friday june 29, 2007

Searching for the right headphones / San Francisco, CA / 11 months ago

For the past 6 years or so I have been searching for a great set of headphones that offer portability, noise cancellation and good sound. Here's a quick look at the products I tried and what I have settled with today.

At first I started with the Bose QuietComfort© headphones. These worked well and at the time there were very few noise canceling headphones available on the market. The main downside was that they were very bulky to carry around, they required batteries to operate and the construction of the headphone cups began to fall apart after a couple of years.

Next I tried the Sennheiser PXC 300 folding headphones on a recommendation from a friend. These were much easier to transport, the sound was great and the noise cancellation worked well. The main problem I had with the PXC 300 headphones was that they are worn "on-ear", which becomes a bit sore when wearing them for longer than 2 hours.

With an focus on portability, I next tried the Bang & Olufsen A8 earphones. These look great, sound fair and are quite small. The big problem I faced is that even with their fancy little ear braces they don't really hold their position on your ear very well. This means you are constantly adjusting and repositioning them.

Finally I bought a pair of V-MODA Vibe earbuds. Now, I have used the Apple earbuds that came with my iPods in the past, and these things do a poor job of staying in your ear unless you jam them in there, which makes your inner ear sore within 30 minutes.
The V-MODA earbuds have a soft rubber cushion that has a pocket of air between the cushion and the actual speaker housing. After testing them out for the past several weeks I can say that they are very comfortable, very tiny, they sound great and they offer a bit of noise cancellation that is definitely noticeable on airplanes as well as in the office. So far I have worn them in my ear for up to 8 consecutive hours with no irritation or discomfort.

And there you have it, that's my recommendation if you are looking for some small, portable, noise canceling headphones with good sound.

P.S. This was written just to distract myself from the sad reality that I might not get an iPhone today.

UPDATE: Post iPhone release I recommend the microphone-enabled V-Moda Vibe Duo headphones so you can take advantage of the phone and iPod features.