JVC HANC100 Noise Cancelling Headphones

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...Read more

I bought these to use with my Ipod, especially on long haul flights. They fold down to a compact size so are excellent for travel. Sound quality is excellent when listening to music. The full shell earphone is comfortable and the noise cancelling function cuts out a lot of low frequency sound. Priced in the middle of the range I think these are great value.

GOOD
- active noise reduction really helped in airport terminal and on plane when listening to music or the movie.
- the best passive sound reduction anywhere near this price
- fold up nicely. (If you in to ultra-small, then these are to big for you, as you can see from the pictures)
- retracting cord is great.
- sound was good, and even ear-to-ear.
- I could not hear any hiss in a noisy environement. If I turned on the noise-reduction in a quiet room I could hear the hiss at first. Tip: don't use noise reduction if it is already quiet ;-)

Not-as-good:
- After about 5 hours one of my ears were getting sore from the touch of the earphone, and my ears are fairly small. I was able to move the headphones around a little and make it a bit more comfortable. I think that after 7 hours almost any headphone would make my ears sore. If this worried me, then I would buy a second pair of noise-reduction earphones, tiny ear-bud...Read more