The best noise-cancelling headphones

We found the perfect pair for tuning out everything, from jet engines to Jeremy in accounting.

EVERY YEAR,

NOISE CANCELLING HEADPHONES BECOME MORE VALUABLE. e background noises in life are getting louder, or at least more annoying. Chalk it up to the mainstream adoption of shared workspaces, remote work, and – Christ

– open oor plans. Blame it on to the growing amount of people who deem it acceptable to host conference calls in cafes or bachelor parties on planes.

For years, Bose headphones have cancelled outside noise so e ectively that the only real reason to look elsewhere was if the

~R5k price tag was too high. But over the last few years, everyone has put out headphones with active noise cancellation (ANC), giving you more options for reducing the world around you to a quiet hum.

e best noisecancelling headphones block out external noise so that they can feed well-balanced and clear audio – ideally, at lower volumes. Less distractions are nice, but reducing the decibels hitting your ear drums is critical. ey’re not going to look back in 50 years and say we should have been listening to headphones louder.

Most people who own noise-cancelling headphones wear them for hours every day, so comfort, battery level, and design are important factors to consider, too.