Sony usually puts out high-quality stuff, but these only cancel MAYBE 15% of ambient noise. They are comfortable and sound great, but trying them with the supplied battery and a new one resulted in the same anemic noise cancellation. They would be good if sold just as headphones.

These are a pair of noise-canceling headphones from Sony. With the power of one AAA battery, they can cancel ambient noise. The way they do this is with a tiny microphone on the outside of the headphones, which records the sounds that are heard, and then plays them back at a 180 degree angle, which...

Somehow, the Ballad of Jed Clampett comes to mind, as I start to write this. You know, the Beverly Hillbillies. He was living his life, struck gold, and everything changed. That's kind of what happened here. Except I didn't strike gold or become rich. Yeah, the metaphor doesn't exactly work.

Very light; portable; built in EQ/NC function

Expensive for what they are; require a battery

No, I would not recommend this to a friend

Comfortable; Lightweight

Poor Sound

I bought them to use in an airplane. I was disapointed. The noise canceling works poorly, I still can hear surrounding noises easily. The battery is at an odd location (on the cord). The cushion does not hug the ears well. The only positive is they are relatively lightweight.

These comfortable cups won't stay on when exercising. Instead, they're designed for long journeys. With the noise-cancelling feature turned on outside noise is blocked well, but the delivery suffers from woolly bass and unexciting treble. With it turned off they sound relatively lifeless.

Noise-cancelling works well

Woolly bass and unexciting treble; Lifeless sound when noise-cancelling is turned off

I purchased the Sony MDR-NC40 headphones almost on impulse because the price was really unbeatable, plus I knew I had a trip coming up to test these out on. These ultra-light noise-cancelling headphones retail for $100, and claim to reduce up to 90% of noise.