Portwest have launched the PW77 ear defenders which have Bluetooth for music playback and at a price which seems extremely good.
Key points: Portwest PW77 Bluetooth Ear Defenders
The price of the Portwest PW77 is superb. I bought these myself at £33.00 + VAT from Toolstore Direct, which is not far off the price of a pair of decent standard ear muffs.
The music playback quality is far better than I would expect at this price.
SNR is 30 dB, and HML figures are 30, 29 and 23 dB, certified to EN 352, (three parts, EN 352-1, EN 352-6 and EN 352-8).
All-day battery life, rechargeable.
Comfy to wear. A little tight so safety glasses may get a little achey over time but that squeeze is part of how ear muffs work and is necessary. It also keeps the music quality good - as soon as the fit on any headphone is loose you lose a lot of the quality.
The ‘electronic’ in the name is a little misleading - these are passive muffs with no electronic noise reduction. They are standard ear muffs but with some speakers and Bluetooth for music playback.
The PW77 are a very good product at an excellent price, I now happily recommend them to my clients and will continue to use them myself.
Portwest PW77 comfort and performance in use
Physical comfort
They feel quite close to a premium ear muff.
The cushions maybe don’t have quite the softness of something like the Peltor Optime III or Moldex M5s, but they’re not far off. Both those products are premium ear muffs but have no music functionality. The PW77 are very good though.
The headband is fine. It’s hard plastic so has not got the padding the premium non-Bluetooth muffs do, but not to the extent where it becomes an issue. What you lose in that you gain in the Bluetooth functionality.
I wore them for several hours at a time. The only time they got a little tender was when also wearing safety glasses with quite thick arms and the pressure on the arm got a little achey after a while.
Again, that’s the same for a lot of ear muffs though and not a fault of the PW77.
SNR and noise attenuation
The SNR of 30 dB leans a little on the high side for a lot of workplaces but is not excessively so.
One of the issues with over-protecting is that people then feel isolated and just don’t wear the hearing protection but as these have the Bluetooth functionality there are other reasons to ensure people keep wearing them which side-steps a lot of those issues.
If you are looking at SNR, there is a free hearing protection selection tool you can use.
More information on over-protection issues can be found here.
Portwest PW77 price
Remarkable. That’s the only word. (Pricing as of October 2026).
Price compared to standard ear muffs
Compared to premium non-Bluetooth ear muffs the Portwest PW77 are in the same approximate price range.
For example, the Moldex M5s are around £23 + VAT, and the 3M Peltor Optime III muffs are around £26, both prices from The Safety Supply Company who are usually a good bet for low-end prices on the proper brands.
I paid £33 + VAT for my PW77 ear muffs from Toolstore Direct, so only around a tenner more than those other premium muffs but for that the PW77 give you the Bluetooth music functionality as well which the Optimes and M5 do not.
Price compared to other good quality hearing protection with Bluetooth
ISOtunes Link 2.0 are over-head ear muffs with Bluetooth music and currently those are £100 + VAT, three times the cost of the Portwest PW77.
As a cheaper option, 3M make the WorkTunes hearing protection which also has Bluetooth for music. The price for those is all over the place, but about £50 + VAT at the lower end while some websites charge £100+ for them. Either way, a good chunk more than the Portwest PW77.
Price comparison overall
Not that many years ago these things would have cost a few hundred pounds. That Portwest are selling the PW77 at the price they are is a bargain.
Portwest PW77 music performance
The whole point of buying a product like this is to listen to music or podcasts while at work so the quality of the music playback is important.
When looking at the PW77, the price does need to be taken into account - I paid £33 + VAT for them which is extremely cheap for a product such as this.
The music quality is perfectly fine, indeed I would say a lot better than there is any right to expect at this price. Bearing in mind what I paid for them, I’m impressed.
Bass is there. It’s not especially heavy but there is enough to give music some depth. Treble and mid-ranges are a little mushed together but again, better than there is any right to expect for the cost of these.
Compared to ISOtunes the music playback quality is a little shallow. The ISOtunes have more range with some better bass and clearer high end but remember the cost difference above. The Portwest are a third of the cost of the ISOtunes but the ISOtunes are most definitely not three times better.
I commonly use Apple AirPods Pro 3 in hearing protection mode these days and the Portwest PW77 are quite a way off those in terms of music quality, but again, they should be as the AirPods Pro 3 are something around £230.
For the price the Portwest PW77 are excellent.
Actually, that proviso about ‘for the price’ is perhaps a little unfair, ignoring price completely they are still very good and the music playback is perfectly good for all-day listening.
If an employer is looking at buying hearing protection for their staff which has music playback, there is now very little reason to get the ISOtunes defenders over the Portwest PW77.
Summary: Portwest PW77 Electronic Bluetooth Ear Defenders
I buy a lot of hearing protection to try out and often end up passing them on as I don’t use them again after a few weeks, but I am keeping these for regular use.
The comfort in use is perfectly good enough.
The music quality is good and far better than there is a right to expect at this price-point.
The Portwest PW77 are far better than a lot of other types of Bluetooth hearing protection I have tried. They are superb not only at this price-point but at even double the price. There are a lot of rubbish Bluetooth protectors on places like Amazon but the Portwest PW77 are superior. Don’t go down the route of things like Protear / Prohear / Doohoeek, etc. on Amazon - they are not good at all.
Yes, ISOtunes are just a little bit better, but they cost a lot more too.
If you are not wanting to pay £100+ for ISOtunes, or £200+ for Apple AirPods Pro 3, there is one solid answer out there now for hearing protection with Bluetooth music, Portwest’s PW77.
These deserve to be a big seller, and rightly so.
As a message to Portwest: In the next iteration, lose the ‘electronic’ in the name, it’s not adding anything to the overall brand but does make them sound like something they are not - they do not have electronic noise suppression. It would make the PW77 brand clearer.
FAQ: Portwest PW77 Electronic Bluetooth Ear Defenders
The review seems too good to be true, did Portwest send you the PW77 muffs free in exchange for it?
No, I buy all my own hearing protection when I am wanting to try it out.
This review is good because they are a good product. I am not always so positive - for example this review of the Portwest PW74 Dual SNR Ear Defenders is far from glowing.
Or this article where I give a simple flat ‘do not use them’ about Specsavers hearing protection.
The Portwest PW77 are very good and deserve to sell extremely well. They aren’t perfect but they are far better than they should be at this price.
Put it this way, I generally wake up grumpy and then get worse throughout the day from there and even I could find very little to quibble about with the PW77s!
If I let people listen to music will they be too isolated at work?
That’s a concern I hear quite often and the simple answer to that is no. The internal playback volume is limited on these, as it is on all EN 352 certified hearing protection with music playback, to 82 dB(A). That’s enough to hear the music clearly but not so much it drowns out everything else in the workplace.
When wearing the PW77 I could still hear what was going on around me. When speaking to someone I just pressed pause on the PW77’s controls. That’s not a fault of the PW77 and is more because I am a middle-aged bloke who can’t hear people speak around background noise at the best of times, with or without hearing protection.
The biggest danger for isolation at work is hearing protection that is too strong in terms of how much noise reduction they give and that applies to all hearing protection, not just those with music functions. An SNR of 30 dB, while high is not crazily high and will not be too isolating for most places.
Surely the music quality isn’t that good?
I have some Sony XM5 over-head headphones and Apple AirPods Pro 3 in-ear buds and yes, the sound from those is better than the PW77, that is an unavoidable fact. But, those two products are headphones first and foremost, both are recognised as being especially good and both also cost a hell of a lot more than the PW77 ear defenders.
Compared to those the PW77 are indeed a little lacking in bass and don’t have the same overall clarity.
But, compared to things like ISOtunes which are also hearing protection with music the PW77 are very close and I can barely tell any difference, despite being only around a third of the cost. I can tell no difference between the PW77 and the WorkTunes which at best cost around £20 more than the PW77, and the PW77 are far better than some of the other rubbish I’ve tried via Amazon sellers.
Related article: Things to watch out for when buying hearing protection
You mention AirPods Pro 3, why single those out?
The AirPods Pro 3 are different to every other type of noise-cancelling headphone or ear bud out there as they are also certified as hearing protection under EN 352, meaning they carry a recognised SNR and can be used as hearing protection if an employer chooses to allow it.
They are different as they are music headphones which are also certified as hearing protection, whereas the PW77, ISOtunes, WorkTunes, etc. are hearing protection with a music function.
As far as my experience goes, AirPods Pro 3 are the best hearing protection on the market right now, bar none, but they are also exceedingly expensive and introduce a few management headaches for employers.
Related article: Apple AirPods Pro 3 as hearing protection at work
More help and advice on hearing protection at work
Article last updated: October 2026
