Twelve South AirFly Pro

Why it is our Premium Pick

Frequent long-haul flyers who travel with AirPods, noise-cancelling headphones or any wireless earbuds, and who are tired of the thin plastic headsets handed out in economy, are exactly who the Twelve South AirFly Pro serves. It also suits couples who want to share one screen with two sets of earbuds.

It is our Premium flight hack because it fixes a problem the cheaper picks cannot touch: your expensive earbuds are useless with a wired seatback screen. The twelve south airfly pro is a small Bluetooth transmitter with a headphone plug on a short cable. Plug it into the seat, pair your earbuds, and the movie audio arrives wirelessly with your own noise cancelling doing the work. It can pair two sets at once, which is where the shared-screen trick comes from, and it also works in reverse as a receiver for car or gym equipment with an aux input.

On a real flight you pair it with your earbuds at home, since pairing is easier on the ground. On board you plug it into the jack, press play, and the cabin noise fades behind your own headphones. On a ten-hour leg that difference in audio quality and comfort is larger than it sounds. Between flights it lives in your tech pouch and charges from the same cable as everything else.

The drawback is that it depends on the aircraft having a seatback screen with a working headphone jack, and on airlines that stream to personal devices it does nothing at all. It is also the priciest item on this page for a single-purpose gadget. If your usual routes are short domestic hops on screenless aircraft, skip the twelve south airfly pro and spend the money on a phone mount instead. For international flyers with good earbuds, it is the upgrade that makes the airline headset obsolete.