Most people prefer buying noise-cancelling headphones because they seem okay on paper. Of course, you should always buy headphones that come with lots of benefits.
However, you can always weigh their disadvantages too to get the best option in the market. Noise-cancelling headphones help you to obtain a quiet environment as you dive into your tunes.
Sometimes, all you need is a little bit of silence, now imagine a very long journey or flight without such music essentials. Whether you take a flight or train, you will always need such audio gadgets to give you some peace of mind.
Noise-cancelling headphones, mostly known as active noise-cancelling headphones, use a noise reduction technology to provide you with clear and less noise sound quality.
That said, what are the pros and cons of noise-cancelling headphones, right?
The best thing about buying noise cancelling headphones is that they help you block sounds from your immediate surrounding.
When you own noise-cancelling headphones, you don’t need to add some volume to avoid the external sounds. In other words, you can still reduce your music’s volume and obtain clear tunes even in a loud environment.
So, what does that mean?
You can still get better sounds for entertainment as you keep healthy. A noisy environment can cause serious health problems such as brain damage, hearing loss and cardiovascular diseases.
Do you live in a noisy environment or travel more often? If so, then you need to consider investing in this type of headphones.
In other words, with noise-cancelling headphones, your ears preserve their perfect health. Noise-cancelling headphones prove their worth when travelling on trains or aeroplanes.
Such means of transport often get associated with much noise and sometimes all you need is a good rest or sleep. Therefore, you can use noise-cancelling headphones to block unpleasant external noises.
Noise-cancelling headphones come handy especially when you need to focus on several tasks but the surrounding noise cannot allow you.
For instance, noise-cancelling headphones allow you to read, study, work or sleep without unpleasant sounds affecting your activities as you travel.
Everyone wants to enjoy their conversations, right? These headsets give you the freedom of talking comfortably on the phone when at home.
You don’t have to struggle with lots of “excuse me or please repeat” when there is a solution to that. Now, imagine a situation where you have to step outside to receive calls because the house is noisy.
In addition to that, with wireless noise-cancelling headphones at your disposal, you can move freely in your house as you talk receive calls.
The headphones can also help students, especially when studying in a noisy environment. With noise-cancelling headphones, students can concentrate on the things they need to grasp.
Additionally, noise-cancelling headphones help users to obtain the richness and variations in their tunes. The richness and variation in music usually disappear under higher volumes as you try to avoid surrounding noises.
This type of headphones harbours a noise-cancelling technology, hence costing more than standard headphones. In other words, due to their complexity, you need to pay more to cover for their manufacturing cost.
As much as they reduce external noises, they prove as an expensive option. You can buy its alternatives at a very low cost and still adjust your volumes to get rid off external noises. The noise cancellation feature needs to operate within the same circuitry with your audio drivers.
What does that mean?
It means that they can end up reducing your music’s audio quality as they work to reduce external noises. Since they carry other features that work with the noise cancellation feature, they can prove as heavy headphones.
For instance, many carry batteries and extra electronics so that they can provide you with noise-free audio. Therefore, these headphones do not suit loud and noisy environments like big rocks falling as well as gunshots.
These headsets make you forget that there is an environment around you. What does that mean, right? Imagine a situation where you let the music carry you completely, you cannot hear things like a car or train horns.
Therefore, these headphones may end up putting your life at risk.
Since they carry other electrical components, they consume more amount of power when compared with standard headphones. Some headphones get power from their internal batteries where some of them can be charged after use.
As said earlier, these headphones prove as bulky alternatives because some need batteries to power them. Standard headphones actually do not need to carry their own power since phones can provide the power needed.
In simpler terms, the more the features they include, the more the power needed to power those components. The worst thing you can ever experience with noise-cancelling headphones is when you still hear the noise.
As great as they seem, there is still some noise that passes under the radar of the noise cancellation technology. Yes, they block most of the sound, however, some noise still passes through.
Therefore, this is one of the pros and cons of noise-cancelling headphones. Last but not least, some of the users of this headset complain about a certain humming sound.
They hear the sound when they put them on to listen to their favourite songs or playlist. They describe the sound like an irritating one which causes them to feel some pressure on their eardrums.
Therefore, sensitive users end up using this type of headphones less or adjust to using them with such limitations.
Most people always look on the good side of things when buying headphones, which is fine. However, they also need to look at the other side of the headphones they want to buy.
Noise-cancelling headphones help to reduce or eliminate a portion of noise in your surroundings. Therefore, proving as great assets in noise reduction when listening to music.
Despite that, they also have their shortcomings. That said, before you buy one, make sure to look at the pros and cons of noise-cancelling headphones.
Noise-cancelling headphones were designed to accomplish one thing and one thing only– cancel noise, or at the very least, muffle it so much so that it becomes harmless. Every other thing they do is dependent on how well they can rid us of the noise.
But apart from the promise of relief and quiet that noise-cancelling headphones promise, what other benefits are there to it? What are the disadvantages that come with being able to “cancel’ noise and how much harm do these disadvantages cause us?
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In light of all these, it might be helpful to break down the pros and cons of owning and using a noise-cancelling headphone; that way current users can become more aware and more cautious while future users can become less naive and more prepared.
Pros
1. It helps to boost your concentration
Noise does more harm to your concentration, output and by extension, your productivity and satisfaction much more than you realize. For quite some time now, researchers have opined that noise, especially loud intermittent noise, reduces our cognitive performance.
Psychologist Nick Perham, who does research on how sound affects the way we think, has reported that something as seemingly harmless as office noise can impair workers’ ability to recall information, or even do basic math.
Who would have thought office noise could be that pernicious? But here’s where your noise cancelling headphones come in, not only does it help you block out noise, it also sends a message to your co-workers that you’re trying to concentrate and would appreciate it if you were left alone.
2. It gives you better audio entertainment
Ever tried listening to audio entertainment in a noisy environment? You’d hate yourself, I was on a flight recently, a pretty long one (7 hours) and I didn’t go with a noise-cancelling headphone, so as you can imagine, I was at the mercy of the loud continuous drone from the aircraft engines. I tried to sleep but couldn’t.
So I decided to see a movie on the in-flight entertainment using one of the normal headphones the airline provides. But no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t hear the dialogue, it was so bad I literally had to read the lips of the characters to catch a faint glimpse of what was going on. It was definitely a struggle and before long I gave up and settled for another movie that had subtitles displaying on the screen.
Now imagine trying to enjoy audio or audiovisual entertainment using normal headphones close to a construction site where a jackhammer is running, that would be nothing short of torture.
With a noise-cancelling headphone, however, whether you’re in a plane or on a construction site, the noise vanishes leaving you with just the awesome audio experience.
3. Enjoy your conversations better
And just like my ugly experience with in-flight audiovisual entertainment, making or answering calls in a noisy environment can be a nightmare, you can hardly get anything in edgewise because the place is a buffet of noises and you can tell that your caller is struggling to make sense of what you’re saying because there’s usually lots of “excuse me”, or “I’m sorry I didn’t quite get that,” or “sorry can you please repeat that?”
So much so that you have to leave that environment briefly (if you can) answer your call and then come back in.
Noise-cancelling headphones helps you remove almost all the background chatter, so you no longer have to get out of noisy coffee shops just because you want to answer a call.
4. Protects your health
Exposure to noise for an extended period of time has been found to pose serious threats to human health, threats ranging from cardiovascular diseases, to sleep disruption and deprivation, to brain damage, to noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus etc.
If you must remain in a noisy environment that puts you at risk for these diseases then you should consider investing in noise-cancelling headphones.
Cons
1. They are expensive
As the adage goes: you get what you pay for, this particularly holds true for noise-cancelling headphones because they definitely do not come cheap, some of them like the new Bose 700 would set you back by as much as $400.
If you’re looking for something much more affordable, I’d say you can something decent for about a $100. You can get some for cheaper but I really can’t vouch for their ability to deliver the kind of noise cancellation you would want.
2. They make you unaware of your surroundings
For safety reasons, it’s not advisable to wear noise-cancelling headphones when you’re on the road, because it blocks out noises such as car horns, train horns, and sirens and makes you unaware of your surroundings.
And if you’re also jamming to music in addition to the noise cancellation, you won’t even hear when people are shouting for you to get out of the way. If you’re lucky, you might get cursed out by angry drivers but if not, you run the risk getting in an accident or getting run over by some careless driver.
3. It can spread ear infections
Ear infections are certainly not contagious, however, the microorganisms (bacteria and viruses) that cause ear infection can spread from person to person via a number of ways and one them is through sharing headphones. So it’s important that you’re careful about who gets to borrow or use your headphones. And if you absolutely have to lend it out to someone make sure you wipe it with disinfecting wipes before using it again.
4. Short battery life
Because of the work they do, noise-cancelling headphones tend to consume a lot of power, for most of them (provided your device is in tip-top condition) you only get about 20 hours of up time before your battery goes flat and that’s a hassle, if for whatever reason you happen to find yourself in some remote parts of the world where power goes out for many hours at a time.
And when your battery empties, you’re left with just a normal everyday headphone without noise cancelling abilities.
If you choose to buy noise cancelling headphones, you can upgrade their noise cancellation by getting a noise cancelling app along with it. There’s such noise cancelling app called Krisp which removes background noise during calls in real time. With its help you’ll be able to have a noiseless productive call from both sides, since it cancels noise bidirectionally.
CONCLUSION
That’s technology for you, it always comes to solve a problem. But mind you it’s not without its merits and demerits so your job as a current or potential end user is to acquaint yourself with as much information as you can about the product and then on the basis of that hopefully make an informed decision.