Could cancel out Red Sox fans boo'ing A-Rod (not that you'd want to.)
Written: Apr 19 '04 (Updated Apr 19 '04)
Product Rating:
Pros: Sound great, feel great, cancel great, are just great.
Cons: If the noise canceling battery dies, the headphones die, but battery lasts 30 hours.
The Bottom Line: The best set of noise canceling headphones you can purchase. They started working on the technology in 1976 and it’s clear that they’ve put tons of sweat into it.
zoogelsnof's Full Review: Bose QuietComfort® 3 Acoustic Noise Cancellin...
Sorry I haven’t written anything in awhile, I’ll be honest, I got bored, there was nothing new and exciting to test and listen to…until I got my hands on a pair of these babies.
Why?or: I tell you how much I love you guys
These headphones are new, and they’re big, and they’re important. I really should have reviewed them even sooner, but there is no Bose store near me, so it took awhile for me to get to a pair. I cajoled, promised, threatened, and begged the store owner to let me borrow a pair for a round trip flight from Boston to Los Angeles that I was taking over the weekend to go to a friends wedding. After much crying begging pleading and a $300 deposit (in case I ran off with them), he agreed to the Friday-Monday loan. Now let me tell you that I returned those headphones only incredibly reluctantly because, frankly, I don’t have enough money to just throw away $300, even on something as awesome as these. These are the biggest things to happen to headphones since the Sennheiser PX 100 /200 sequence
Testing EnvironmentOr: NO MORE CD’S!!! EVER! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
I’ve moved up on the world after my stupid CD player kept breaking, to a Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox Zen Extra (how’s that for a long name?) Listening to, “a bunch of R.E.M. songs I downloaded from Napster (paid for, legally) and what I call my, “drum mix” which is a CD full of awesome drum stuff from Roots to Cirque Du Soleil and random African tribal music, and a whole bunch of other MP3’s, I flew for 12 hours, I listened to damn near 30% of my entire collection.
Sound QualityOr: Wait..really? They really sound this good? No kidding…
There is a general rule amongst noise canceling headphones that you will pay for the noise canceling feature with lower quality sound, usually there is an annoying frequency of the music you’re listening to that they cancel out, or maybe they just cost the price of your average luxury car, and sound like your average Toyota. These not only sound great, but also cancel out a vast majority of airplane noise, and sounds awesome in all ways.
Bass
Amazing, simply amazing. The bass at all volume levels is perfect. It’s deep, it’s boomy, it’s powerful, but not overpowering, and it just sounds fantastic. I love drums, I absolutely love them, and this does them proper justice. There simply isn’t anything else to say about them, they’re exemplary.
Mids
If these have a weakness, which they don’t, it’s in the middle range. I don’t know why but they always sounded a touch, a tiny touch, too faint. I’d actually be more likely to chock this up to my audiophile nature then a true flaw in the headphones, but sometimes I wish they were just about a Db fuller in sound.
Highs
I run out of words to say awesome when everything is so awesome. So I leave you with that: awesome. They sound exactly how they should sound…I really can’t give them any higher compliment. They do justice to Josh Groban’s voice (he hits some really gorgeous high notes).
Noise CancelingOr: Remember why you bought them in the first place?
It works! There is no other way to say it. It works in two ways: first these are ear encompassing closed headphones, which immediately knocks out a lot of the noise. Second, they have the noise canceling circuitry. I’m not going to get into a long explanation of how it works, because frankly it doesn’t really matter how, it just matters that it does. There is one AAA battery in the headband with an, “on/off” switch on the left ear cup and a, “high/low” switch on the headband. I remember putting these on during my flight and being impressed first by how much noise was canceled simply by putting them on. Then I flicked the, “on” switch while it was set to low, and there was a definite, perceivable lowering of the remaining outside noise. I then kicked it up to, “high” and again the noise dropped even lower to the point that it was almost spooky to realize that I was still on the airplane. The hum never goes away completely, but the hum that remains is almost the noise that comes through the vibrations of the chair and into your body instead of the audio hum that goes throughout the plane. One tiny downside is that the headphones die if the noise canceling battery dies, apparently it’s all hooked up in one circuit (this applies even if you turn the noise canceling off) but luckily you do get 30 hours from one AAA battery, so it’s really not that big a deal.
ComfortOr: Just one more reason these are so awesome.
These fit well, are very comfortable, very well built, and I wore them for all 6 hours of that long lonely flight without once feeling the need to take them off. They are manual adjusting with a nicely padded headband and nicely padded ear pads.
Extra FeaturesOr: Extra Features!
These have a removable cord, for which I will love them forever. Removable cords are huge for me, because the number of times I’ve broken a cord and then had to throw away the entire headset is up around 3, which may not sound like a lot, but when you’re talking about a combined $500, it suddenly becomes more important. It terminates to a gold plated (that was nice of them!) mini adapter, but also comes with a quarter inch adapter, and (this is really cute) they have the dual-prong-plane-exclusive-annoying-as-hell-who-would-ever-design-a-headphone- jack-that-looks-like-that adapter. They also provide, I don’t know why, an extension cord. Go figure.
OverallOr, I run out of clever, “secondary” titles to give to sections
(Note, as always, this is related to price, so it’s not the sound related to the best sound in the world, but sound related to other headphones that cost around $300.)
Sound: A
Comfort: A
Durability: A
Noise Canceling: A
Overall: A
The best set of noise canceling headphones you can purchase. They started working on the technology in 1976 and it’s clear that they’ve put a lot of very real effort into it.
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