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

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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, well over 100 years of collective experience testing headphones, and many of its members review dozens of both closed-back and open-back pairs every year. That puts us in the perfect position to explain the pros, cons and quirks of both types of headphone so that you are fully in the picture when it comes to deciding which kind is right for you.

Open-back vs closed-back: what's the difference?

An open-back pair of headphones doesn't have an enclosure behind its drivers, which means that sound is fired both towards and away from the listener's ears. Therefore, if you sit next to anyone using a pair of open-back headphones, the chances are that you'll have no problem hearing their music, albeit with a thin and tinny tone. You'll be hearing the sound being fired away from the listener's ears and out of the headphone's ear cups (which often have holes for that sound to escape through).