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The 5 best noise canceling headphones for 2024 cost as little as $99
Soundcore, Bose
The best noise canceling headphones — as their name suggests — do a marvelous job getting rid of ambient noise, so you can focus on the audio you really want to hear. This might be sound from a TV show or movie, your favorite music, the latest episode of a podcast, or even a popular audiobook.
Audio from the best headphones sound lifelike and immersive, but there are other benefits to noise cancellation: It can be used on its own, so you can eliminate any and all sounds that surround you and just bliss out in near total silence. Plus, since noice canceling headphones have built-in microphones, they also deliver clear, hands-free calls via your smartphone, tablet, smart watch or computer.
Some people find headphones too bulky to carry around, or don’t like wearing them for extended periods. In this case, we recommend a premium pair of noise canceling wireless earbuds.
The best noise canceling headphones
For the best listening, our in-house consumer technology experts recommend headphones from a well-known audio brand that also has a reputation for pushing the limits of what active or adaptive tech can offer.
We also suggest headphones that offer a long battery life and additional features, like spatial audio with dynamic head tracking or Dolby Atmos support. Don’t forget to look for headphones that come with a carrying case — all the better for stress-free travel. Whatever your budget, you can easily find a quality pair of headphones that’ll make audio sound truly immersive.
Best noise canceling headphones overall: Bose QuietComfort Ultra
Bose
Battery Life: Up to 24 hours | Weight: 0.56 pounds | Driver Size: Not disclosed by Bose | Microphones: 12 | Case: Included | Special Features: Supports Bluetooth 5.3; Superior noice cancellation; Customizable sound via Bose Music app
With the launch of its QuietComfort Ultra headphones, Bose has upped its already-impressive noise cancellation reputation. The model also makes audio more customizable via the Bose Music mobile app.
Another major new feature: support for spatial audio. This makes audio sound more immersive — as if it’s emanating from all around you. If you’re listening to music, it’ll sound more like you’re in the middle of a live show. If you’re watching a battle scene in an action movie, it’ll sound as if you’re actually on the field.
We also like the plush ear cups and headband, which make these headphones extremely comfy, even for extended listening sessions. Battery life is up to 24 hours, but there’s a quick-charge feature. Just a 15-minute charge adds up to two hours of listening time — with the immersive audio feature turned on.
The QuietComfort Ultra headphones work with any Bluetooth smartphone, tablet or computer. They’ll also pair with any Bose TV soundbars to allow for private TV viewing and listening. When it comes to hands-free audio calls, the dozen integrated microphones ensure your voice is heard clearly, while ambient noise is eliminated. This makes the headphones ideal for an office, a commute, or just sitting at home relaxing.
Best budget noise canceling headphones: Soundcore Space One
Soundcore
Battery Life: Up to 40 hours | Weight: 9.1 ounces | Driver Size: 40mm | Microphones: 3 | Case: Not included | Special Features: LDAC Hi-Res audio support; 8-degree floating axis design; Reduces 2x more crowd noise (up to 98%) compared to previous versions; Fast Charge feature; Bluetooth 5.3 support
In most cases, our in-house consumer tech experts advise against cheap noise canceling headphones, because that age-old phrase, “You get what you pay for” typically applies. That’s not the case, however, with the Soundcore Space One headphones.
Priced under $100, these headphones offer decent sound quality and impressive active noise cancellation for the price. Soundcore promises that these headphones can reduce ambient sound by up to 98%. But when you need to communicate with someone in the real world, you can select between five levels of transparency.
The Space One headphones offer 40mm drivers that support LDAC Hi-Res audio. So when compressed audio is being played, the headphones can capture up to three times more data than standard Bluetooth codecs, so you’ll hear more intricate nuance in whatever you’re listening to. You’ll also enjoy up to 40 hours of playtime with ANC turned on. A quick five-minute charge will keep the headphones functioning for up to four additional hours.
From a quality standpoint, these headphones don’t compare to what you get from premium brands like Bose, Sony, Apple, or Bowers & Wilkins, so keep your expectations in check. After all, these headphones are less than one-third the price. What the Space One headphones do provide is a really good value with impressive sound quality for the money.
Best noise canceling headphones for music: Sony WH-1000XM5
Sony
Battery Life: Up to 30 hours | Weight: 8.82 ounces | Driver Size: 30mm | Microphones: 8 | Case: Included | Special Features: Supports Bluetooth 5.2; DSEE Extreme support; Hi-Res audio support; Integrated touch sensors for volume control
The WH-1000XM5s are Sony’s top-of-the-line consumer headphones. They offer superior noise cancellation, up to 30 hours of battery life and support for hi-res audio. These headphones also make hands-free calls sound crystal clear.
Keep in mind, while the WH-1000XM5 headphones support spatial audio, this feature can only be used with a supported streaming music service (such as Amazon Music Unlimited or Tidal); Sony PlayStation games; a “360 Reality Audio Certified Smartphone,” or a compatible Sony TV. You also need to use the Sony app to make use of spatial audio and to customize your listening experience.
One feature we love in these headphones is their support for DSEE Extreme. This tech upscales compressed digital audio files in real time to restore high-range sounds that would otherwise be lost to compression. Overall, the WH-1000XM5s does a superior job playing any type of music.
The headphones work well with spoken audio — whether it’s from a podcast, audiobook or hands-free phone call. And these headphones have an elegant form factor, so they’ll fit nicely in a work environment and can be used for hands-free calls, or when you just want to block out ambient noise.
Yes, these are expensive headphones, but you get the quality audio that Sony is known for. You’re also paying a slight premium for the Sony brand name.
Best noise canceling headphones for Apple users: Apple AirPods Max
Apple
Battery Life: Up to 20 hours | Weight: 13.6 ounces | Driver Size: 40mm | Microphones: 8 | Case: Covers just the ear cups | Special Features: Auto pairs with all Apple devices; Offers spatial audio with dynamic head tracking; Can be located using Apple’s Find My service; Functionality is built into the iOS, iPadOS and MacOS operating systems, so no special app is required
If you can get past the hefty price tag, you’ll be rewarded with amazing audio, adaptive noise cancellation and spatial audio with dynamic head tracking — amazing listening overall.
Whether you use these headphones with Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Podcasts or Apple Arcade, the audio will be clear and robust. In fact, this is the case with any audio, from virtually any source.
The AirPods Max are relatively lightweight and comfortable. But it’s the spatial audio with dynamic head tracking that makes them truly stand out, especially with supported movies or TV shows. These headphones also work with Apple’s Find My feature and will automatically pair with whichever Apple device you’re using, such as an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, MacBook, or iMac.
The one drawback is that these headphones come with a rubber housing that protects just the ear cups, not the headband, so you need to be careful when transporting them. And the ear cups are connected to the headband using magnets, without the casing to keep them in place, so they could fall off and get lost. What’s great about these headphones, however, is that they don’t require a special app. AirPods Max control features are incorporated into the operating systems for Apple devices. You also get intuitive onboard controls.
Best premium noise canceling headphones: Bowers & Wilkins Px8
Bowers & Wilkins
Battery Life: Up to 30 hours | Weight: 11.29 ounces | Driver Size: 40mm | Microphones: 6 | Case: Included | Special Features: Built-in wear detection sensor; Bluetooth 5.2 with aptX adaptive support; luxury design
When it comes to cars, you could drive a low-cost Mazda, or spend more for the unparalleled luxury of a Rolls Royce. Think of the Bowers & Wilkins Px8s as the ultimate in luxury listening option.
The Px8s come in your choice of black, tan or burgundy. Prepare to hear 24-bit audio that uses digital sound processing to eliminate distortion and enhance high-frequency detail. In fact, when you stream music or audio from the internet, these headphones decompress the audio in a way that allows you to hear far more detail.
While the headphones work to improve audio quality, the active noise cancellation feature simultaneously removes ambient sounds. This also applies when using the Px8 headphones for hands-free calls.
Sure, sound quality is essential, but the Px8s also focuses on comfort and appearance. The ear cups and headband are covered with napa leather and use memory foam to provide added comfort, while the metal (not plastic!) frame adds durability and a more sophisticated and premium appearance.
The Bowers & Wilkins Music app gives you maximum control over your listening experience. But if the almost $700 price point is too steep for your budget, the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S2e headphones are priced at $399 and offer also a truly impressive listening experience packed into a slightly less premium design.
What to look for in noise canceling headphones
Regardless of the brand name, design or price, what’s most important when it comes to headphones are sound quality, comfort and performance. Here are seven key things to consider:
- Design: The size, weight and shape of headphones contribute to their comfort level, but can also impact sound quality and the accessibility of onboard controls. Build quality contributes to their durability and overall performance.
- Driver size and audio quality: The larger the drivers in the headphones, the better the audio quality. That said, it’s the tech used in conjunction with the hardware that ultimately determines clarity, level of distortion and the overall quality of the sound. Features like hi-res audio, spatial audio and Dolby Atmos, along with digital signal processing capabilities all make a difference.
- Number of microphones: The microphones measure ambient sound, so the ANC technology can reduce or eliminate unwanted noise. The microphones also pick up your voice, so you sound clear on calls. In some cases, the microphones know that you’re speaking with someone close by, and automatically activate transparency mode. The more microphones built into the headphones, the better.
- Noise canceling technology and transparency mode: Active noise cancellation reduces or removes ambient sound. Adaptive tech adjusts the level of noise cancellation. Some headphones, like the Bose QuietComfort Ultra, let you manually adjust the level of noise cancellation.
- Battery life: The longer the battery life, the better. Seek out headphones that offer at least 15 hours of listening time per charge. You may also find a quick charge feature useful; plug the headphones into an external power source for just a few minutes to extend listening time by up to several hours.
- Mobile app: Except for Apple AirPods Max, most of the best headphones work with a free mobile app. The app often allows you to customize your listening experience, choose from a handful of audio presets, tweak the audio EQ, use transparency mode, or customize noise cancellation. This is usually in addition to the headphones’ onboard controls that may use buttons or dials. They might also be touch sensitive. The AirPods Max offer some of this functionality integrated into iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, MacBooks and iMacs, so a separate app is not needed.
- Special features: We recommend headphones that support features like spatial audio (or better yet, spatial audio with dynamic head tracking), Dolby Atmos support, or the ability to generate hi-res audio.
To learn all about the latest consumer tech, read in-depth product reviews, discover informative buyer’s guides for popular products and find the best deals, be sure to check out our constantly updated tech coverage.
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In 2000, Malcolm Gladwell published the first of several bestselling books, “The Tipping Point,” in which he applied the laws of epidemics to promote positive social change. Now, he’s returned to that optimistic book’s lessons in “Revenge of the Tipping Point” (to be published October 1 by Little, Brown & Co.), to examine the flip side of those theories.
The new book’s topics range from cheetah reproduction and the Harvard women’s rugby team to the Holocaust.
Read the excerpt below, and don’t miss David Pogue’s interview with Malcolm Gladwell on “CBS Sunday Morning” September 29!
“Revenge of the Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell
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In the 1970s, zookeepers around the world began to invest more and more resources in breeding their animal populations in captivity. The logic was clear. Why go to all the trouble of capturing animals in the wild? The growing conservation movement also favored breeding programs. The new strategy was a big success — with one big outlier: the cheetah.
“They seldom had offspring that survived, and many of them when put together couldn’t breed,” remembers the geneticist Stephen O’Brien, who was then working at the National Cancer Institute.
It didn’t make sense. The cheetah seemed a perfect example of evolutionary fitness: a massive nuclear reactor for a heart, the legs of a greyhound, a skull shaped like a professional cyclist’s aerodynamic helmet, and semi-retractable claws that, as O’Brien puts it, “grip the earth like football cleats as they race after their prey at sixty miles per hour.”
“It’s the fastest animal on earth,” O’Brien said. “The second fastest animal on earth is the American pronghorn. And the reason that it’s the second-fastest is that it was running from the cheetahs.”
The zookeepers wondered if they were doing something wrong, or whether there was something about the make-up of the cheetah that they didn’t understand. They came up with theories and tried experiments — all to no avail. In the end, they shrugged and said that the animals must be “skittish.”
Things came to a head at a meeting in 1980 in Front Royal, Virginia. Zoo directors from around the world were there, among them the head of a big wildlife-conservation program in South Africa.
“And he says, ‘Do you have anybody that knows what they’re doing scientifically?’ ” O’Brien remembers. ” ‘[To] basically explain to us why our breeding program of cheetahs in South Africa has something like 15 percent success while the rest of these animals — elephants and horses and giraffes — they breed like rats?’ “
Two scientists raised their hands — both colleagues of O’Brien’s. They flew to South Africa, to a big wildlife sanctuary near Pretoria. They took blood and sperm samples from dozens of cheetahs. What they found astonished them. The sperm counts of the cheetahs were low. And the spermatozoa themselves were badly malformed. That was clearly why the animals had such trouble breeding. It wasn’t that they were “skittish.”
But why? O’Brien’s laboratory then began testing the blood samples that had been sent to them. They had done similar studies in the past on birds, humans, horses, and domestic cats, and in all those cases the animals showed a healthy degree of genetic diversity: In most species, around 30 percent of sampled genes will show some degree of variation. The cheetah’s genes looked nothing like that. They were all the same. “I never saw a species that was so genetically uniform,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien’s findings were greeted with skepticism by his colleagues. So he and his team kept going.
“I went down to Children’s Hospital in Washington and I learned how to do skin grafts at a burn unit,” he said. “They taught me how to keep it sterile and how to take the . . . slices and how to suture it up and everything. And then we did [skin grafts on] about eight cheetahs in South Africa, and then we did another six or eight in Oregon.”
Winston, Oregon, was home to the Wildlife Safari, the largest collection of cheetahs in the United States at the time.
The idea was simple. If you graft a piece of skin from one animal onto another, the recipient’s body will reject it. It will recognize the genes of the donor as foreign. “It would blacken and slough off in two weeks,” O’Brien said. But if you take a patch of skin from, say, one identical twin and graft it onto another, it will work. The donor’s immune system thinks the skin is its own. This was the ultimate test of his hypothesis.
The grafts were small — one inch by one inch, sewn onto the side of the animal’s chest, protected by an elastic bandage wrapped around the cat’s body. First, the team gave some of the cheetahs a skin graft from a domestic cat, just to make sure the animals had an immune system. Sure enough, the cheetahs rejected the cat graft: It got inflamed, then necrotic. Their bodies knew what different was — and a domestic cat was different. Then the team grafted skin from other cheetahs. What happened? Nothing! They were accepted, O’Brien said, “as if they were identical twins. The only place you see that is in inbred mice that have been brother-sister mated for twenty generations. And that convinced me.”
O’Brien realized that the world’s cheetah population must have at some point been devastated. His best guess was that it happened during the great mammal die-off 12,000 years ago — when saber-toothed cats, mastodons, mammoths, giant ground sloths, and over thirty other species were wiped out by an ice age. Somehow the cheetah survived. But just barely.
“The numbers that fit all the data are less than one hundred, maybe less than fifty,” O’Brien said. It’s possible, in fact, that the cheetah population was reduced to a single pregnant female. And the only way for those lonely few cheetahs to survive was to overcome the inhibition that most mammals have against incest: Sisters had to mate with brothers, first cousins with first cousins. The species eventually rebounded, but only through the endless replication of the same narrow set of genes. The cheetah was still magnificent. But now every cheetah represented the exact same kind of magnificence.
From “Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering” by Malcolm Gladwell. Copyright © 2024 by Malcolm Gladwell. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group. All rights reserved.
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“Revenge of the Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell
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Pope Francis promised Saturday to “offer all the help we can” to aid clergy sexual abuse victims, after a group of Belgian survivors told him first-hand of the trauma that had shattered their lives and left many in poverty and mental misery.
Francis’ visit to Belgium has been dominated by the abuse scandal, with King Philippe and Prime Minister Alexander De Croo both blasting the Catholic Church’s dreadful legacy of priests raping and molesting children and its decades-long cover-up of the crimes.
Francis met for more than two hours late Friday with 17 survivors who are seeking reparations from the church for the trauma they suffered and to pay for the therapy many need. They said they gave Francis a month to consider their requests, which the Vatican said Francis was studying.
“There are so many victims. There are also so many victims who are still completely broke,” survivor Koen Van Sumere told The Associated Press. “I have also been lucky enough to get a diploma and build a life for myself. But there are so many people who are completely broke and who need help and who cannot afford it and who really need urgent help now.”
NICOLAS MAETERLINCK/POOL/BELGA/AFP via Getty Images
Van Sumere said he was encouraged by the “positive” meeting with the pope, but was waiting to see what comes of it. The meeting itself was intense, victims said, “It was at certain moments very emotional and at certain moments it was very rough. When the pope was told things he did not agree with, he also let it be known so there was real interaction,” Van Sumere said.
He said he hoped as a first step that the pope would receive the victims at the Vatican in the spring during Holy Week. “And then we can not only celebrate the resurrection of Christ but perhaps also the resurrection of all victims in Belgium,” he said.
On Saturday, during a meeting with Belgian clergy and nuns at the Koekelberg Basilica, Francis acknowledged that the abuse scandal had created “atrocious suffering and wounds,” and undermined the faith.
“There is a need for a great deal of mercy to keep us from hardening our hearts before the suffering of victims so that we can help them feel our closeness and offer all the help we can,” he said.
He said the Belgian church must learn from victims and serve them. “Indeed, one of the roots of violence stems from the abuse of power when we use the positions we have to crush or manipulate others,” he said.
Francis has met with victims in the United States, Ireland and Canada, as well as in multiple occasions at the Vatican. He has cracked down on some bishops who failed to protect their flocks by passing new church rules on investigations and punishments. But the scandal has continued to fester, and Francis’ record is uneven, with several high-profile cases still pending or seemingly ignored.
Most galling to Belgians was that it took the Vatican 14 years to laicize Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, who admitted in 2010 to having abused his nephew for 13 years. Francis defrocked him in March in a move widely seen as attempting to remove a problem before his visit.
After the encounter, Francis went to the royal crypt in the Church of Our Lady to pray at the tomb of King Baudouin, best known for having refused to give a parliament-approved bill legalizing abortion his royal assent, one of his constitutional duties.
Baudouin stepped down for one day in 1990 to allow the government to pass the law, which he was required to sign, before he was reinstated as king.
Francis praised Baudouin’s courage when he decided to “leave his position as king to not sign a homicidal law,” according to the Vatican summary of the private encounter, which was attended by Baudouin’s nephew, King Philippe, and Queen Mathilde.
The pope then referred to a new legislative proposal to extend the legal limit for an abortion in Belgium, from 12 weeks to 18 weeks after conception. The bill failed at the last minute because parties in government negotiations considered the timing inopportune.
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Francis urged Belgians to look to Baudouin’s example in preventing such a law, and added that he hoped Baudouin’s beatification cause would move ahead, the Vatican said.
With the visit, Francis waded straight into Belgian politics and dragged the royal family along with him.
The royals are bound by strict neutrality and the palace immediately issued a statement distancing itself from the visit. The statement said the “spontaneous visit, on the pope’s request, was not part of the official program” and added the king and queen were there only “out of hospitality toward the pope.”
Francis started the day by having breakfast — coffee and croissants — with a group of 10 homeless people and migrants who are looked after by the St. Gilles parish of Brussels.
They sat around a table at the entrance of the parish church and told him their stories, and gave him bottles of beer that the parish makes, “La Biche de Saint-Gilles.” The proceeds of the beer sales help fund the parish’s charity works.
Francis thanked them for the beer and breakfast and told them that the church’s true wealth was in caring for the weakest.
“If we want to truly know and show the church’s beauty, we should give to one another like this, in our smallness, in our poverty, without pretexts and with much love.”
The breakfast encounter was presided over by Marie-Françoise Boveroulle, an adjunct episcopal vicar for the diocese. The position is usually filled by a priest, but Boveroulle’s appointment has been highlighted as evidence of the roles that women can and should play in the church.