Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/18/great-deal-on-noise-canceling.html
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Do noise cancelling headphones now cost less than $50? If so, I am happy. But will they actually work? I have no problem believing that Bose and others have been charging $300 just for profit. But I can’t even buy a regular set of good headphones for this price.
“Soft Protein”
Umm, what?
I bought a set of inexpensive noise canceling earphones on Amazon. They had hundreds, and hundreds of great reviews. I did not check the reviews on fake spot, unfortunately.
Anyways, I tried the earphones out on public transit. And turning on the active noise cancellation mostly just increased the volume of the earphones a little bit. Useless on BART. And not helpful on an airplane, either. The noise reduction was minuscule.
As part of expectations management, the company that sold me the earphones emailed me after I purchased them to say to not compare them to $300 Bose earphones and that it would be unrealistic to expect inexpensive active noise cancellation to work as well as expensive noise cancellation. Yeah, that’s something that should have been in their marketing materials before I bought them.
Then, after I gave them a bad review for their utter lack of noise cancellation, they emailed me to offer me a complete refund hoping I would reconsider my review and “update my experience”. Which I did by leaving the low star rating intact and the original review, but adding a preface saying that they have great customer service.
Since then, Amazon deleted all the reviews and blocked customers from leaving any reviews whatsoever on the product page. There were definitely some shenanigans going on with that company.
All in all, this is to say that the quality of noise reduction varies radically from device device. And Bose really do work better than less expensive active noise cancellation devices. I’ve heard Bose described as $50 of headphones with $250 of noise cancellation. But, you can just put on good passive hearing protection muffs over your ears while you’re wearing your wired earbuds and get as much or more noise reduction, with no batteries to worry about. Bulky and ugly, but guaranteed to work.
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Mostly I just use foam ear plugs. Doesn’t let me listen to music, but cuts down engine noise.
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Great! Also, currently unavailable! 
Did you try the link I posted? I checked and they’re still in stock. $26.99
I did not, just from the OP.
Thanks!
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