V-Flyer

Hello[^]

Just had a look at the inflight mag for duty free on the website, they have some noise cancelling headphones for £50 and some B&O ones for about £80.

Does anyone know if the noise cancelling ones are any good and has anyone bought them.

I am figuring I might pre order for the points plus the extra points for my amex.

Stick with the Bose QC2/3's, by far the best on the market imo.

Neil:)

I bought some Senssiser CX300 earphones and they are pretty dam good for £30. Cancel out a lot of the external noise but dont isolate you.

I haven't used either model. But beware. The cheap ones really are often not of the same quality and their noise cancelling abilities are often limited to say the least.

B&O is of course a very reliable brand. But for half the price of bose headphones and about the same price as the senheisser isolation headphones - Hummm? Normally B&O would be 10x the price! I find myself wondering about their noise cancelling ability again, especially as I have never heard of B&O doing a NC headphone.

Have to admit I did try a pair of QC2 from a mate and was astounded at the quality and amount of noise they cancelled. I tried turning my stereo up while I was listening to my ipod and got disapointed when I could hear the stereo faintly. Stopped my iPod and cacked myself as my stereo was on almost full wack! Swear the plaster was coming of the roof! [:0]

But couldn't justify spending that much on earphones so when I saw the CX300 (RRP £70) for £25 inc shipping on Amazon, I picked them up and couldn't be happier. Not total blockout of noise but enough that it makes a difference, plus there v.comfy.

Originally posted by Attitude23
Stick with the Bose QC2/3's, by far the best on the market imo.

I doubt anyone can argue that, its more a case of justifying the budget to get them. I've used the Sennheiser ones before now and they did the job just fine for me.

BTW, £30 for PCX300's is a very good price. List is £99.99 and the best I have seen them at is about £75. I have to agree they are pretty good, nearly as good as my QC2's but not quite as comfortable and of course they don't cover the ears.

Originally posted by fozzyo

Originally posted by Attitude23
Stick with the Bose QC2/3's, by far the best on the market imo.

I doubt anyone can argue that, its more a case of justifying the budget to get them. I've used the Sennheiser ones before now and they did the job just fine for me.

Thats a fair point, obviously the bose are fairly expensive, but I guess you get what you pay for.

Originally posted by sailor99
BTW, £30 for PCX300's is a very good price. List is £99.99 and the best I have seen them at is about £75. I have to agree they are pretty good, nearly as good as my QC2's but not quite as comfortable and of course they don't cover the ears.

I actually got them for £19.99 inc shipping on offer on Amazon. My g/f then liked them and a week later went order some and they were back £29.99 inc shipping but she still got them.

Sorry - I thought you meant the PCX300 which are about £80 now which is about the price they were when I got some a few years ago.

The CX300's are about a tenner these days.[:#]

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.

The CX300 are not NC - they are just ear buds. Amazon do them from about £10.

The PXC300's which are the mid-range NR model, are supra-aural rather than intro-aural.

The B&O ones in the magazine are useless. Certainly not noise-cancelling, just regular in-ear headphones.

I bought a pair of the CX300 from the Apple Store for listening to my iPod at the gym, but was very disappointed. It seems if you're moving about (ie, on the treadmill), there's a lot of noise generated by the movement of the earpiece within its rubber enclosure. The lead also felt cheap and flimsy. Can't say I'd ever recommend them, and I went back to using the standard iPod ear buds.

After going through about 6 different "specially designed" sets of earphones for use in the gym, I FINALLY came across these in May (also available in white). Will now never use another pair - they're brilliant. [y]

Although not noise cancelling like my Bose ones, they're not bad at blocking out noise, either [y]

What's a gym? A new VS IFE component? [:p]

I read a 'gym' is something they are going to put on the new A380's. I believe it is something that allows people to sit in VS Y seats even if they have love handles - right preiffer?

Originally posted by sailor99
I read a 'gym' is something they are going to put on the new A380's. I believe it is something that allows people to sit in VS Y seats even if they have love handles - right preiffer?

Oohhh, that's right, I do remember seeing something like that, but I thought it was to do with powering the double decker as it only had four engines? Apparently the Y deck is being fitted with treadmills connected to some new type of thrust device... [:p]