1. Introduction

• QuietComfort 2 Noise...
• • compuaddons
  • $259.99

Bose QuietComfort 2 noise canceling headphones are generally considered the standard to beat, but they're big and bulky. If you seek something smaller and lighter, Bose has brought out the QuickComfort 3 headphones - which are still large but small for true noise canceling headphones. The question is, are they as good - and why has the price gone up?

Want something even smaller and lighter? Bose's in-ear TriPort IE headphones don't offer noise cancellation nor do they fit tightly enough for noise isolation - will they suit listeners who don't usually like ear buds and canal phones?

Bose QuietComfort 3

Lucky business class travelers on some airlines will be offered a pair of Bose QC2s to use; the combination of large over-the-ear cams and active noise cancellation makes for a quiet journey, but the QC2s are also bulky and heavy, and leave you wanting to take them off every few hours to let your ears breathe. The QC3 headphones still have active noise canceling and they're still large, but they now sit on your ears, so you don't start to feel over-heated. Combined with the lighter weight, the memory foam makes them very comfortable against your ears. It also provides a reasonable seal to the ear, which is what you need for noise isolation to shut out external sounds and to prevent others from hearing what you are listening to.

Whether you find that the on-ear design gives you more or less isolation depends on the shape of your ears and your head; this reviewer found the passive noise isolation as good as that of theQC2s but other listeners disagreed. The active noise cancellation is just as good as the most recent generation of QC2s; if you have older models you'd notice the same improvement in current QC2s as in the QC3s. Plane noise is reduced significantly and annoying conversations and background music are minimized, even if you aren't playing any music. But if you don't get good isolation with the memory foam cams, you'll hear too much background noise for comfort.