[sloomingbla]

Hey guys! Currently looking for headphones with active noise canceling, great sound quality, a mic and Bluetooth. It will be used for plane rides, taking phone calls on the go, and mixing music while traveling. Being over ear, and having decent comfort is a must!

Target range somewhere between 300-400$, and looking for a relatively flat audio response.

Let me know if anything comes to mind! Haha. You guys have done a great job in the past.

And, as a bonus, it might be nice to have a cheaper wireless pair of headphones for a family member too, something around 50-100$, with comfort and sturdiness as the biggest factor. But don’t worry about finding a recommendation for both.

 

[mammal]

I own a pair of Bose QC25 and QC35, as well as Airpods Max (outside of your mentioned budget) and compared them with friend's Sony WH-1000XM4. Because I have misophonia, for me, noise cancellation is the most important factor of a headphone, else I will have a mental breakdown. This condition forces me to have headphones always on my head, no matter if at work/travelling/at home (I even sleep with them, albeit with a smaller in-ears). I hope this puts me in a position to comment on these headphones from the perspective of noise cancelling.

I have never heard better isolating headphones than Airpods Max, they work well with music playing, but also without it. What surprised me the most is their "transparency" mode, which is just a button press away, and pumps microphone sounds of my own voice as well as my surrounding to the headphone, and it sounds completely natural, so much so that I do not have to remove them from my head. No other headphone has implemented this feature as well as Apple did, but you pay premium.

Second best from noise cancellation perspective is QC25, a hair behind it QC35 (but more ergonomic as it is wireless). Sound quality wise I think Sony are better than Bose.

As for Bluetooth, all work quite well, but since I have Apple ecosystem Airpods work the best (easy to have them essentially connected to all of my devices, Bose can be only connected to two). Comfort wise, I prefer QC25/35, that in my opinion can be worn for the whole day. Airpods are a bit worse, I get tired after maybe 3-4 hours. Sony are the worst, when I was testing friends pair, I could not wear them for more than 2 hours, my ears got hot.

And for battery, benefit of QC25 is that it takes in AAA, which is SUPER USEFUL when travelling, as these batteries are easy to get and no need to recharge the whole headphone, while not being able to use them (well you can, but on a cable with battery dead they sound quite different). Of course, QC25 are not wireless, so perhaps moot point even mentioning them.