I asked to look at the VS NC headphones. They were quite cheap looking, and not a brand I know IIRC. That does not necessarily mean they are no good though - I really don't know.
As for the Bose QC2/3, I trialled the QC2 for a month, and I would only pass them as average. The sound quality, while far superior to the standard apple iPod headphones for example, is not that great for the price. There are many threads attesting to this all over the net. Some people seem to hate Bose almost as much as Microsoft! You can see some of these comments on the Apple Store website. In addition, I found the internals uncomfortable after a while. Inside the 'cup' of the headphone is a fairly large plastic wedge moulding which actually houses the speaker. I presume this is to direct the sound directly into the ear canal. In my case though, it made my ears ache after a while. I have fairly big ears (note username!) so I don't know if this is a problem for others.
As for the QC3, they are identical technology pretty much, just in a supra-aural (on ear) packaging as opposed to the circum-aural (over ear) packaging for the QC2.
The one thing I did like about the QC2 was that you could remove the audio lead, and just use them as a noise cancelling headset. That is when the penny dropped - all you need for noise cancelling is in ear headphones! There are some great makes of these, such as Shure, Sennheiser (whose CX300 are in Apple store for £40), Etymotic Research and more. I have tried the Shure and ER ones, and the sound quality and noise isolation IMO is vastly superior to the Bose. I do appreciate though that in-ear phones are not for everyone, and that not being able to disconnect the audio lead is a minor negative if all you want is ear plugs, but then if that is all you want, VS still give those out for free
.
Just my two penneth worth.
