Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Overall I rate these phones as a very good value for the money, and think anyone considering noise-canceling headphones should consider them. Also, I think I can clear up some confusion about some reported problems with these phones. There are indeed two revisions of the Philips HN110 phones, as was briefly mentioned in a prior review. The older version (which I spotted at Walmart) has a very different earcup mounting arrangement with a silver tinted plastic part between the headband and earcups. I think this older style is responsible for most of the negative comments about parts breaking (because one individual's review specifically complained about the "silver portion that connects the muff" breaking). I have the [presumably newer] type that is shown in the Amazon picture above that has a crosswise black plastic hinge piece that holds upside-down U-shaped adjustable chromed wire earpiece supports, and I have had no problems with parts breaking with this model. Some have complained that the `noise cancelation' is not very effective, but I think it works quite well, easily on a par with some of the 300+ dollar offerings from the likes of BOSE. Some may not fully understand the limitations that apply to ALL phones of this type, and may have unrealistic expectations. To cancel noise, the phones sample the outside noise with microphones on the outside of each earcup, then guess how much of this noise will leak inside to the listeners ear, so they can create a cancellation signal. This cancellation signal is flipped around to be 180 degrees out of phase so that when it is applied to the speakers inside each earpiece, it will cancel out the outside noise that has leaked inside. This process can only work well for a limited range of frequencies in the lower range, because at higher frequencies the audio waves become so short that the phones can not accurately predict the `phase' of sounds leaking in from different angles (which makes it impossible to accurately create an `out of phase' signal to cancel out the noise). These limitations are essentially based on physics, and apply to ALL phones whether they cost 35 dollars or 350 dollars. So to test this type of phone, we need to use lower frequency sounds like road noise, or engine drone, NOT higher frequency sounds like speech. In their favor, the Philips HN110's are `around the ear' type headphones, which do provide some `passive' higher frequency blocking (by acting like earmuffs) to complement the `active' lower frequency cancellation done by the electronics. Also, the 'around-the-ear' design makes it much easier for the phones to accurately predict the noise leakage (and therefore to more accurately cancel it) which allows the low cost HN110's to actually out perform some other non-around-the-ear offerings which cost hundreds more. The only down side is that some folks (particularly those with larger ears) have reported that the HN110's may become uncomfortable during extended listening sessions (though I have found them to be extremely comfortable). I also find the audio performance of the HN110 phones to be very pleasing, but I am not one of those folks that like to listen to their music at ear splitting dB levels (or that confuses `thumpa-bump-bump' overdriven bass with music).