Must have for long-haul travellers (Sony MDR-NC 5)

Member Name: HassledDad

Product:	Sony MDR-NC 5
Date:	04/01/04 (733 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent for noisy environments, Good for Film dialogue or music

Disadvantages: Do not isolate you completely, Sound is a little short of 'hi-fi'

These are pretty effective noise-cancelling headphones. If you want to listen to music or film dialogue in a noisy environment like a long-haul flight, these will do the job nicely. However, if you want headphones for listening in quiet environments, there are better choices, and if you just want to block out noise, earplugs are cheaper.

They are operated by a single 1.5V AAA battery that mounts just above the right hand earpiece, and there is a switch on the RH earpiece for turning them on or off. They work as conventional headphones when turned off, though the sound quality is not great. Turn them on and you get better sound quality plus noise cancellation. Battery life seems to be good, but I can?t say I have systematically measured it. When not in use, they fold up fairly small (approximately 14cm by 8cm by 5cm max) and they come with a little carry bag.

How well does the noise cancellation work? In a noisy environment like an airplane or the London Underground, it produces a very significant reduction in background noise but it by no means completely eliminates it. Also, if someone in the seat beside you is talking, you can still hear them.

As I said earlier, if just want noise reduction, foam earplugs are cheaper, possibly more effective and certainly more comfortable for sleeping. However, unlike earplugs, the headphones cannot push ear-wax onto your eardrums.

What makes these headphones well worth carrying onto long plane trips is that you can comfortably listen to music. If you are watching a film with airline headphone, you have the choice between hearing almost no dialogue or deafening yourself but still hearing only every other word. With these, you can not only hear every word, provided of course the actors are not mumbling! Another bonus is the headphones are virtually inaudible to anyone except the person wearing them.

If you use them in a quiet environment, you will hear some background hiss that comes
from the headphones themselves. But using them in a quiet environment is not what they are intended for, and if this is what you want, buy something else, perhaps the Sennheiser HD497s I have also reviewed in dooyoo.

In summary I recommend these as being valuable to frequent long-haul fliers, or people who want to listen to music on noisy trains like the London tube. If you have the misfortune to do frequent long haul travel for a company too stingy to pay for buisness class, you should buy a pair. But for other purposes, there are better alternatives.

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