Noise Canceling Earbuds: Miracle or Waste of Money?

This is a question I’ve asked myself for a while, but I’ll soon find out. Hoping the answer will be “miracle”. 🙂

After hearing many of my co-workers extol the benefits of noise cancelation to make air travel less sucky, I looked at quite a few reviews and such for noise-canceling earbuds and headphones. The consensus was “you get what you pay for” and that the inexpensive options weren’t worth the money. In other words, when it comes to shelling out the dough, go big or don’t bother.

Since I’ll be doing quite a bit of travel this year and I’ve frankly become desperate to figure out something that will help me sleep on long haul/overnight flights, I finally ponied up and ordered the Bose Quiet Comfort QC20. I also considered the headphones (Quiet Comfort QC25). It seemed easier to justify the expense for headphones since they are more substantial, but I opted for earbuds since they are small and won’t be as uncomfortable to try to sleep with them on.

bose qc20
Image from http://www.woodbrass.com

 

Bose was the most popular recommendation from my travel-savvy co-workers, but at $299 USD, I would be lying if I said it wasn’t really really hard to click the “buy” button. That strikes me as an almost-obscene amount of money to pay for earbuds, but then I tend to be frugal, particularly when it comes to buying myself things. All I know is that these  better be ah-maze-ing! Here’s hoping I’ll be able to sleep on my next flight. 🙂

 

3 thoughts on “Noise Canceling Earbuds: Miracle or Waste of Money?

  1. I don’t own these, but I tried the QC25 version in a Fry’s back in Phoenix.

    The way I can describe it is that after putting it on, I was suddenly transported inside my own quiet room. It’s uncanny. The store’s noise was just… gone, aside for some distant sounds (doesn’t look like it’s technologically possible to cancel anything yet).

    I have a bluetooth headphone with some noise canceling, but the QC25 worked even better. It’s pretty light too. I imagine the earbuds version will be even better. One thing for sure, after putting on these in a plane for a while, you will notice how noisy everything is without.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. after putting it on, I was suddenly transported inside my own quiet room

      Sounds perfect! Can’t wait to try mine out once they get here. 🙂

      Like

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