These Innovative Wireless Earbuds Solve a Long-Running Problem with Modern Hi-Fi

They bring a long-awaited feature many hoped Sonos’s headphones would previously deliver.

Published March 3, 2025

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Before the Ace were released last summer, I remember there being all kinds of rumors surrounding Sonos’s first-ever headphones. Many speculated that, similar to their most recent speakers, they’d support both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi streaming … which would’ve been awesome for two reasons.

First, it would allow the headphones to be grouped with other Sonos speakers in your home. More interestingly, it would have allowed the Ace headphones to stream music over Wi-Fi and thus play much higher-resolution tracks. Wi-Fi can support much higher bitrates than Bluetooth, after all.

But alas, the Sonos Ace came out and only ended up supporting Bluetooth streaming, similar to every other pair of wireless headphones and earbuds out there. And I have to admit, it was a little bit of a bummer.

Fast forward to the present, however, and a new pair of wireless earbuds could deliver on a promise that many hoped Sonos would deliver.

The next frontier for wireless headphones?

At Mobile World Congress (MWC), the world’s biggest annual trade show for smartphones, Xiaomi revealed the Buds 5 Pro Wi-Fi. They are the first wireless earbuds to feature Qualcomm’s S7 Pro chip, which allows them to stream audio over either Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

When at home and your smartphone is connected to Wi-Fi, the earbuds can play lossless audio up to 24-bit/96kHz with a transmission rate of up to 4.2 Mbps.

This is significantly better than what Bluetooth — including high-res codecs like aptX Adaptive (up to 420 kbps), aptX HD (up to 576 kbps), LDAC (up to 990 kbps), and aptX Lossless (1,411 kbps) — can deliver.

Then, when you leave the house and its Wi-Fi network, the Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro Wi-Fi wireless earbuds will default back to streaming over Bluetooth. (They support aptX Adaptive and aptX Lossless.)

Wait, what’s the catch?

Of course, there are a few (big) caveats regarding Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro Wi-Fi. The biggest hurdle you’ll face is that you need to have a compatible smartphone.

In order to play high-resolution audio over Wi-Fi, you’ll need to pair the wireless earbuds with a smartphone equipped with Qualcomm’s flagship processor. Currently, only Xiaomi’s smartphones, the Xiaomi 15 and Xiaomi 15 Ultra, check that box.

Also, the Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro Wi-Fi have only launched in Europe and there’s no telling if they’ll ever be released in the States. Since Xiaomi doesn’t typically sell its smartphones in the US, I wouldn’t hold my breath for these earbuds to come anytime soon, either.

For those who do have a Xiaomi smartphone and are able to get their hands on the Buds 5 Pro Wi-Fi, you’ll obviously have to subscribe to a lossless streaming service to enjoy the full high-res audio quality, too.

Obviously, this means that the vast majority of iPhone-wielding people in the States won’t have access to these new earbuds or their new resolution streaming capabilities. But it’s still promising that such technologies are being worked on.

That said, Apple continues to improve its AirPods line with impressive new capabilities — most recently, turning the Pros into bonafide hearing aids — so I wouldn’t abandon hope that it could eventually release a pair that supports Wi-Fi streaming as well.

The Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro Wi-Fi cost £190 (around $240), making them pretty competitively priced compared to other flagship noise-canceling wireless earbuds.