Philips SHB9850NC Wireless Noise Cancelling Bluetooth Headphone (Activeshield Pro, NFC) - Black

If noise cancelling is used with the Bluetooth connection there is a buzzing/interference sound in the right ear. This isn't present if you use noise cancelling with the wired connection, or if you use Bluetooth with NC switched off. It seems like the Bluetooth electronics are causing interference that gets picked up by the noise cancelling hardware. Perhaps there is a lack of shielding between the NC and BT hardware or something. I wondered if it was just the unit I received that was faulty, but other reviewers seem to be reporting the same thing, so this looks to be a design flaw.If you only expect to use NC with the wired connection (e.g. on a flight) then this might not be a big deal for you (the much hyped Bose QC25 has no Bluetooth support after all).I didn't like the touch controls. It might be possible to get used to them, but in the short time I tried it I just found them to be extremely awkward to use and far too easy to trigger accidentally.Sound quality seemed to be acceptable. I am not an audiophile though.The noise cancelling works ok with a wired connection. Was able to dampen the noise from traffic and office air conditioning reasonably well. I briefly compared the NC with a friend's Plantronics Backbeat Pro, and the Plantronics perhaps did a slightly better job (The Plantronics is overall a much better product, but I find it to be too big to the practical for travel).Build quality is fine but the shiny plastic would show up fingerprints and scratches quite easily. I did like the fact the headphones can be folded for transport.To test out the internal microphones I tried calling Skype test call service. The recorded sound quality was quite poor.Overall, this product seems to have been pushed out to market with serious flaws. Not worth £130 in my opinion. I sent mine back. I will probably try the Sony MDR-ZX770BN (currently £100).

I decided to get some noise cancelling headphones after my brother got a pair of Bose Quite-comfort 25 headphones; but the Bose is just a bit too expensive for me. After much reading of reviews online Philips noise cancelling was suggested as being middle of the road and good value for money, so I thought I'd give these ago.The sound reproduction is great and reproduces everything from bass to treble excellently and is very comfortable to ware on the ears and are light weight. The touch controls are a nice feature and work well, you have to use slow movements for reliable operation swipe to fast and it wont recognise the gesture.For the noise cancelling I downloaded some noise effects of in plane noise and office background and I can confirm that the Philips noise cancelling does work well. Background noise becomes reduced to the point where is is barely noticeable and the music can be heard clearly.The only difference between the Bose and these that I can tell subjectively is a bit of mid range hiss with the noise cancellation on, but you can only really hear this without music playing or during quite bits; it is definitely better than background noise.I'm more than happy to recommend them.

I bought these partly to help me deal with annoying loud neighbours and partly because I've fancied a pair of decent noise cancelling headphones for ages but laughed at spending £300 on 'the best'. At first I was really pleased with these. I think they are pretty reasonably styled but not too boring; the touch panel was useful and gimmicky at the same time; they sounded pretty decent to my ears; The noise cancelling works very well - yes you get some high freq. hiss but that's an inherent issue with almost all noise cancelling headphones. I never had any issues pairing and connecting the bluetooth with my budget android phone. I think the sound quality over BT is very good. I never bothered with the wired connection option. If like some others you experience hissing/noise etc from one side of the headphones its very likely a software issue with your phone/BT chipset, not the headphones.The first design flaw for me was comfort. I think the ear cups are not deep enough and there is an odd block of plastic that seems to protrude from inside the earpiece/loudspeaker that pressed against my ear when wearing. After about 30mins of use this became quite uncomfortable.The second design flaw is inexcusable. The headband is kind of designed in three pieces. The middle part is very stiff and doesn't flex much. On both sides it connects to the rest of the headphone with two small screws into plastic that clearly isn't up to the job of regular use. When you 'pull' the headphones apart to simply place over your head, too much stress goes through this weak connection every time...until it snaps after 4 months in my case.I've returned to the seller and now looking for an alternative set at a similar price.

This headset does exactly what I bought it for - great for commuting and the noise cancelling is pretty good as well. I love the wireless capability and also the inbuilt touch control. However, after a couple of months there started to be some interference in my left earphone when the noise cancelling is on. It is getting to the point that I might not be able to keep using them. I am assuming that this might be a manufacturing default, as I always took pretty good care of them.