Why aren't more headphones and earbuds using Wi-Fi for audio?

Wireless headphones and earbuds are ubiquitous in 2025, but they're built upon an imperfect standard: Bluetooth. There are several aspects of Bluetooth that make it an excellent choice for wirelessly connecting a wide range of devices, including audio gear. It's versatile, compatible, and continues to evolve, gaining new features with each iteration, such as Bluetooth 6 and Low Energy (LE) Audio.

However, there are a few notable limitations that come with using Bluetooth for audio playback on headphones, earbuds, and speakers. Two big ones are range and quality. The average range for common Bluetooth devices (Class 2) is about 33 feet, which isn't much and can be shortened by interference, digital or physical, like walls or floors. Additionally, attaining lossless quality for music over Bluetooth is near impossible, though emerging codecs like AptX Lossless are trying to make it a reality.

That raises an important question: should we focus on improving Bluetooth or switch to Wi-Fi? Qualcomm is a company that's doing both, developing AptX Lossless over Bluetooth and working on XPAN (Expanded Personal Area Network) over Wi-Fi. It's exciting, but Sonos has been doing Wi-Fi on its speakers for years, and Qualcomm announced XPAN years ago.

So, where is Wi-Fi for consumer audio gear, like headphones and earbuds? It's a complex situation, but the future looks bright.

Why we need Wi-Fi over Bluetooth (and how it works)

Many casual audio enthusiasts wonder why Wi-Fi headphones and earbuds haven't gained popularity yet, as evidenced by numerous Reddit threads. After all, Wi-Fi speakers are very much a thing, and Sonos has a robust ecosystem of them. Taking that technology and applying it to headphones and earbuds should be easy, right? Well, not exactly.

The perceived simplicity of this goal usually comes from a misunderstanding of how Wi-Fi speakers like Sonos work. When connecting a pair of Bluetooth headphones to your phone, it's your smartphone that streams the music from a service and then separately beams it to those headphones. Your phone is talking to a streaming service over Wi-Fi or data (or playing downloaded content), and subsequently shares the audio with a wireless device over Bluetooth.

That's not how Wi-Fi speakers like Sonos operate. In this scenario, your phone effectively becomes a remote control for your Sonos speaker, which independently streams music from a service over Wi-Fi. That's how you can remotely control playback on Sonos speakers from across the world, whereas you typically need to be within 33 feet to maintain a Bluetooth connection.

To apply this technology to headphones and earbuds, these consumer audio products must be able to connect to Wi-Fi networks and stream audio independently of an intermediary device, such as a smartphone. That's tricky, because you'd need to cram extra hardware into smaller devices. It might be why Sonos' first pair of headphones, the Sonos Ace, opted for Bluetooth instead of Wi-Fi, unlike the rest of the ecosystem.

But Wi-Fi has clear advantages over Bluetooth, which is why many audiophiles crave it. The connectivity protocol effectively removes the range limits of Bluetooth — with enough networking hardware and access points, Wi-Fi earbuds could work anywhere that receives your network's signal — and adds high-fidelity audio.

Qualcomm's XPAN technology brings Wi-Fi audio

This technology isn't a fever-dream; it's real and available now in the form of Qualcomm XPAN. It's available on select headphones and earbuds, like the Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro, and extends the range typically provided by Bluetooth by adding your home Wi-Fi network. In practice, it means your buds won't cut out if you walk too far away from your Bluetooth device, since they'll fall back to Wi-Fi.

Built upon the Snapdragon Sound platform and the S7 series of chips, Qualcomm XPAN is trying to make Wi-Fi headphones and earbuds mainstream. There's a long road ahead, but the first consumer audio products to support XPAN were released this year, including the Buds 5 Pro.

Aside from the extended range, Qualcomm XPAN offers higher-fidelity audio by leveraging a Wi-Fi connection. The mode's maximum quality is 96kHz/24-bit, which is higher than CD-quality. In other words, XPAN technology and supported devices like the Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro deliver true wireless lossless audio beyond what conventional Bluetooth offers.

While 96kHz/24-bit is something you can use with XPAN today, the future is 24-bit/192kHz lossless audio. So, what's in the way of that future becoming reality?

The slow adoption

In some ways, Wi-Fi as an audio connectivity standard comes with just as many pain points as Bluetooth, which may be slowing adoption. The extra hardware needed to make it work could be expensive or open an entirely new can of worms on the research and development side. Plus, using Wi-Fi consumes more battery than Bluetooth, especially when compared to new standards like LE Audio.

Mainstream earbuds and headphones with Wi-Fi support would need extra chips, a solution to the battery life problem, and a solution to the compatibility problem. While almost everything supports Bluetooth audio these days, Wi-Fi audio compatibility would need to be built from the ground up. For instance, you need a supported phone like the flagship Xiaomi 15 Ultra to get the full 96Hz/24-bit audio of XPAN.

Even technologies like Qualcomm XPAN use a mix of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, rather than streaming audio directly over Wi-Fi, like Sonos speakers do. This helps Qualcomm address the battery life problem that would plague true Wi-Fi headphones.

The hybrid approach, combined with larger internal batteries — the Wi-Fi version of Xiaomi's Buds 5 Pro has a 64mAh battery compared to the 53mAh capacity of the Bluetooth version — helps Qualcomm deliver the same or better battery life as Bluetooth earbuds.

We haven't seen Wi-Fi headphones and earbuds go mainstream due to technical limitations and compatibility issues, but that might be changing as emerging standards like Qualcomm's XPAN continue to grow.