Technics EAH-AZ60

It has to be said that the Technics' EAH-AZ60 doesn't make a great first impression. The £200 price tag is tempting, but the charging case that holds the earbuds feels rather light and flimsy compared with most of its rivals. And, upon downloading the Technics Audio Connect app, you're presented with pages of irritating terms and conditions and some rather confusing instructions.

You're told to 'optimise' the noise-cancelling features by finding a noisy location and then fiddling with a slider to try and block out as much sound as possible. That's all very well if you happen to be sitting on a train or in a busy coffee shop - but not especially practical if you're quietly working at home on your own.

Thankfully, things pick up after that, and the EAH-AZ60 manages to stand out from its rivals with a number of useful features. Most notably, it's one of the few earbuds to support Sony's 'hi-res' LDAC codec for Bluetooth audio. That means it's primarily suited for use with other Sony devices that also support LDAC, although this relatively new codec is gradually being adopted by a number of Android devices as well. For the rest of us, the EAH-AZ60 offers the basic SBC codec or Apple's AAC.