Great product by Sennheiser!

R. S. on 10.12.2006

Great product for the money, use constantly in my job travelling internationally, took me nearly three years to break my first ones. I'm a repeat customer!

Makes travel less tiring

S. C. on 26.03.2006

Just used these on 747 flight to US and they worked as advertised. I realized that on previous trips using ordinary earbuds I had been cranking up the volume and arriving at my destination exhausted both from the engine noise and the loud music in my ear. These get rid of jet engine noise and allow me to play music or movies at reasonable sound levels. Sound quality improves after breaking them in with a few hours of initial use so don't worry if they seem slightly lackluster to begin with. Felt slightly tight fitting on my head, but not a serious problem. Note that the noise cancelling is quite useless for prop jet flights - but great for ordinary jets. Very good quality design and construction details.

Probably a good compromise

C. P. on 13.04.2006

I've owned three different noise cancelling headphones in the last year or so; two Sony models and this Sennheiser. From a strictly noise cancelling perspective, the original Sony pair that I owned were probably the best. These were in-ear phones that acted like earplugs and actually sealed out a lot of the high-frequency noise. This, combined with the active noise cancelling made them excellent in terms of reducing ambient noise. However, I always found them uncomfortable and they never really seem to fit properly in my ears. So when they were stolen, I used the insurance money to replace them with a different set of Sony noise cancelling headphones -- this time the ""street style"" phones. I found these very uncomfortable to wear and the noise cancelling was much less effective because these lacked the passive earplug-like nature of the previous set. So I sold them, and purchased these Sennheiser. One area that this new set are clearly superior to both Sony pairs is in terms of sound quality. Even though I suspect they aren't fully run in yet, they still sound very good with only one restriction -- if you switch off the noise cancelling feature, the sound quality drops massively. In particular, the bass almost completely disappears. This is consistent with other reviews that I've read on the Web. Since I bought these specifically for travel where I intend using the noise cancelling feature, this isn't really an issue for me that it is something you should be aware of. If you don't really need noise cancelling headphones then something like the Sennheiser PX -100 have markedly better sound quality for a lot less money. Other problems with the PXC-250s are that the noise cancelling unit which holds the batteries is comparatively bulky and heavy and you will need to find somewhere to put it! If you have lots of pockets, this is fine but otherwise you may need to clip it onto your belt or something like that. Also, these headphones don't work well with backpacks that include special audio player compartments and then have an outlet design for the headphones cable since the noise cancelling unit itself is too big to fit through these holes which therefore limits the amount of headphone cable that can reach from the backpack to the headphones themselves. Again, not a big issue if you don't intend using these headphones in that way but if you're somebody who commutes with one of these backpacks then it's something to definitely think about. Finally, and probably most seriously, the noise cancelling feature of these headphones is not necessarily brilliant. In particular, compared with my original Sony in-ear headphones, much less ambient noise is reduced, even in the low frequency range. I've also noticed a strange effect which also happened with my second set of Sony noise cancelling phones where a sort of vibration and distortion is introduced into the music. I'm pretty sure this is due to the noise cancelling somehow reacting with a particular type of ambient noise which then interferes with the music and this is something that is quite noticeable with certain sorts of music but it doesn't happen all the time. Since the same effect happened with the other pair (2nd Sony) of headphones, I don't believe this to actually be a fault of the headphones of sales but simply a consequence of the noise cancelling design. I wish I could be more specific about this problem because it doesn't happen all of the time but it does seem to happen a lot on a particular bus driving down a particular road -- I haven't experienced this problem listing to the headphones on trains or on other buses. In any case, if you're buying these for air travel then I don't think it should be an issue.

a noise in my head

G. G. on 18.04.2006

I like the sennheiser pxc250s,i was not disappointed .I just flu back from up north and they passed the big test ,i had to get a shuttle bus back from the airport and the driver was chewing gum and his denchers where clicking ,it was driving me nuts,thank god for the noise cancelling headphones

Good lightweight headphone for travel

R. P. on 16.07.2006

This headphone is great for frequent travellers. It is quite effective at lowering engine noise levels and allows the traveller to actually hear the movie feature they are watching. It has an 80% noise filter rate. I live in an area where lots of helicopters fly low and I find myself using this at home as often as I do than my other high quality sennheiser headphone. I like the pouch and the battery life - I've used it on a 12 hour flight and it looks like I can still use the batteries on my return. Overall, a good headphone at a reasonable price.