Later, images of stars including Lily-Rose Depp and Zoë Kravitz wearing wired headphones surfaced.The look has since moved beyond street style.
Addison Rae's 2025 song “Headphones On” came with a music video in which she wears wired earbuds, putting the wired-earbud look directly into contemporary pop culture.
Gen Z and Alpha are discovering an old piece of everyday technology as something retro, visible and even cool.
The model offers USB-C plug-and-play audio, an inline remote and microphone, with no pairing or charging.Bose is taking the category considerably further upmarket.
Wired headphones are growing from a much smaller base.The cable also comes with drawbacks.
Bose just brought back wired earbuds after an 11-year gap, returning to a product category that wireless audio had largely displaced.On September 28, the company unveiled its first new wired earbuds since 2015 — a $99 (about ₹9,500) USB-C pair with active noise cancellation, lossless audio support and an inline remote. The earbuds have no internal battery, require no Bluetooth pairing and don't need an app.The move comes as wired headphones show signs of a revival.After five years of sales declines, the category grew 3% in 2025, with sales up 10% between July and December. In the first six weeks of 2026, wired headphone revenue was up 20%, according to Circana.Bose President of Consumer Audio Raza Haider told WIRED that after dropping his teenage child at college last year, he noticed wired earbuds “left and right”.That is a notable shift for Bose, which discontinued its wired earbuds in 2015 and moved heavily toward wireless products.Wired earbuds have been appearing in celebrity street-style photographs for years.Bella Hadid was photographed wearing Apple's wired EarPods in 2019. Later, images of stars including Lily-Rose Depp and Zoë Kravitz wearing wired headphones surfaced.The look has since moved beyond street style. Addison Rae's 2025 song “Headphones On” came with a music video in which she wears wired earbuds, putting the wired-earbud look directly into contemporary pop culture.
And for a generation raised as wireless became the default, the wire is strangely new. Gen Z and Alpha are discovering an old piece of everyday technology as something retro, visible and even cool.
The revival is part of a broader return of older-looking consumer technology. Circana said digital point-and-shoot camera volumes surged 93% in 2025, driven in part by demand for lower-cost models.Nostalgia is only part of the story.Dua Lipa has been explicit about why she likes wired headphones. She told Vogue: “It's just one less thing to charge.”Irish actor Paul Mescal's explanation is even more basic: he finds wireless headphones less practical because they fall out.Circana puts the average selling price of wired headphones at about $13 (roughly ₹1,250) in 2025, compared with $99 (about ₹9,500) for Bluetooth headphones.Actual products show how wide the wired market has become. Apple's USB-C EarPods carry an MRP of ₹2,190 in India, while Sony's basic MDR-EX15AP wired earphones have an MRP of ₹890.Sennheiser's USB-C CX 80 U has an MRP of ₹3,990 in India. The model offers USB-C plug-and-play audio, an inline remote and microphone, with no pairing or charging.Bose is taking the category considerably further upmarket. Its new noise-cancelling wired earbuds cost $99, or about ₹9,500.So examples in the wired category now range from a sub-₹1,000 basic pair to a roughly ₹9,500 Bose model with active noise cancellation.For consumers, the appeal can be simple: no battery to recharge, no Bluetooth pairing and, in many cases, a much lower price.And Bose is not simply bringing back the earphones of the 2010s.The new product uses USB-C rather than the 3.5mm headphone jack and combines the wired connection with active noise cancellation, lossless audio support and call controls. Bose says the earbuds draw power directly from the connected device, eliminating the need for an internal rechargeable battery.Sennheiser's CX 80 U takes a similar approach, using USB-C for plug-and-play audio without Bluetooth pairing or charging.But none of this means consumers are abandoning wireless headphones.True wireless remained the dominant headphone form factor in 2025, accounting for 65% of all headphone dollars, according to Circana. Wired headphones are growing from a much smaller base.The cable also comes with drawbacks. It can tangle and physically tie the listener to the device.So this is not a reversal of the shift to wireless. It is a revival happening alongside it.
