Bose QuietComfort 15 hands-on

If you fly over long distances often, you might have looked at noise-cancelling headphones before (but we usually tend to cheap out of it, right?). They have two purposes: the primary one is to block out loud background noises like plane engines . It works by analyzing the sound around you, isolating the background noise and basically creates an exact opposite sound pattern that will cancel it – hence the noise-cancelling name. Now that the loud and unwanted sound is out of the picture, the second purpose is obviously to output good quality audio. And it does: the sound is crisp and you can hear a lot of details.

What I really like with noise-cancelling headphones is that I don’t have to crank the volume to 8/10 in the plane. A 2/10 is usually good enough. It’s better for your ears too. There are two details worth noting: first, it is light. At least, lighter than the older Sony MDR-NC500 ($399) that I previously reviewed. The sound is also a bit better in my opinion. Oh and it’s cheaper too ($299). The second detail is that it uses one AAA battery. If you forget to charge it, you can always buy a battery at the airport or something.