233621 H501 Active Noise Cancelling Over-Ear Headphones with Inline Microphone and Carrying Case, 50 Hour Battery Time (Wired/Space Grey)

EDIT: After using these headphones for a total of about ~40 hours of international flight time, I can recommend these without reservation. They performed flawlessly, cutting cabin noise to almost nothing, and they also allowed me to use my MP3 player without having to turn up the volume above my usual setting. Both the airplane cabin and engine noise were almost completely suppressed while still allowing me to clearly hear in-flight announcements.In short, these are a *great* set of noise cancelling headphones that work extremely well and are priced very affordably. These are as good or better than the Bose headphones which cost 3 or 4 times as much.-----------------------Wow. Simply put, these are great noise cancelling headphones, well-made and inexpensive. They knock out about 90% of common low-end, cyclical noise like fans, engines, compressors, etc and cost less than a 1/3 of the Bose noise cancelling headphones. I'll be testing these more against some high-end Bose headphones and also on a long airplane trip shortly, but my first impression is that they work very well. Turn them on and everything...just...gets...quiet. Standing next to a refrigerator and turning them on makes it sound like the refrigerator just stopped running.They come in a nice travel case with 2 patch cords, a 1/4" adapter, an airplane adapter, and a battery. The little pouch that holds the cords and stuff detaches from the carrying case so you can put in a bag separately if you don't want to lug the carrying case around.The instructions are a hoot- very spacey. For example, the instructions start off with this little bit of Zen prose:------------------------------------------9,000m in the sky, 7-hour time difference,over 7,000 miles apart.The cabin mix with the travel tiredness and the unique smell,the soul inside the body can finally relax.This moment, rare and precious.Changing a pose and choosing an old song,Put on my headphone.A short rest,for getting rid of the plane roaring,for escaping preciseness and all the worries,finding the real me and this moment of satisfaction,Pursuit of a lifetime, mixed in the hubub and noise,I finally know the meaning of content in calmness,233621 grants you the best quiet space.Silence is Golden.------------------------------------------Lol, what's not to like about that? :) The translation of the directions are a little bit shaky but still completely understandable. Plugging an MP3 player into them results in good, clear sound, no complaints there. The headband seems sturdy and is well-padded and the earcups also seem very comfortable- much better than the "on-ear" style.Two very minor gripes: 1) I wish that the headphone cups would fold in (swivel) to store a little more compactly, but this is a very minor gripe. 2) The audio input jack on my pair is a little loose, but that's probably just this pair. If it gets too loose I'll return them for the exact same model, that's how much I like these so far.All in all, I'm impressed with these and looking forward to using them and putting them up against the $350 Bose headphones. My guess is that there will hardly be any noticeable difference, and I'll update this to let you know what I find. But so far these seems to be an outstanding deal for the money.

The build quality of these headphones are decent, they are comfortable when worn (I have an average sized head and average sized ears), and the sound quality average (the $20 Sony headphones my kids have sound better). The ANC does a pretty good job cancelling out low sounds; things like an air conditioner running and the lower tones of a persons voice. The ANC does not cancel out the mid or higher tones of a person talking or anything else making mid to high toned noises.While I could have lived with those things, given the price of these, the losing point and reason I am sending these back is the sound leak, or maybe I should say the sound broadcast of the headphones. My wife can sing along to the music I am listening to, standing 15 feet away, when the volume is turned up to about 65% on my iPhone. We compared these to the kids $20 Sony over-the-ear headphones and you could barely hear any noise 3 feet away when turned up to about 75% on my iPhone, and you certainly could not sing along with the music.If you want to turn up the volume to 80% and broadcast to everyone around you what you are listening to, then these will make a great set of headphones for you. I would not want to sit next to a person on a plane wearing these, and will thus not be using them for what I had intended hoping to spare someone else that which I would not want to hear while sitting on a plane for hours on end.Additional info in response to customer service email nagging:Hi Sarah-Thank you for your comments on the headphones and about what these headphones are not. Reality and experience with these headphones are that they look nice but lack in insulation or noise noise reduction both ways. To not hear people around me (and there are always people talking on planes, trains, and other places with low frequency noises), because the noise cancelling does not cancel voices out nor does the noise insulation of the soft earphone padding minimize any of the sound of others talking around you, you have to turn up the volume. Not anywhere near a level that might damage my hearing; and when you do so, everyone knows what you are listening to - in detail.In experimenting with them by putting them on my leg to mimic the headphones being on someone, we were actually able to hear the sound from the headphones better than when we just held them in the air - volume at the same level, similar distance away. Simple physics principle that the headphones themselves act as a speaker resonating material when the sound bounces off your head/leg and back to the headphones plastic material.Bottom line, these are cheap, Chinese reverse engineered headphones that look nice but lack in everything else. They should sell for $20, but even then they still aren't as good in reducing/blocking sounds or have the sound quality of my kids on-the-ear $20 Sony headphones.

FYI: This review is for the H501 Active Noise Cancelling headphones.I work in a cubicle in an engineering center, with people frequently coming to the cubes around mine to semi-quietly discuss designs/etc. While I work, I like to play action-y movie soundtracks like Star Wars, Ironman, Jack Johnson (...for particularly stressful days...), etc. to keep me going. With these headphones turned on, I don't have to have my music turned up loud at all in order to not hear pretty much anything around me; however, without music these headphones have a somewhat difficult time filtering out sounds in the range of human voices, although they still do a great job of cancelling out a lot of background noise (air handler, button clicks, etc.). But, like I said, add a little music and I don't hear a thing. In fact, when someone comes to ask me a question, they've resorted to waving a hand next to my monitors because I can't hear them otherwise (and tapping my shoulder makes me jump ... ).I've checked to see if any of my music can be heard by someone near me. I don't turn my music up very loud, but I can't hear any music when I take the headphones off my head and set them down on my desk.All in all, these headphones are comfortable (I've been wearing them for about 3-4 hours each day, mostly in contiguous stints), and they work really well for my application. I've even tried wearing them while mowing the lawn, and they worked fairly well there, too. Also, going on ~three weeks of use and I haven't had to change the battery yet. Great purchase. Definitely worth it.