Sony MDR-NC22B

I bought a pair of these earlier this year to use with my Archos Gmini 402 jukebox. They costed me about £60 when I purchased them from Argos. At first I felt a little bad at the cost of the headphones, however, after using them I was so glad that I'd bought them.

Using the headphones to listen to music without the noise cancelling feature is fine. The sound quality is beautiful and all types of music that I've listened to (pop, rock, ...
...the bass is nice and strong. Using the headphones without the noise cancelling feature requires no battery power and is very good. The actual design of the headphones means that a lot of noise gets supressed since the headphones effectively block the ear canal. The headphones are supplied with three different sized soft rubber earpieces so it should be suitable for everyone. I find the headphones to be extremely comfortable to wear and much better ... more

I bought a pair of these earlier this year to use with my Archos Gmini 402 jukebox. They costed me about £60 when I purchased them from Argos. At first I felt a little bad at the cost of the headphones, however, after using them I was so glad that I'd bought them.

Using the headphones to listen to music without the noise cancelling feature is fine. The sound quality is beautiful and all types of music that I've listened to (pop, rock, rap, classical, electric) sound amazing. The treble is great and the bass is nice and strong. Using the headphones without the noise cancelling feature requires no battery power and is very good. The actual design of the headphones means that a lot of noise gets supressed since the headphones effectively block the ear canal. The headphones are supplied with three different sized soft rubber earpieces so it should be suitable for everyone. I find the headphones to be extremely comfortable to wear and much better than the normal in-ear ones I've used previously.

The noise cancelling circuitry is powered by 1 AAA battery and worked very well. The battery comparment has a clip on the back to attach it to oneself and has a monitor button. Press the button when in noise cancelling mode and it will effectively bring back the noise, i.e. pauses the noise cancellation. At work, a busy office with about 100 PCs, turning on the noise cancelling feature immediately blocked out the noise. Doing this, without listening to music is amazing, it's just amazing how much white noise surrounds us. Noise cancelling is geared more towards blocking out white noise than voices, still, I'm pleased to say that a particularly annoying talkative lady on my floor was blocked out by the headphones! Even people near me are cancelled out when I have music on and the noise cancelling feature switched on. I love these headphones so much! On the tube, the feature makes an amazing difference, it blocks so much of the background noise out, not all, but, switching the circuitry on and off shows how much improvement is made. On a recent trip to portugal I used these on the way over there. The headphones did their job very well and made for a pleasant journey. Sadly, my MP3 player battery died on the way back, but, I decided to keep the headphones in and noise cancelling on since it worked so well.

The unit looks quite nice and battery life is around 15 hours with a good quality battery. My only gripe is that the headphones do not have an inline volume control but, despite this, the sheer greatness of the noise cancelling feature more than makes up for this.

The headphones are supplied with small pouch (made of felt) and an adaptor for use on aircraft. I can recommend these headphones with no hesitation. They're small and light, they work magic, they block out nearby voices and background noise and music sounds great on them. They are one of the best purchases I've made. £60 may seem like a lot for headphones, but, they really do their job very very well. 

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