Recently I got a pair of the new Sony noise canceling ear bud headphones, the MDR-NC11′s. I’ve tried several different types of noise canceling headphones over the years, from the Bose QuietComfort series to the cheaper Philips ones (which work great but are terribly uncomfortable). The reason I tried these new Sony’s is because they are very light and portable since they are ear bud headphones (vs. the big bulky Bose ones). At $160 they aren’t cheap but boy are they worth it.

After getting them I tried them at the office and was very pleased with the sound quality. It was hard to gauge noise canceling, as it’s not that loud in my office already, my main goal was to see if they were comfortable enough. At first they aren’t, mainly because the stick way down in your ear to block they noise (they have great passive noise canceling due to this, they are also active but that’s really hard to tell unless your on a plane, more on that soon). So I gave it a day or so to see and I finally got used to them. The main downside of this type of headphone is not only are they a bit uncomfortable (again I got over that), you can hear every sound your mouth makes. Forget talking with them in, you’ll feel like your screaming your head off even if you’re whispering. Eating is impossible too, as you’ll sound like your chomping like crazy!

Those negatives aside these babies are awesome. They passive noise canceling (the fact that they simply block out sound do to blocking the ear canal) combined with the active electronics is really amazing. Recently my wife and I took a flight and right when we got on a young child (about 2-3 years old), the bane of air travel, started screaming his head off. He was on the other side of the plane, one row up. It was terrible. After we took off he stopped screaming (finally). I then put in the earbuds and turned on some music for the duration of the flight. It was nice and quite, and with the active noise canceling turned on my music was crystal clear and plenty loud (I had major volume issues with the cheaper Philips ones). As we landed I turned off the music but I left the active canceling on for landing (just to have quiet). I was very pleased with them and decided to keep them (I still had 3 days if I wanted to return them). The clincher was when we got off the flight and my wife said the kid in the rows near us was screaming the entire last hour of the flight. I heard nothing! Nothing! Sold! If these babies can silence a screaming kid they are worth their weight in gold to me!