13 out of 14 people found this review helpful.
On the Border
Date of Review: Apr 6, 2002
The Bottom Line: Excellent product for every day use; you'll never believe how much noise to which you were once subjected. But a bit pricey.
I must admit that I'm still on the 30-day trial period (I've had them for almost three weeks now).
First of all, as a college student, plunking down 334 simoleons (including tax and S/H) for a pair of headphones seems like a lot. I was very excited to receive them and tried them on almost immediately. I first tried them without any music playing through them and was surprised at how much ambient noise I previously had to deal with.
By the way, don't expect 100% sound cancellation. You just won't get it, because the QCs aren't supposed to cancel speech and doesn't do well canceling high-frequencies. However, as soon as you play a low- to medium-level of music through the QCs, nearly *everything* is canceled. Thus, you can get near-100% cancellation if you play music through them.
If you work or live in an environment with bothersome ambient noise, these headphones might be for you. Of course, there are other styles of headphones, specifically ear-bud types. Personally, I am uncomfortable with shoving a device into my ear, as it becomes physically uncomfortable very quickly. I had a pair of headphones that rested on my ear and those, too, were very uncomfortable. In terms of comfort, the Bose QCs are wonderful. Honestly, I frequently forget that I have them on when I try to get out of my seat(and inadvertently pull on the wires).
Which brings me to a con. The wires. The QCs have a battery pack and a mandatory input wire attached to the battery pack. Thus, at minimum, you have a wire going from your belt to your head. Then, if you connect them to an input source, you have another wire from there to the belt. It just seems nonsensical that I can't remove the battery pack's input wire when I don't want to do anything but cancel noise.
I don't like the fact that the headphones must be in "noise canceling" mode because I'd like to be able to use them if the batteries go dead.
Still, the sound reproduction sounds excellent, to me. Bass reproduction is phenomenal, as is to be expected from Bose, but I personally feel that the QCs don't deal with 8kHz+ treble too well. Sometimes I hear distortion with those frequencies. I will admit, however, that this could be due to the QCs reproduction of distortion from the source itself (typically 128kbps MP3s). Thus, in terms of sound reproduction of high-treble, I'm not exactly sure if it's Bose's fault or not.
I have to say that I do feel like the product itself was engineering well. As a computer engineer, and an engineer in general, I appreciate quality manufacturing. It feels like Bose put effort into its product, greatly increasing my personal user experience. If you don't have the ability to distinguish (or don't care) between high-quality and low-quality products, then the QC's quality might not be a factor.
I think that you need to judge for yourself if the QCs are worth the $300 price tag. I highly suggest these if:
1) you enjoy quality products (Mercedes-Benz included :-) )
2) you want to cancel ambient noises with comfort
3) you want excellent sound reproduction
Don't buy these if you don't have a problem with earbuds, because I think that there are earbud products that do nearly the same as the QCs at a considerably lower cost.
