There's a great price on them on Drop ($150) at the moment, and I have been considering a good pair of Automatic Noise Cancelling (ANC) over the ear headphones for a while.

I understand that at lower price points Anker Soundcore Q30 or Q35 are very good, But Anker is a Chinese company. NAD is of English origin with current headquarters in Canada.

I'm not willing to spend the +/-$300 on the Bose 700 or Sony WH 1000, so $150 or so is my upper limit. I know that there are a bunch of dedicated Bose ANC users on here. If I didn't care about price, I'd be buying the Sony, and may cowboy up and still do so.

Due to the shape of my inner ear, "in ear" buds or headphones won't work for me, they always fall out with any movement at all, and I don't find "on ear" designs comfortable for any length of time, so notwithstanding the heat and "enclosure" issues with over the ear, they really are the only option for me.

Any experience or thoughts?

Thanks very much for any help or insight you can offer.

I have the Bose ANC and I love them. You are correct it's a pretty good chunk of change to lay out, however I will almost always buy reconditioned units. The warranty is the same and sometimes you can hit a pretty good price reduction.

They arrives today. Not fully charged yet so I can't do a full review, but oh my God... The sound, the isolation, the clarity.... I think I'm in heaven.

quote:

Originally posted by ArtieS:
They arrives today. Not fully charged yet so I can't do a full review, but oh my God... The sound, the isolation, the clarity.... I think I'm in heaven.

I received the Sony WH1000mx4's recently and finally tweaked my Custom EQ settings. I was listening to them just yesterday and thinking almost the same as your comments above. In fact they were so good that they've almost replaced the Sennheiser PXC 550's and moved to the top of the pile, even slightly knocking out the QC-35's in noise cancelling. I purchase mostly for the sound quality over the noise cancelling feature as they are mainly for home use listening to music. I do use them with the active noise cancelling feature when the lawn guys are running their mowers, I can appreciate this feature. Though they're may be corded phones that will edge the sound quality, I like the freedom of bluetoof.

Good to hear your comments about the Nad's, I'm always interested in good gear. I noticed the your comment about the Sony's in the OP, so I thought I'd step in with a comment since I had similar thought's about the Sony's just yesterday.

When I did my research a couple of years ago, here and many, many reviews, Bose was the champ in all categories but I knew I wasn't going to use them that often and went with a cheaper runner up. I couldn't be happier with my AKG's

https://www.amazon.com/AKG-Can...d=1629466534&sr=8-10