I basically live on airplanes. I fly somewhere over 250,000 miles a year every year. I'm also an amateur audiophile and have a really cool 2 channel stereo system, as well as lots of other high end audio gear. I've owned nearly every brand of noise cancelling headset, as well as used ones I haven't owned. These are by far the best value out there for Around the Ear headphones, bar none. Its true that if you have large ears, these may cramp your style, but this is true of ALL around the ear headphones worn over a long period of time. Thats why most major manufacturers have also introduced OVER THE EAR units as well.
As far as noise cancelling and sound quality, these headphones are at the top of the class. I've worn the ridiculously expensive Bose QCs for years, and the price is downright scandalous. I always am amazed at how many suckers pay for these, when they are no better or worse than all the other ones I have.
At the moment, I have Sennhieser PC300, Philips HN110, Sony HC6 (I think) and have sold my Bose QC2s to pay for ALL of these. So I have both an over the ear (sennheiser,sony) and around the ear (philips). I travel with either the Sennhieser (90% of the time) and the Philips (10%) of the time, but I use the Philips 100% of the time for at home game playing and music listening when I don't want to wake the family. I travel with the Sennheisers more often simply because they take up much less space in my carry on bag. But on long flights (asia, etc), I bring the philips
The Sennhiesers are over the ear and probably have the nicest sound quality, but these Philips are a nearly close second. The Philips also have very very good noise cancelling. The Sony's are generally decent, and are basically balanced overall, not excelling at any one thing. I tend not to use them that much, as they don't have great audio quality.
My ears are not that huge I guess, and these Philips are nice to wear for me. The Bose hurt quite a bit over time, just like any around the ear. I recently wore a pair of Bose QC3 over the ears on a flight from London to New York, and they hurt quite a bit as well (they were complimentary on a American Airlines business class flight). And the sound quality was lousy, as well as the noise cancelling was sub par.
But Bose spends lots O' money on marketing. Philips is basically inept at everything but making things. So you would have to search for these to discover them as a value.
A couple of rules of thumb.
1) ALL around the ear headphones will hurt if you have large ears.
2) NO noise cancelling headphones cancel all noise....they all work the same way, there is no magic (if you are into reading technical specs, you can see this for yourself, don't take my word for it)
3) Bose are priced 5-6 times what they could be priced
4) Most NC headsets between $35-$100 have decent sound quality and around the same NC characteristics
5) ALL over the ear headsets have marginally less NC characteristics than around the ear due to the physical design
Conclusion. Don't be fooled by fancy TV ads, billboards, and other seductive marketing. The product cost the same as all the others inside. Noise Cancelling has been around for 30 odd years, and hasn't changed that much, beyond miniaturization of the silicon chips that cancel the noise, and huge improvement is small speaker quality. But these are not exclusive to one manufacturer. Anyone can make decent NC headphones.
From someone who has worn them all, and has a taste for music and lives on airplanes, I can recommend these units. You could buy 10 pair of these for the functionally equivalent bose QCs, and not really experience any difference. Philips HN 110 Folding Noise-Canceling Headphones
Overall I rate these phones as a very good value for the money, and think anyone considering noise-canceling headphones should consider them.
Also, I think I can clear up some confusion about some reported problems with these phones.
There are indeed two revisions of the Philips HN110 phones, as was briefly mentioned in a prior review.
The older version (which I spotted at Walmart) has a very different earcup mounting arrangement with a silver tinted plastic part between the headband and earcups. I think this older style is responsible for most of the negative comments about parts breaking (because one individual's review specifically complained about the "silver portion that connects the muff" breaking).
I have the [presumably newer] type that is shown in the Amazon picture above that has a crosswise black plastic hinge piece that holds upside-down U-shaped adjustable chromed wire earpiece supports, and I have had no problems with parts breaking with this model.
Some have complained that the `noise cancelation' is not very effective, but I think it works quite well, easily on a par with some of the 300+ dollar offerings from the likes of BOSE.
Some may not fully understand the limitations that apply to ALL phones of this type, and may have unrealistic expectations.
To cancel noise, the phones sample the outside noise with microphones on the outside of each earcup, then guess how much of this noise will leak inside to the listeners ear, so they can create a cancellation signal.
This cancellation signal is flipped around to be 180 degrees out of phase so that when it is applied to the speakers inside each earpiece, it will cancel out the outside noise that has leaked inside.
This process can only work well for a limited range of frequencies in the lower range, because at higher frequencies the audio waves become so short that the phones can not accurately predict the `phase' of sounds leaking in from different angles (which makes it impossible to accurately create an `out of phase' signal to cancel out the noise).
These limitations are essentially based on physics, and apply to ALL phones whether they cost 35 dollars or 350 dollars.
So to test this type of phone, we need to use lower frequency sounds like road noise, or engine drone, NOT higher frequency sounds like speech.
In their favor, the Philips HN110's are `around the ear' type headphones, which do provide some `passive' higher frequency blocking (by acting like earmuffs) to complement the `active' lower frequency cancellation done by the electronics. Also, the 'around-the-ear' design makes it much easier for the phones to accurately predict the noise leakage (and therefore to more accurately cancel it) which allows the low cost HN110's to actually out perform some other non-around-the-ear offerings which cost hundreds more.
The only down side is that some folks (particularly those with larger ears) have reported that the HN110's may become uncomfortable during extended listening sessions (though I have found them to be extremely comfortable).
I also find the audio performance of the HN110 phones to be very pleasing, but I am not one of those folks that like to listen to their music at ear splitting dB levels (or that confuses `thumpa-bump-bump' overdriven bass with music). - Headphones - Noise Canceling - Philips - Travel Headphones'
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