7 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
Disappointment for several important reasons
Date of Review: Jan 17, 2005
The Bottom Line: Not worth it unless you only care about airplane noise. Makes you want to swallow or yawn due to eustachian tube dysfunction, music reproduction poor, won't block chatter/crying/screaming at all.
Don't get me wrong: Bose makes high quality material. But they overprice them and I think marketing sells more of these than they should.
This is indeed an improvement over their original: less hiss, and foldable for storage. The case is rather large but convenient. They do the job: noise cancelling of LOW frequency noise. They do NOT block the crying baby or normal chatter. I'm not saying they advertise that they should, but they also don't advertise that they don't, because the only way you can block that is with ear plugs. The only decrease in hearing chatter or babies crying or the kid screaming is from placing the headphones over your head, which is minimal. The technology, which emits a polarizing cancelling frequency (hiss), will block out airplane noise very well, but not chatter.
One major comfort problem: when you turn these on, notice how you all of a sudden feel like you need to swallow to equilibrate your ear pressure. I don't mean the pressure of having the headphones on the head, I mean that same feeling when you go up in an airplane or elevator and need to swallow or yawn. You may get used to it, but some people will have trouble with this.
Also: you have to have the unit turned on for the headphones to work regularly just to hear music. Given that it runs on a AAA battery, that's a pain.
The reason you need the case: lots of gadgets to lose: adapters, etc.
Hi-lo switch on the headphone requires you to disconnect the cable in order to change it. This is shockingly cumbersome, and I don't see any advantage to this flaw. The hi setting is better to hear music, but the hiss is louder, too.
Comfort level: excellent. Light and well designed for the head.
Overall, not worth it to me, but if all you care about is the typical low frequency noise from an airplane, and don't mind poor music listening performance, the baby crying, the kid screaming, the teenagers giggling, and eustachian tube pressure making you want to swallow or yawn, they are comfortable and should serve you well.
By the way, the CD player is average and who uses them anyway with MP3 players now?
