I have an old pair of Bose Quiet Comfort headphones that I mostly use on airplanes. But they are wearing out. The battery doesn’t hold a charge as well (it still lasts a long time, but drops suddenly from “70%” to “doesn’t work”) and now I see that it doesn’t turn off appropriately. So I’m in the market for new ones.
Features I need:
over-the ear. I can’t wear earbuds, and I think the only other choice in noise-cancelling is over-the-ear.
bluetooth
wired
(yes, I want both. I want to be able to plug into the airplane’s movie, but also use bluetooth to talk to my phone.)
Good noise cancellation – I don’t want to blast the volume to hear over the airplane noise.
I also want them to be comfortable, but everyone’s comfort is different, so I’ll probably need to try stuff on. I don’t need super sound quality. I’m not using these to appreciate the finer nuances of music, but to listen to movies and YouTube on an airplane.
I have other earphones (including a nice bone-conducting set) that I can use in quieter places, so I’m really just focused on airplane use.
Oh – and a really nice feature of the ones I currently have that I’d like to retain is that they will link to two different blue-tooth sources, so I have have them talk to both my phone and my laptop, without a fuss.
Any suggestions? Anything new I should be aware of?
(Discourse is suggesting surprisingly on-point threads, but they are all older than my current headphones.)
If you want something much cheaper than the Bose, at probably 75% of the performance, I got my kid the Anker Life Q20. They have all of the features you want, but are probably an old model, because it looks like Amazon only has pink ones in stock. They’ve mostly withstood a year of kid abuse, and Anker replaced the ear pads for free when they started flaking.
Of the various Sony, Bose, Anker, and no name noise cancelling devices I’ve tried, none are as good as my ancient (and disintegrated) Noise Buster Extremes.
I’m going to second UDS1. When I do an A-B comparison of Sony to Bose, I feel that the NC on the Sony is superior. Not an order of magnitude, but noticeable. They ain’t cheap, though. Sony is very proud of them.
I am at the airport, and decided to shop here, and see what felt good. They sold the Sony’s, but didn’t have a sample pair that i could try on. The Bose that are exactly like the ones I’m replacing, except presumably new, were on sale for $230, and they had a pair for me to try on. (Also a pair of Beats, but no one seems to recommend those. And a pair of the newer Bose, which cost the same as the Sony, but mostly it’s better than the older one because it’s better if you want to talk to it to take phone calls, if i read the reviews right.)
Wirecutter recommend the Sony, and says the Bose is a good back up if you want to be able to turn down the noise cancelling. The only fault they sound it compared to the Sony is that the sound is a little too bassy, which really isn’t a problem for my needs. And yes, they agree that the Sony has slightly better noise cancellation, which i would like. But this is good enough for half the price.
Wirecutter also recommends some budget options, which might have worked well for me. But i couldn’t find one to try on, and it’s really easy to irritate my ears. (Thus, no earbuds.) Also, they don’t come with a protective case, and that’s probably worthwhile. I stash all sorts of odds and ends in this case. The cable, the two-prong adapter in case i ever get a really old airline seat, a thing to adapt from usb-c to micro (although i bet the new one charges with usb-C), and a Europe-to-US power plug adapter, because i travel enough that it’s handy to stow those all through my luggage, so i can always find one.
Thanks for the advice! I’m honestly shocked that my old model is still more-or-less in production.
I will also mention that I wear hearing aids, so I tend to prefer a certain size and shape of earpiece that covers my ear and hearing aid without being uncomfortable. The Sony earcup is a tad better suited to me and I probably gave some weight to that factor without mentioning it.