Long flight made more enjoyable using these phones. Usual engine roar almost completely gone. I may well use these elsewhere but they are excellent for aircraft.

Mine broke and have had to be repaired twice so not sure how long they will last

I have been diagnosed with some hearing loss. This manifests itself in the human speech frequencies, specifically the initial and closing sound of a word, which if there is any background noise I struggle to catch those areas of a word. I thought I’d try some NC headphones as this has impacted on my ability to watch and enjoy movies/ listen to music. I have had to resort to Subtitles to enjoy films. realise that the NC on this set is not the best available on the market, nor is it even the best available from Sony. However as my budget is extremely tight, I thought I’d try a mid range set of Sony’s as I only want the NC ability for home use. The blurb on the NC informs you that they will reduce low frequency background noise and yup they do. What they should be less effective at is vocal range frequencies, but they still take much of that out the picture too. With my wife watching Youtube, my boy playing his Switch and them both holding a conversation at the same time, as me enjoying a movie on Netflix they reduce pretty much everything that was happening in the background. The conversation could still be picked up (but the words for about 95% of the time were indistinct and didn’t really stop me from hearing what I was trying to listen to. Although my son who has an extremely deep (and loud) voice still can break through with distinct words/phrases much more often than the wives voice who I almost never hear when NC is activated. The games console and Youtube just disappeared from my awareness altogether though. So does the NC serve my needs. Mostly is the honest answer. Do they serve my needs enough. Absolutely. More than enough background is killed off for me to get full enjoyment from both my music and Netflix. Where things get interesting though is on the sound clarity. On some newer albums that I have picked up I can hear quieter segments within the background of some tunes that I haven’t heard before. I just didn’t know those parts of the songs existed. The depth to the sound was also extremely gratifying. It has life that I haven’t experienced due to my hearing loss for a long time now. If you are price conscious/restricted (I picked these up in the boxing day sale) and want a decent set of NC cans that delivers good sound then I for one would recommend these.