[I just posted this review at Amazon.com.]
For the last couple of years I’ve carried around a pair of Bose QC2 noise cancelling headphones. They’ve gone all over the world with me, and have made long-haul air travel a much less stressful experience. The only flaw in the design is that if you turn off the noise cancelling system, the headphones don’t work. No battery, no audio. That’s dumb – and most of the competition figured that out.
Last Sunday, while on a trip to Silicon Valley, I started to get an annoying buzz in the right earpiece. I changed batteries, but it got steadily worse. Out of warranty. Time to replace.
I mostly use my headphones for two purposes: to listen to my iPod while walking or travelling in a bus or plane, and to listen to channel 9 on United flights. No jogging or energetic exercising.
I picked up a pair of these Philips earbuds at Fry’s in Palo Alto (and paid much more than Amazon – sigh!). They worked flawlessly in my hotel room, listening to a movie on my laptop, and on the flight back from SFO to SEA. Ignore the negative reviews above: the noise cancelling circuitry does an excellent job at attenuating aircraft noise, especially the lower frequencies. With noise cancellation turned off, the in-ear design certainly reduces the high frequencies but does nothing for the roar of an aircraft engine just outside the window. It feels like a nicely balanced design.
As for audio quality, I’m no audiophile, but it sounded about the same as my iPod’s factory-supplied earbuds. Not outstanding, but perfectly acceptable.