Quote:
Originally Posted by Titan2
Costco has good sales on the Bose QuietComforts. I recently bought them and am very happy with them. Beware, they are not the Ultra but are pretty good for the price. They are currently listed at $429 but are often available for $199. I have seen them at that price a couple of times since I bought mine. https://www.costco.ca/bose-qc-sc-hea...000247779.html
Bose did announce a new version of the Ultra, and I saw an article stating they were now the best, but I couldn't find it. Keep that in mind if you are in that price range.
Sony seems to be the king of NC for now, with Bose a good runner-up.
Here is the rtings page based on noise cancelling, FYI:
https://www.rtings.com/headphones/re...ise-cancelling
I also like the Wirecutter reviews. Also, Sony as king: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/r...ng-headphones/ |
I had an inkling I was sleeping on the Sony 1000XM series a little bit when I wrote the comparison post, but I kinda brushed it off. It seems that was unfair. It was one of those builds like the M4/Quiet comfort and beats that were mostly made of plastic and fidelity focused. Quick glances seems to show that the MX1000 seems to have higher quality plastic/durability design out of all of them, but of course it won't hold a candle to a build that is more metals based.
There are differences in complaints of active noise cancelling (ANC) via passive, active and/or effects to fidelity when active, but I kinda assumed that if OP started off with corded, it'll all still be superior to what OP started with. But yes, the Sony and Bose rank quite highly, and there's supposedly a noticeable gap between the, and the others. rtings is showing solid 9 scores for the 1000XM, Quietcomfort and Airpods Max with the next guys ranking in the mid 8 ranges or lower.
The Px7/Px8 and Beoplay portal seem to have ANC that are suited for indoors mentioned to be poor at bass. This implies it's good for home/office, but not as great at outdoors stuff vehicles/busses, street noise and planes. Sonos Ace is weird as it has low 8s for office/commute isolation but very good overall full range isolation. I think that is because this rtings chart had testing blends both the natural isolation of closed headphones with the ANC feature added on top? Somehow it had a good overall ranking that challenged the Bose and Sonys but base rankings that didn't compare.
I also think that the Sony 1000XM series for the 4-6 models are all still close ish in price and worth comparing to each other, and not just against the other headphones.
ANC seems to go XM6>>XM4>XM5 with almost everything else being compared to, but falling short of the XM5 for ANC. Fidelity goes XM6>XM5>XM4.
IMO, for just the Sony 1000XM series, XM4 are still solid, but if you can reach the XM5 <$100, worth considering. Then there's a similar calibre of improvement from XM5 to XM6, but the 6 also boasts a redesign for folding that the XM5 doesn't have, so I'd say if it's within <$100, worth considering upgrading, unless the folding feature is worth a little more than a $100 price gap.
Amazon showing XM4 at around $430 XM5 at around $400-500 (currently discounted), and XM6 at $600.
Blahhh.... I just grabbed a pair of open box XM5 at a decent price. I've been looking for something to upgrade from the 450BT since my wife likes them and I've been leaning towards grabbing some Sony headphones to pair with my Xperia phone I'm using as a music player. That's the 9th set of headphones now and that also ignores half a dozen pairs of IEMs/earbuds/bone conducting headphones.
I gotta find new homes for some of these headphones.