Closed-back VS open-back Headphones which is right for you?

Each headphone type has its pros and cons, and here our expert reviewers break them down

Over-ear headphones come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but can primarily be broken down into just two types: open-back or closed-back. Whether a pair of over-ears is open or closed isn’t always immediately apparent to the eye, but essentially it comes down to their structure and consequential effect on performance. Closed-back is unarguably the most common type, with most wired and nearly all wireless models sporting a closed design; while open-back is the reserve only of wired over-ears (save for one notable exception: the Grado GW100x) and is typically more present in the higher-priced regions of that market. While headphone manufacturers produce open and closed-back headphones to varying degrees of quality, there are fundamental differences between these two main types. Thankfully, What Hi-Fi?’s expert team has, between them,…

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What Hi-Fi? (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 2025

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