Bought these headphone because i have heard them before and also liked the fact that they are noise canceling. The noise canceling works really well on low frequency sounds like plane engines and car noise. Used these just yesterday on a 3 hours car trip with noise canceling on and it creates a sense of space making you feel very comfortable, when i eventually took the headphones off the road noise was deafening because i didn't realize how well they canceled the sound :) To listen to music when noise canceling is not important to me i always use the bypass method as it gives much better detail to the music and is a pleasure to listen too

I got these as an early Christmas present and wore them for the first time on a 14 hour flight from Australia to Argentina, the comfort factor was exceptional I never took them off and even slept in them, the noise reduction provided made the flight so much more comfortable.

Every time I flew I used these headphones on the flight to listen to music, watch films etc. to pass the time but never for just 'noise cancelling'. I am really pleased with the quality of sound. However, I recently did a red-eye flight and wanted to sleep, so I unplugged the lead and switched on the headphones and used them for just noise-cancelling and I was amazed at how good they were. They were very comfy with the head strap tilted forward to allow you to lay back on a pillow or to the side of the headrest without them being knocked off your ears. As regards 'noise-cancelling' I didn't know what to expect as this is the first pair I've owned, and in my ignorance I thought that it would be like wearing industrial earplugs and you wouldn't be able to hear anything at all . . . and therefore I wasn't expecting how much you actually could hear. At first I didn't think they were going to work very well and I was starting to feel anxious that I had spent all that money on a sub-standard product. How wrong I was. You could hear everything that you needed to hear (albeit not crystal clear - as that is the whole point of the things) but the drone of the engines and the constant background hum was gone. In fact, I fell asleep (which I have never been able to do before on an airplane) and had a decent kip. I am very impressed with these and am so pleased that I invested the money in them and I truly believe I have bought a great product.

I bought these recently and have been really disappointed. I don't understand why such an expensive set of a active noise cancelling headphones would have such poor passive cancellation. I ended up just going back to using my Sennheiser HD-280s (passive). I found them to have better sound, noise reduction and no hassle with batteries. I even took the 450's back to the distributor as I thought my set must have been faulty, unfortunately no. I am a sound engineer, own 9 sets of headphones, and am pretty much a sennheiser loyalist, but please take my advice - stear clear of these!