Compared to nothing (in the way of noise cancelling) these are better than that. Damning with faint praise?  Yeah, I guess so, but really what can you expect for the price. Sony makes a product that generally is worth buying, if it meets your criteria. If in this case the criteria is cheap, light weight and easily portable you are in luck. If it is for noticeable noise reduction, again you are in luck. If you have any pretensions of being an audiophile, and getting high quality audio, well, that's not going to happen. These do offer some noise...

There seems to be a lot of issues with the sound quality for these 2nd gen Bose phones. These came out before wireless headphones were in any significant use, and when few other companies were making a serious attempt at noise reduction. Given the parameters that Bose used, which was the best travel headphones and good quality audio, I know they succeeded and excelled over other products.  In fact they had no real competitors for quite some time. Virtually every review was glowing, and considered them the gold standard.  Today, is seems unfair...

I am not an obsessed audiophile, but have enjoyed headphones and music in general, for a very long time. Only recently, in the last 3 or 4 years, have I had been buying high quality headphones. I prefer closed over the ear, but since I enjoy them mostly at home, by myself, open are fine also. I listen to a lot of jazz, both old and new school, and also blues of all types. I do not travel with headphones very often, and never use them for commuting, since I am retired. I have been using these for a couple of months now, and have used them amped...

Brand new to the whole world of portable amps, but a really long time hifi addict. Bought this unit on recomendations of others online, and am not disappointed. I have nothing to compare it with of course. I am waiting for a converter to use it on my iPod proprietary slot, so I have tried it only on an Android phone and a Sony MP3 player. I have a variety of headphones, from Sennheiser to mee to Koss, and I must say the sound improvement is quite noticeable. Very pleased with the features, ease of use and available output improvement.