Bose Launches $99 Noise-Canceling Wired Earbuds, Its First Corded Pair in 11 Years, Shipping October 15

Bose on Monday announced the Bose Noise Cancelling Wired Earbuds, a $99 USB-C pair that adds active noise cancellation to a category the company left in 2015, marking its first wired earbuds in 11 years. Preorders opened Monday on Bose.com and at Best Buy, and the company said shipping starts October 15.

The earbuds are available in black, white smoke and a limited-edition green shade called dewdrop mint, according to The Verge and Techaeris. Bose's release describes a My Bose exclusive preorder, Techaeris reported. The Verge noted a discrepancy in the ship date: Bose's release says October 15, while the company's online store lists October 13.

The design trades a battery for a cable. The buds connect over USB-C to compatible phones, tablets and computers with no pairing and no app required, and they draw power from the connected device, so there is no internal battery to charge even with noise cancellation on, Techaeris reported. The cable runs 4.2 feet and includes an inline remote with playback and volume buttons and a microphone for calls, according to Briefs. The earbuds are rated IPX4, meaning they tolerate sweat, light rain and small splashes but are not designed to be submerged. In the box are a simple carrying pouch, three sizes of silicone ear tips and medium and large stability fins for a snugger fit, Briefs reported.

Noise cancellation is the headline addition. Bose put four microphones in the set, two on each side, to detect and reduce outside noise, and the buds use the company's QuietControl technology, Briefs and The Verge reported. Users can cycle between modes with a button on the inline remote: Quiet Mode reduces the intensity of surrounding sounds, Aware Mode boosts them, and noise cancellation can be turned off entirely, The Verge reported. Briefs noted that active noise cancellation is still uncommon in wired earbuds and that some models offering it have drawn lukewarm buyer feedback saying the effect is hard to notice.

Early impressions suggest the effect is useful but weaker than on Bose's wireless flagships. In hands-on use so far, the noise blocking is not as strong as on Bose's $299 second-generation QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds or Sony's $330 WF-1000XM6, Briefs reported. That is a meaningful caveat given the price gap, and full reviews of the finished product were not available at the time of writing.

The wired connection also enables higher-quality audio. Bose's SoundDesign digital signal processing supports lossless listening, and using the USB Audio Class 2 protocol the earbuds accept source input at any sample and bit rate, with playback fixed at 24-bit/48kHz, Techaeris reported. The direct connection also allows low-latency performance, keeping audio in sync for video, gaming and content creation, according to the same report.

Bose framed the launch around a revival of wired listening. "Wired earbuds are experiencing a cultural renaissance, and when we decided to bring them back, we knew we had to make them even better than before," said Raza Haider, president of Bose Premium Consumer Audio. "Technology has come a long way since our last wired earbuds, allowing us the opportunity to bring our latest advancements to the category and set a new standard for what wired earbuds can be," he said, according to the release as reported by Techaeris.

There is some data behind the trend. Wired headphone sales climbed 10% in the second half of 2025 and jumped another 20% at the start of 2026, according to Archyde's summary of the launch coverage. The shift is largely driven by Gen Z and Gen Alpha users, including celebrities who have begun wearing wired buds and writing songs about them, the report said. Haider noticed the prevalence of wired earbuds while dropping his teenager off at college last year, and Bose moved from the initial idea to the final product in roughly eight or nine months, much faster than a typical audio release, according to the same account.

The product has limits that buyers should weigh. It has no 3.5 mm jack, so it requires a powered USB-C port on a phone, tablet or laptop, and Archyde said that makes it incompatible with standard in-flight entertainment systems. With most smartphones having moved on from the headphone jack, Bose's pair plugs in over USB-C like many current wired models, Briefs noted. The Verge described the earbuds' functionality as limited, but said they take advantage of the past 11 years of earbud innovation with the addition of active noise canceling.

The return also reflects how the category changed. Bose discontinued the wired option in 2015, The Verge reported, and its recent earbuds have been wireless, including the second-generation QuietComfort Earbuds released in September 2024, according to a list of Bose headphones on Wikipedia. At $99, the new pair costs a third of the $299 QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds. Techaeris highlighted the absence of a battery as a headline feature for commuters and travelers tired of juggling charge cycles.

For now, the pitch rests on price, simplicity and Bose's noise cancellation without a charging case. Independent reviews of the finished product were not available at the time of writing and are likely to show how the noise blocking compares with the company's wireless models once units ship in October.