10
votes
Recommendations for noise cancelling, over ear headphones
I recently got promoted and my new position is about 70% travel.
Planes are loud.
Airports are loud.
Malls are loud.
I'm looking for really good noise cancelling, over ear headphones that have a hidden mic.
Ideally they would be good at playing audio on a plane and for taking zoom calls on my laptop. Bonus if switching between my android phone and MacBook is simple/without known issues.
Price is not a concern.
Sennheiser Momentum 4. They also have multipoint so you can connect to multiple devices at once. Battery life is great. Audio quality is great. Noise cancelling is great. They come with a hidden mic as well.
I've had them for a few years now and they are fabulous.
I've had my Momentum 3's for 5 years now and they are still doing great. I was worried about wear on the pads because they aren't replaceable (the one feature I was disappointed was missing) but so far so good. Battery life is still good. Really happy with my purchase, would definitely buy this series again.
I will also say Sennheiser Momentum is great in terms of sound quality and battery life. Good general use headphones, and work when I want to take calls as well.
The only thing I dont like is the touch controls on the sides.
Sony wh-1000xm6
Has probably the best noise cancelling. I'm not sure what you mean, but it doesn't have like a gamer headset mic.
They have multi-device support. You can have up to two devices connected and it'll try to swap between them.
You can also try the WH-1000xm4. It's more foldable, but has a way worse mic than the xm6.
I have the Xm4s and love them, but yes mic is meh. I very rarely use it so not a big deal for me. Great battery life, great noise cancelling, and decently portable due to the way it folds.
My siblings and I got these as a father's day gift for my dad.
We took turns putting them on and trying to make out what other people were saying, and it was impossible (and hilarious). The noise cancelling is VERY good.
I've been using the XM3 since I bought them new many moons ago. They're comfortable and they fold up nicely into a carrying case. I like the touch activated controls on the right headphone. The sound quality is excellent and I love the option of noise canceling, ambient sound, or regular modes.
I know you don't ask, but my on ear headphones for working out are three WC CH 520. Inexpensive enough that I don't mind them bouncing around in a workout bag or getting sweaty. The only things I don't like is that they don't fold up nicely and they don't come with a carrying case, and also that the material on the ear cups gets wet with sweat and creates a painful suction effect on my ears, especially if I'm walking or running.
I have the XM5s, and I love them for air travel except the stupid head bar digs into my head sometimes and can be a bit painful after a few hours. It looks like the XM6s have a wider/comfier bar.
It also looks like the XM6s fold down smaller.
I can recommend the Sony WH-1000XM4's though as @stu2b50 mentions, the microphone isn't as great and you might enjoy the newer Sony 1000XM6's more. I've had my XM4s for ~4-5 years now and they're still really good. I only use them during my travels, their noise cancelling is perfect for flights and travel in general. Comfort does leave a bit to be desired since I have big ears and a big head and the XM4s crushes my ears a lil. However, the XM6s do not have this problem.
Despite having my XM4s for many years now, battery life on them is still really good and has lasted me 12-14+ hour flights with continuous power on. ANC is active the moment you turn on the headphones too and I don't baby the battery on them. Switching between devices has not been a problem for me either, I switch between my iPhone and my Samsung tablet and have switched with my Macbook in the past with no trouble either.
I can confirm most of this, although over the years my big head (and also cushion replacements) have beaten the XM4s into submission and they don't hurt my ears anymore. The only point where my experience was worse than yours was with device switching; I found the best way to reliably get them to connect to my DAC was to have my phone forget them entirely.
Also a big fan of the xm4. Mine have held up well over the last 4-5 years. They really reduce the stress of flying. Twice, I've had one ear develop a very annoying high pitched whine. Take the ear pads off, take out the foam barrier, clean the microphone inside with isopropyl alcohol, let dry. There's also a calibration process you can trigger from the app that helps, and that you should do if you significantly change altitude.
I was just in the market for new multipurpose wireless headphones (kind of still am) and spent a couple of weeks researching many current headphones and talking to several people about it.
There are two very distinct types of wireless headphones you can get. One is your typical gaming headset. It will typically come with a visible microphone, possibly LEDs. It's better at having physical buttons and software for controlling them from a computer. These headsets have two main benefits: They're good at delivering "no" latency/low latency audio, and they have better microphones, not restricted by bluetooth profile and codec limitations, so your calls would sound better with your microphone on. However, they also tend to require their own USB dongle for connecting wirelessly (since we're bypassing bluetooth). You probably don't want one of these.
The second type are bluetooth headphones from various brands that tend to be phone-first. Typically they come with their own app that will configure them from your android phone. Microphones aren't visible (they're the same as the noise cancelling microphones, I think) and calls will sound "worse" and have higher latency but it's the same for everyone else. You want to be mindful of bluetooth codec support and battery life. This is probably the type you're looking for.
Within the wireless bluetooth headset category, the Sony WH-1000 line appears to be unambiguously the best at noise canceling and should be the best choice for you. They also deliver high quality audio and they are actually competitively priced. There are usually replacement cushions in the market (speaking from experience) for when yours wear off. In addition to the Android app there are third party Linux clients for some models and others are in the works. Also, Linux supports Sony's LDAC codec (one of the best bluetooth codecs). Note that Windows does not.
Other alternatives exist with different strengths and weaknesses. The Sennheiser Momentum 4 are a direct competitor that may have slightly better audio and worse NC. I dislike the capacitive touch controls that both the Sony and Sennheiser headphones have embraced as they seem janky and failure-prone, but that's something I have to live with.
The Bose Quiet Comfort Ultra gen2 is another current gen alternative that's a little more expensive and has more physical buttons (only a less exposed capacitive strip for volume). I actually tried these, having found them discounted, and quite liked the sound. The microphone was also quite decent for a bluetooth headset, and it has a functioning third party linux client and support for wired audio and multipoint! The only BT audio codec it has with cross platform support is aac however, since neither windows nor linux support its low latency codec aptX-adaptive (see my linux pain points comment!) There's a slight hiss in the NC and it's bad at blocking off light rustling against the headphones themselves (unlike Sony). Comfort is OK; they're lighter than my Sonys.
To be clear, all of these headphones sound great. As long as you can use a high quality codec and are not in a call, bluetooth headphones tend to actually test better than gaming headphones, so they should be great for listening to music or podcasts while on the move. You can look at online lab test results to see their frequency response curves. Keep in mind that as long as an equalizer is available some unevenness is tolerable since you can always fix it yourself.
Other brands in this category that had models I shortlisted as competitive during my research are Bowers & Wilkins (there was a discounted model with sweet physical buttons) and JBL (the Tour One M3 linked in the article above). I was warned against AudioTechnicas. A friend was very satisfied with his Beyerdynamics but when we looked into technical results, their wireless models did not perform well. There was also an option from Fairphone, the Fairbuds XL (not earbuds despite the name), which had the advantage of being highly repairable as you would expect, but also didn't test super great at actually being headphones.
I have a pair of Bose QuietComfort 2nd gen over the ear headphones and adore them. When I was in the market a couple years ago I was concerned with comfort while wearing glasses and the Mic quality for calls. The Bose QuietComforts at the time had a significantly better Mic than the Sony equivalent. I went to Best Buy so I could try wearing the headphones before I bought and found them to be the most comfortable headphones out of any of the ones there.
I can't speak to their noise canceling performance relative to other headphones since they're the only pair I've owned, but I can confirm that they work really well to cut out engine noise and baby crying while on airplanes and stay comfortable on long flights.
They also work pretty well when connected to 2 devices. Sometimes my computer or laptop will hog the connection and not release it for audio playing on my phone, but I'm not sure that it's a specific issue to these headphones.