Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

A few years ago flying on a cross country trip I was fortunate enough to be bumped to first class. I sat next to a rich dude who subtly bragged about his material possessions and owned property during take off and landing. One of the items he bragged about was his new Bose headphones, and he insisted I listen to them. Sure enough, they were outstanding, but I didn't travel often enough to justify the price tag. Well fast forward a few years and I now have a job that requires me to fly a few times a month. So I took the plunge and used my hotel loyalty points to get me a free set of these Bose headphones. They impressed me out of the box as much as the very first time I listened to them (or the equivalent I had tried a few years back). The noise just melts away into the background so that it is hardly noticeable at all. I took my first flight with them today and tried them in a very busy crowded airport terminal. My music sounded wonderful, and the cacophony of random people and machine noise all but vanished. And that was quite a challenging test, the noise levels were pretty high in a fairly confined round terminal hub. The music source was simply my phone, a Samsung Infuse, not a dedicated music player. Next I wore them on a plane for a short 80 minute jet flight. It's like being in a different world. The music from my android phone sounded awesome, the noise practically vanished. Somehow without the constant racket of the plane the time seemed to just go by quicker too. The headphones were extremely comfortable, and the excessively hot day didn't add any problems either. To me Bose are a company I have a lot of respect for. They always seem to innovate and amaze. As an audiologist I am well versed in acoustics and the physics of sound, and to create this level of noise reduction so seamlessly is very impressive, especially if their claims of battery life are close to accurate. The headphones fit in a very attractive slim case. There is even a little space in there for a couple of spare batteries if you wanted. This model ships with a standard headphone cord and also an iPod/iPad/iPhone version which has a microphone on the wire. I question how useful that would be simply because when you wear these headphones it is hard to tell how loud your own voice is to some extent, so I'd be worried about shouting to the person on the other end of the phone, and also if it is noisy enough to wear them, I wonder how well the person being called would hear anyway. In any case, I replaced my iPhone with an Android based phone recently so I've not tested that feature. The bottom line is these are expensive headphones. Truth be told if you go to Best Buy and listen to some other headphones at half the price, you'd probably get better or similar sound quality. What you won't get though is the incredible noise reduction system that Bose has been working on for many years. That combination of a great sound AND the noise reduction is what makes this product work. If your life involves plenty of air travel, or other similar travel that includes background noise, then these will really improve that journey for you. Music sounds great, audio books are far easier to hear, even Angry Birds is more enjoyable without all that background noise. In fact when you put these on in almost any environment, it makes you realize how much ambient noise there is in so many places. I think the only real issue is if your budget and lifestyle justifies the price tag. *** Update: Since writing this I have also tried watching a DVD on my laptop in my hotel room. Again these headphones eat through noise like the air conditioning, ventilation in the bathroom, noises from other guests, the whir of the DVD drive, the refrigerator etc. The sound quality off my laptop was just exceptional too, rich bass, clear treble, good mid tones. I can already see myself using these for more than just plane rides.