Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

These headphones are pricey, so you expect them to be amazing. And they are. The effect of cancelling out the drone of an airplane engine or central air unit is, to me, well worth the price. As for sound quality, there are two caveats. I'm not an audiophile in the strict sense, but the reproduction of the highs and lows is superb while the mids may be just the tiniest bit overshadowed. I love the sound... when they noise cancellation is ON, or when it is in AWARE mode (more on that later). However, when the noise cancellation is OFF, or the unit is unpowered, the lows tend to be muddy and exaggerated. Quality definitely suffers when they noise cancellation is turned off. They're still fairly good, just not the crisp sound you get when they're on. The other caveat is that, when noise cancellation is on, there is an audible hiss. That's the white noise that blocks out the ambient sound of the world. You'll love going from a noisy plane or train to just this quiet hiss, but sometimes the hiss the actually louder than my environment. In that case, I'd choose to turn noise cancellation off but that leaves the muddy, overpowered lows. So that's the dilemma: when it's quiet you have to choose between a white hiss and muddy lows. When it's loud, these are amazing headphones. When it's quiet... they're just really good. As for "Aware" mode, it's kind of odd. I found that the full noise cancellation was actually more capable at drowning out voices than I was expecting (namely my two-year-old daughter whose voice is fairly sing-song and high-pitched). Aware mode allowed me to hear her, but her voice was mechanical and artificial sounding. The noise that "aware" mode allows through is sufficient to keep you aware of your surroundings, but the sound it does allow through is strange and unfamiliar. Still, "aware" mode is a better choice than turning noise cancellation off because the muddy lows are not present. For what it's worth, I'm quite happy so far with these headphones. I've only had them for three days (Best Buy stocked them early by mistake), so if my opinion changes I will be back to edit this post.