JVC HANC100 Noise Cancelling Headphones

Rating:
Summary: Excellent features, but sore ears for extended periods
Review: There are a few things about these earphones that need mention right up front, because they are so very well done.
1. Most noise cancelling headphones have a bulky battery pack in line on the headphone wire. These DO NOT, which means the wire is small and free of things to catch on airplane handrests and such. This is great.
2. Many noise cancelling headphones have a constantly connected cord, or allow the cord to be removed if you only want noise cancelling. With this, the cord rewinds into the left earpiece. This is again, extremely well thought out. If you just want noice cancelling, rewind the cord up. It's easy and since it's attached, you can't forget and leave the cord on the plane or at home. This is great.
3. It runs on a single AAA battery, which resides in the right earpiece, again nothing external to snag on anything.
4. They fold up nicely for travel.
5. Noise reduction works very well. I even use them at my office to block out the white noise and fans of my building.
6. Audio quality is fairly good, nice rich tones but a little lacking on bass. I enjoyed my videos and music with them very much. An audiophile might be dissappointed, but if you're using noise reduction in the first place, you probably are in a noisy environment where you can't appreciate perfect audio anyway. All in all, the sound is very good however.
All that is very good.

What's not so good. The headphones look like over the ear designs, and for the most part are. The earcups are actually very small and barely fit over your ear. I'm OK with that, and the padding is very soft. On the inside however, the cup where your ear sits is not very deep due to the electronics and such in them (battery on one side, retractable cord on the other). The top of my ear touches this inside panel and while not instantly uncomfortable, by the time I landed, both ears were a little sore from this. I flew from Chicago to Tokyo and by half way... both ears were sore. I continued to wear them because they worked so well and the noise reduction and audio with my computer was so good, but this is the only drawback I saw.

Rating:
Summary: Great but not close to the best.
Review: These are really good. You still will hear people talkng, Not much though. Alost 75 percent blockage of unwanted noise.
Bose provides headphones that have extraordinary sound quality and has AT LEAST 95 percent of noise cancelling.