O.K., so I work in a cube farm, and I have to take the occasional (once every other month) business trip, so the newfangled "noise cancelling" headphones have attracted my attention. Bose was totally out of the question-$300! But there are several others on the market. After reading many reviews, I settled on the Sony MDR-NC50. It retails for $120-180, but I found it open package on ebay for $50. Just got here today and I have to say - WOW! My little LAN of computers here puts out quite a bit of noise with all the fans going, I plug these headphones into the sound card, switch the noise cancellation on-near silence.
Now, it's not magic, you can hear a little white noise eminating from the headphones, like holding a large seashell to your ear. But I don't mind it at all, and I can already tell it's perfect for cancelling out airplane noise. It even has a little button on the side so you can temporarily turn off the silence (say if DW wants to tell you to get off the computer ). Oh, and the sound quality is very good, not audiophile good, but laypersons like myself will truly enjoy the sound, good range and depth. Once you put a song on, you will not be hearing anything around you, and you don't have to crank the volume to accomplish that. Imagine, saving your eardrums!
One con would be comfort. While the earcups fit fully around the ear, and are nicely padded, the headband pushes the earcups a litte too firmly into the head. This is so you get a good seal (A lot of the silencing is passively accomplished), but I can tell after a while you would get tired of the pressure. I'm going to see if I can adjust that.
Overall, I would say they are well worth the money, a truly revolutionary product. Oh, and it comes with an airplane adapter so you can plug into the armrest and watch the movie!
Now, it's not magic, you can hear a little white noise eminating from the headphones, like holding a large seashell to your ear. But I don't mind it at all, and I can already tell it's perfect for cancelling out airplane noise. It even has a little button on the side so you can temporarily turn off the silence (say if DW wants to tell you to get off the computer ). Oh, and the sound quality is very good, not audiophile good, but laypersons like myself will truly enjoy the sound, good range and depth. Once you put a song on, you will not be hearing anything around you, and you don't have to crank the volume to accomplish that. Imagine, saving your eardrums!
One con would be comfort. While the earcups fit fully around the ear, and are nicely padded, the headband pushes the earcups a litte too firmly into the head. This is so you get a good seal (A lot of the silencing is passively accomplished), but I can tell after a while you would get tired of the pressure. I'm going to see if I can adjust that.
Overall, I would say they are well worth the money, a truly revolutionary product. Oh, and it comes with an airplane adapter so you can plug into the armrest and watch the movie!