Design: The design of Sony’s noise canceling headphones is great! I find myself using them every day, whether it is watching a You Tube video, listening to music, or just wearing them to block out sound from the background so I can concentrate on my work. These headphones are available at Sam’s Club for around $35, but expect to fork out an extra 3 dollars or so for tax. The items include: the Sony headphones, a plug adapter for flying (for listening to movies or such, I thought it was a European plug until I read the back of the packaging), and 1 AA battery (in order to use the noise canceling feature, but they do still work even if you don’t have the battery in). I found the hatch to open up the battery compartment slightly hard to find, but I’ll give you directions for how to insert the battery: First you must push the left earphone down halfway, then press down on the “Open” button, and pull up, and you know the rest. The design looks very sleek and “retro”, but quite a change from my Maxwell noise canceling headphones, which are silver, while Sony’s is a type of coal gray. I’m used to using in-the-ear headphones, so it took some getting used to. The headphones are coal gray around where the actual headphones go, with silver in the middle. The rest is black.

Performance: The performance of Sony’s headphones is great, but I’m not sure if they’re a liable competitor against the Bose Quiet Comfort headphones, which I’ve never used. The headphones produce pretty good sound quality, but I haven’t listened to any deep bass songs using them, so that may not be a clear opinion. But I have listened to songs using them with a lot of treble, so that IS a clear opinion.

Like all noise canceling headphones, they tend to drain the battery on your laptop or music player a lot faster than the in-the-ear version. But, they do produce a more clear sound and better sound quality, so that’s kind of a problem more for you to work out. The sound quality is also excellent when listening to someone talking, such as watching a video review on You Tube. Already, as I’m typing, my battery was at 80%, and 5 minutes into a song it’s a 54% remaining, but that happens with my laptop computer whenever I’m listening to something using in-the-ear headphones, too. So the sound quality: Very good for some in-expensive sound canceling headphones, after looking online, they’re some of the cheapest sound canceling headphones ever. Now that may sound like I’m saying they’re not that good, but they are a pretty good pair of headphones, unless you own the Bose Quiet Comfort headphones, which are $300 and more. I’m not saying that they ARE cheap, just cheaper compared to the other sound canceling headphones I’ve looked at before. After listening to videos and music with good audio, and with the background noise switch turned to “On”, it sounds great, even with a TV blaring in the background. I’m watching a video tutorial over the iPad while I’m typing this sentence, and it sounds great! The quality is crystal clear (as I said before), just like watching (or listening to) a Blu-ray movie or an HD TV show, right over your ears.