Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Edit: I've long since used these on an airplane, including a flight from Philadelphia to Tokyo. They did a miraculous job of filtering out the engine noise on the jet, making them even better than i praise them in the initial review below! ------- I thought that surely i'd be returning these with disappointment but thought affordable, active noise-canceling earbuds would be great if they worked so it was worth the risk. Not only do they work, they work like a miracle. I haven't used these on an airplane yet but i've been finding noisy stuff to test them around. My apartment's A/C is completely muted when these are on, in fact if i leave them on over the course of an hour i can only tell the A/C is on because air starts blowing on me. Normally i have to turn my TV up when it kicks on because the A/C is on the other side of the far wall with the air return vent visible from the couch. The dishwasher is reduced from its normal volume to a swishing sound, the collective sound of all the apartments in the courtyard outside simultaneously air conditioning is eliminated, and even the white noise generator my wife uses to sleep turns to silence. What these will NOT quiet are sudden noises and high-pitched noises. I've seen noise-canceling headphones that can handle sudden noises but these require the noise to be regular, so talking passes right through. When i run my Roomba, the vacuum motor's sound is removed by the headphones but the wheel motors make a high-pitched whine that gets through unphased. This is because they are earbuds so they can't insulate against high-frequency sounds like headphones can. These get 5 stars from me because they do what they say they will within the expected limitations of the materials used. I won't dock them points for not standing toe-to-toe with headphones that cost 10x as much. One word of caution: make sure the earbuds are firmly seated in your ears (so try the different sizes they provide to get the best fit) and you'll get more than what you pay for with these.