Best Noise Cancelling Headphones 

Noise canceling headphones are useful in many different situations. The best noise canceling headphones will be a godsend if you do a lot of traveling or commuting on a train or a bus for work or school.

College students find them extremely helpful especially when you're trying to study in a noisy dorm room.

I also use them while cutting the grass to block out sound from my lawnmower. If you enjoyed listening to audio books doing so while using noise canceling headphones greatly enhances the enjoyment.

Although headphones may be labeled "noise canceling" unfortunately they do not all perform equally. I wanted to provide you with a short list of the best noise canceling headphones available as rated by consumers that own them.

Some of the problems with the lower end noise canceling models is they tent to produce a lot of static. Also many of them are bulky and it's very hard to find a way to wear them comfortably which obviously would detract from your over all listening experience.

It seems to hold true with noise canceling headphones that the higher-priced models do perform the best.

As mentioned before the best noise cancellation headphones are extremely useful in many different situations from watching TV when everyone else is asleep in the house to providing solitary isolation when listening to meditative music.

The whole idea of noise cancellation headphones is to produce a personal relaxed environment where you can focus on your thoughts and totally enjoyed the depth of the music without disturbing others, or being disturbed by the sounds that surround you.

These types of headphones are the best solution for frequent flyers because models like those produced by Bose are extremely good at blocking out airplane engine noise.

Because we all have different tastes and are looking for a headphone that will provide noise cancellation for specific circumstances there is not one-size-fits-all when it comes to purchasing the best noise canceling headphones.

When doing research before buying a pair of noise canceling headphones I found that reading countless reviews became more confusing than they were helpful. This really is because what one person finds extraordinary, another may comment that it didn't live up to their expectations, so until I had a chance to actually audition some of the best noise canceling headphones available I truly was pretty much at square one.

I find one of the most reliable ways to determine which products really perform the best is by checking Amazon and the customer reviews. I've included links to all of the headphones listed will take you directly to Amazon site where you can check out the reviews for yourself.

This truly is a great resource and if you're looking to buy it's always better to find a product that has four or five stars as opposed to one with only one or two stars.

Of course this method isn't foolproof but the people giving these reviews have nothing financially to gain from it as opposed to reading an ad by some headphone manufacturer.

Some of the inferior noise canceling headphones actually pose some health risks to your ears. This is because in order to eliminate the outside noise they require you to raise the volume of whatever you're listening to. This is because they don't have the same engineering and design as the more expensive models do.

Here is a list of The Best Noise Canceling Headphones

(all links open in a new window!)

1). Audio Technica ATH-ANC7B Active Noise-Cancelling Closed-Back Headphones 

2). Sennheiser PXC 450 NoiseGard Active Noise-Canceling Headphones

3). Audio Technica ATH-ANC1 QuietPoint Active Noise-Cancelling On-Ear Headphones

4). Bose® QuietComfort® 15 Acoustic Noise Cancelling® Headphones

5). Sennheiser PXC 350 Active Noise Cancellation Headphone with Vol Control

There are two terms that you come across when looking at noise canceling headphones that I wanted to give a brief explanation of each. These terms are active noise cancellation and passive noise cancellation.

Active noise cancellation is achieved by the use of a microphone that samples the external sounds and then plays them back through the headphones in an anti-phase frequency which will cancel out up to 20 DB of external noise. Headphones that utilize active noise cancellation will be heavier then those that use passive noise cancellation. This is because of the additional electronics that are required as well as batteries to power the microphone and circuitry.


Passive noise cancellation headphones are most commonly the in ear type. They simply work by forming a physical seal between the ear and the outside world. This could be compared to a pair of earplugs that happened to have tiny speakers in them.