The best headphones we've tested and reviewed

The best headphones we've tested and reviewed

Summary

Noise-cancelling headphones have become almost an essential everyday item for many of us, whether they're used to isolate you on your morning commute or drown out the drone of an aeroplane jet engine.

The best headphones we've tested and reviewed
The best headphones we've tested and reviewed

by suki.wang@dgbosta.com

Noise-cancelling headphones have become almost an essential everyday item for many of us, whether they're used to isolate you on your morning commute or drown out the drone of an aeroplane jet engine.

With so many pairs now being available finding the best pair for your ears is no easy task. Some pairs will have more effective noise cancellation, while others will sound better - finding the middle ground can be tricky.

We've rounded up our favourite pairs and picked out what we believe to be the best pair money can currently buy, to make the decision whole lot easier.

Sony has updated the 1000X headphones 3 years in a row, taking an approach as aggressive to with product launches as it is with cutting out external noise. Design tweaks add quality and refinement to these headphones, while a new and more powerful chip provides the grunt to cancel out more noise.

The results are sensational, with the 1000XM3 not only sounding great as a set of headphones, but also being some of the most effective at combatting noise. The offer Google Assistant on a button press, but that's about the only weakness of this increasingly smart pair of headphones. Google Assistant might not work well, but the optimisation options really do.


Think of noise-cancelling headphones and chances are you'll think of Bose. The company's QuietComfort range is known the world over for being the crème de la crème in noise-cancellation technology. The QuietComfort 35 is the latest pair in the company's arsenal, going wireless for the first time. 

This second-generation pair of the QC 35 are the exact same as the pair that wowed us in 2016, save for a new dedicated button for launching Google Assistant. The new button lets you launch Google Assistant and give it commands or ask it questions, or basically any other command you'd ask Google Home. Android users naturally get more benefits than iPhone users, although owners of both can have incoming notifications read out through the headphones.

While we can really sing about the noise-cancellation offered by the Bose pair, we feel the sound quality lacks a little compared to the pair from Sony. Nevertheless, they're still a fantastic pair of noise-cancelling headphones.