Audio-technica QuietPoint active noise-canceling headphones

Cool Yule Rating: 4 stars

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Cool Yule Rating: 4 stars

Price: $169.95

Product Web site

Description: These in-ear headphones (model ATH-ANC3) offer good sound quality when listening to your music player, but also can cancel outside noise (up to 85% of outside noises, according to the company), which make it good for drowning out the annoying parts of the world (like airplane engine noise). The noise-canceling feature is powered by a single AAA battery, but if the battery dies you can still use the headphones to still listen to the music. While I didn't have a calculator to determine whether 85% of the outside noise was canceled, it did reduce them quite significantly when the system was activated.

A "monitor" button can turn on or off the noise-canceling feature in real time, depending on what you're doing at the time. For example, if you're listening to music and someone asks you something, you can press the button to mute the music. On the other hand, if you're drowning out all of the outside noise, pressing the Monitor button turns off the noise cancellation, allowing you to say, "What?" to the person asking you the question.

The system comes with a handy carrying case, a cable extender for adding extra cord between the headphones and your music player, extra rubber-tipped ear buds and a gold-plated airline adapter.

My only complaint is that in-ear headphones tend to slip out of my ear – in order to get them to stick, I end up having to jam them inside my ear canal to get a good grip. That's probably not healthy, but it's also possible that it's just my ears. It was also very hard to see which earbud was the "left" and "right" earbud – I had to squint very hard to find the labels.

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