I will be doing a good amount of international travel in a month and have been looking for some headphones in the $300ish range with solid ANC. I have a pair of AirPods Pro, and they are just alright on flights as far as ANC goes, and I don’t want to deal with charging them every few hours.
I went around to multiple local Best Buys to try out the Bose QC45, Sony XM4, and Sony XM5, and was honestly very disappointed. All three of them only had a tiny change between ambient mode and ANC mode. I also had the same experience with a pair of Bose 700s in all ANC modes. I could still clearly hear customer and employee conversations going on around the store, and I could hear my partner talking next to me, all with none of the demo music playing. I tried out my AirPods Pro immediately after each one and was able to cut out significantly more noise. This experience was the same at each of the Best Buys I went to, and I went to multiple hoping that the first Best Buy just had broken demo units maybe.
One of the Best Buys had a pair of Airpods Max to try, those also cut out significantly more noise.
I have seen nothing but praise for how good the ANC is on all of these Bose and Sony headphones, I would expect them to at least be as good as AirPods, I have tried a family member’s XM3s a few years ago and was absolutely blown away by how good the ANC was. Do these demo units just suck? I don’t really want to spend $300 just to find out, but I cannot think of another reason.
It depends what part of the frequency range you’re comparing. E.g. WH1000XM4 vs Airpod Pro 2s: https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/sony/wh-1000xm4-wireless#test_423
https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/apple/airpods-pro-2nd-generation-truly-wireless#test_423WH1000XM4 isolate best at around the 40-50Hz region, Airpod Pros do much better than the Sonys in the mid range region where voices predominantly are
My advice: stick with your Airpod Pros. I dont think any over ear ANC options will be a worthwhile use of your money and many will have worse sound quality
The main benefit for me at least is comfort. I would not want to be on an airplane for many hours with in-ears (I have XM4)
It could come down to tips. I have a pair of denon pearl pro, anc with stock tips is okish, but when I replaced the tips with some other ones that came from god knows where, they isolate really well. Haven’t really rested the xm5 but it’s been praised for its anc. I’ll try them out tomorrow at my best buy.
The ANC on my AirPods Pros recently stopped working right again. I’ve RMA’d them a few times and they are out of warranty now. I’m definitely not buying another pair from Apple. Even when they worked perfectly they were not that great.
