundup of the best headphones for skiing and snowboarding this winter season, brought to you by our in-house expert – who is not only a professional mountain guide with thousands of mountain days under his belt, but also has a degree in audio technology (we’re not kidding)!
Whether you like the compactness and convenience of earbuds, or the comfort and extended bass of a larger driver – we’ve got you covered. Get ready for the best skiing and snowboarding headphones that money can buy.
As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. We also earn from other affiliate programs. This means we may receive a small commission on products purchased through our links at no extra cost to you.
Table of Contents
- Best headphones for skiing – best earbuds
- Best budget earbuds
- Best AirPods for skiing
- Best on-ear headphones for skiing
- Best in-helmet headphones for skiing
- Best budget in-helmet headphones
- What makes a great set of ski headphones?
Best headphones for skiing – best earbuds
🏆 Our top pick – The Sony WF-1000XM5s
Let’s start with this: you definitely want wireless earbuds for skiing or snowboarding. Otherwise, the trailing cord will yank them out of your ears with terrifying violence at least three times a day.
When it comes to pure audio quality, the best wireless earbuds on the market today are the multi-award-winning Sony WF-1000XM5s.
The tiny drivers in earbuds are never going to sound quite the same as full, over-ear headphones – it’s just physics. But the WF-1000XM5s put up a very convincing fight.
Not only do they sound phenomenal, they have a number of features such as IPX4 waterproofing and up to sixteen hours of battery life that make them well-suited to skiing and snowboarding as well.
We felt them to be very comfortable, secure and helmet-compatible, and overall, very easy to recommend. They come in at around $270 / £220.
If you’re looking for something a little cheaper, Sony’s excellent WF-C700Ns offer a lot of the same benefits for a third of the price. They’re not quite as articulate or as comfortable, and the battery is smaller – but they represent great value.
Best budget earbuds for snowboarding
🏆 Our top pick – the Anker Soundcore P20i
If you’re saving every penny for the slopes (and we don’t blame you) the Anker Soundcore P20i wireless earbuds will absolutely do you.
Do they sound as good as the WF-1000XM5s? Absolutely not.
But they do only cost $25, and that $25 goes a very long way. The Anker P20i’s are waterproof; they support the latest Bluetooth standard; they have a 10-hour battery and fast charging (10 minutes will get you 2 hours of playtime).
They use the 10mm drivers normally seen on more expensive earbuds; they have a companion app that lets you do things choose between different EQ presets. There’s even a “find my earbud” mode that plays a tone to help you find them.
In other words, the Anker P20i’s pack in a lot of the same premium features as a much more expensive set of headphones, at a fraction of the cost. If you’d have asked us to guess, we’d have pegged them around $100.
They don’t sound bad, either. In fact, if your benchmark is the earbuds that came with your phone, they sound incredible.
If you audition them against something like the more expensive Sony’s, the difference is clear – but on their own they’re still a very competent and enjoyable set of earbuds.
Overall, at $25 the Anker P20i’s are easily the best budget earbuds for skiing and snowboarding today. They definitely make the list of the best gifts for skiers under $50.
If you’re willing to spend just a little more, keep an eye out for sales on the JBL Tune Flex, which sometimes drops to $50-60.
The JBL Tune Flex similarly punches above its weight when it comes to features, but also audio quality this time – with larger 12mm drivers that can produce deeper, punchier bass.
We also liked JBL’s Talk Through technology, which feeds a little of the mic back into your music or podcast to make you more aware of your surroundings.
Overall JBL’s Tune Flex are the best budget earbuds for skiers who want to maximise audio quality on a budget.
Best AirPods
If it simply has to be Apple, then AirPods Pro 2nd Gen are the way to go.
Apple’s best AirPods yet run on their new H2 chip, meaning they have deeply-immersive spatial audio with support for Dolby Atmos, and can even personalise their sound to your ear.
AirPods are dust, sweat and water resistant to IP54, meaning they’re even pretty rugged. They’re definitely not that impact-resistant though!
The big pull with Apple products is always that they “play so nicely together”, and if you’re already in the Apple ecosystem this will be an additional draw.
Best on-ear headphones for skiing
When we talk about the best on-ear headphones for skiing, we’re limiting our recommendations to headphones that fit under a helmet (aka are “helmet-compatible”).
That leads us to recommend a very different set of headphones than if we were talking about say, general daily use. It also limits our pool of options so much that there are few examples worth recommending above around $50.
One solution is to buy a very low-profile headphone like JVC’s HA-S23W. Whether these fit inside your helmet may come down to the make and model, but at 18mm deep you’ve got a good chance.
See also, the Audio Technica ATH-EQ300M, and these RTUSIA wraparounds are another favourite.
Another route worth exploring for lovers of both skiing and on-ear headphones is, believe it or not, sleep headphones.
Sleep headphones are designed to be so low-profile that you can fall asleep lying on them. As a result, they’re also almost universally helmet-compatible.
Many sleep headphone manufacturers, such as the perennially popular Perytong Sleep Headphones, now also list sports as a use-case in their marketing.
Naturally, the audio quality isn’t as good as with a $270 set of Sony WF-1000XM5’s, but it’s certainly usable.
Normally, the over-ear and on-ear headphone categories encompass at least 90% of the best headphones in the world, but none of them fit under helmets – making this by far the hardest category to recommend good options.
Luckily, this is a solved problem in a sense, in the form of in-helmet headphones.
Best in-helmet headphones for skiing
🏆 Our top pick – The Wildhorn Alta
The current king of in-helmet headphones is the Wildhorn Alta.
These clever headphones pack great-sounding audio into an extremely compact form-factor.
The controls are huge and easy to operate, but the headphones themselves are under an inch thick and completely disappear into your helmet pockets. It’s clear these headphones have been designed by actual skiers.
The Alta is also compatible with helmets from almost every leading brand, including Smith, POC, K2, Giro, Bolle, Anon, Burton and more.
One of the main reasons to go for in-helmet headphones is the ability to use much larger drivers. The Wildhorn Alta’s sport 40mm drivers, meaning they’re about 1600% larger than those used in earbuds, allowing them to produce a much richer sound.
The built-in battery lasts over 10 hours, and is specially formulated to work down to 24 degrees Fahrenheit (minus four Celsius).
Best budget in-helmet headphones for snowboarding
Those seeking to save their funds for the hill should check out the Unigear Ski Helmet Speaker – boasting many of the same features, and even beating the market leader on some specs.
We were even a little torn as to whether to make the Unigear our top recommendation, but we do feel the Wildhorn Alta offers a little more if you mean the price-tag.
They’re marginally thicker and heavier, and we didn’t think they sounded quite the same. That said, Unigear’s offering is a very competent competitor at around half the price and you will likely be very happy with either.
What makes headphones good for skiing?
This is a quick tour of our judging criteria and what we believe makes a great set of headphones based on over a decade of skiing and snowboarding experience.
There’s always an element of personal taste. But at the same time, there are some criteria we can point to as more or less universally desirable, and also some features we can rule out.
For example, we always advocate for wearing a helmet up the hill – we’ve seen lives saved by them first-hand, more than once. So, we’re universally only interested in headphones that are helmet-compatible.
Naturally we’re on the look-out for headphones that deliver great audio, but unlike if we were recommending a set for, say, a commute, we won’t be worrying about noise cancelling.
Not that it’s a bad thing to have – you can always just turn it off – but we do strongly recommend turning it off while skiing because it significantly reduces your situational awareness. Thus, we won’t be awarding or deducting any points for noise cancelling.
Price, value for money, durability and ergonomics all play a part as well. Skiing and snowboarding headphones come in essentially three form-factors:
1. In-ear. These are regular earbuds, and can be wired or wireless. Earbuds are characterised by their tiny size and convenience – the best are super comfortable and simply disappear into your ear. In doing so they are also able to achieve a high level of passive isolation, i.e. they work like an ear plug. You can have them custom-moulded to your ear canal if you wish.
As discussed above, this is not necessarily desirable for skiing where audio forms a large part of your situational awareness picture. Some skiers opt to ski with one bud in, one bud out.
This will probably induce rage amongst some readers but 99% of earbuds simply don’t sound as good as larger designs like on-ear or over-ear.
It’s simple physics – a smaller driver cannot produce the same range of frequencies as a larger one, particularly at the low end. Manufacturers have developed some incredible tricks with waveguides and baffles to create the illusion of sub-50hz bass, but it’s not the same.
In a nutshell, you’re trading up on comfort and convenience, and down on audio quality. There are also some concerns about hearing damage from extended use of earbuds.
Our top choice when it comes to this style of headphone is the Sony WF-1000XM5s. You can’t beat the quality of these earbuds!
2. On–ear. On-ear headphones sit on top of the ear – they’re the smaller cousins of full over-ear or “circumoral” headphones. Arguably the most famous on-ear headphones are Sennheiser’s HD25’s, an undying favourite of DJs, sound technicians and TV and film professionals around the world.
When choosing an on-ear headphone for skiing or snowboarding we have to choose one that fits under a helmet, and significantly lowers our pool of options (no HD25s, for example).
Now that the driver no longer needs to fit inside the outer ear, or even ear canal, it can be much larger – 40mm is not uncommon; three to four times larger than an in-ear headphone.
This allows for dramatically improved sound quality and, if desired, volume. You generally lose some noise isolation, because they’re no longer a plug but a cover, but in our case we don’t mind.
A larger form-factor also allows for things like longer battery life in wireless models, and can often translate to better quality and value for money because the manufacturer has so much more real estate to work with.
Overall, we feel the large boost in audio quality makes on-ear headphones superior to in-ear in most situations. The biggest drawbacks are that they’re harder to stash in a pocket, and the difficulty of finding helmet-compatible models.
Our top choice here are the JVC’s HA-S23W. They should just about fit under your helmet, but you’ll want to check to be sure.
3. In-helmet. This category combines many of the best points of both in-ear and on-ear headphones. Almost all ski helmets cover your ears, and many of them have pockets in the lining to accept small, low-profile speakers.
Essentially, these are on-ear headphones that live inside your helmet. They’re usually set up to be a little louder than regular headphones because they won’t be pressed up against your ear in quite the same way.
Despite that, sound leakage is minimal (you won’t be “that guy” on the chairlift) – but there is a small penalty in terms of sound quality.
The best headphones for skiing and snowboarding are almost all wireless, because tangled cables are a huge pain when it comes to sports.
We also reward points for factors like fast charging, water, sweat and dust-proofing, impact resistance, and safe operating temperature (some battery chemistries don’t like getting cold!).
Our absolute top choice here is the Wildhorn Alta. We think they’re well worth the money for the quality you get in a ski specific set of headphones.
Conclusion: The Best Headphones For Skiing
Heading off on a ski trip? Make sure you take the best GoPro for skiing
Selecting the right headphones for skiing is crucial to enhance your snow-covered adventures while ensuring safety and comfort. The best headphones combine durability, weather resistance, and sound quality.
We’ve given you some of the best options to suit all sorts of different needs on the mountain. Whether you’re looking for in ear buds or headphones that fit under your helmet, this article gives you all the best options out there.
For us, the top pick has to be the Wildhorn Alta. They’re made specifically for purpose and don’t compromise on quality. Whatever you end up going for, we hope that music up the mountain makes your season even more enjoyable!
