I've had these for about 7 years now and during that time they have been thoroughly mistreated. Today, they still sound good as new and are in perfect working order which I think is pretty impressive.

The sound from these earphones is good for an in ear set, certainly far better than the earphones bundled with mp3 players. The bass is particularly impressive which is nice considering this is usually a very weak area for in ears but this does come at a price. With these earphones the bass does tend to overpower the mids and highs so if you're interested in earphones to listen to classical music or something else with a lot of range then these earphones aren't for you. If however you like metal or D n B then these will probably be right up your street. At this price range you're not going to get a set of earphones that do everything amazingly so get some that do you're favourite kind of music well.

I do however have some pretty big issues with the earbuds which seem to fall off at the slightest knock, always at the most convenient times. The amount of times I have had to apologetically retrieve one of them form under someone else's seat on the bus must be in the 100s. One good thing though is that if you do lose them Bose will send you new ones for free.

These earphones can go very loud; maybe that's what they mean by noise cancelling as they certainly don't exclude that much sound. The included carry case is very useful too.

Overall, you're probably paying a bit for the name but they are very reliable. If it wasn't for the earbud issues I'd definitely buy again but with that, I'm not so sure