KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 29 — If you fly often enough, there’s one travel essential to have: Noise-cancelling headphones. They’re your best defence against the bane of airplane experiences otherwise known as crying infants.
While babies can’t help expressing themselves with piercing wails, you can make flights bearable by packing headphones.
The ones provided by airlines don’t cut it so stashing your own makes sense and while the best over-ear ones tend to cost upwards of RM1k, there are budget alternatives. Take the Edifier W860NB, for instance.
Retailing for just under RM500, they’re not super-cheap but they’re cheap for wireless noise-cancelling over-ear headphones.
Typically the best bang for the buck for noise-cancelling earphones is the in-ear variety while over-ears cost a lot more, especially if they’re the wireless kind.
In the box
What do you get for the ringgit? There’s a decent, padded carrying case, an adapter to plug the headphones into an airline seat socket as well as a cable to plug it into a standard 2.5mm jack.
Basic but fair for the price. All in black, of course. Only thing is the cable doesn’t come with a microphone so if you want to use it to answer calls, you’ll have to be in wireless mode.
Pairing the headset with different phone models (an iPhone and the Honor 8X) was a fairly painless process and I did not experience sudden cut-outs with stable Bluetooth connectivity throughout.
All you need to do is turn the headset on then press on a button until you get the standard flashing light that indicates the headset is in pairing mode.
It is fairly comfortable though if you have cartilage piercings and rather big ears like I do you will need to fiddle with the cups a little. The grip on my head wasn’t too tight and was overall a decent experience.
Bass prioritised
Whoever tuned the audio on this must be a bass junkie. This means the mids and highs suffer a little but if you’re the type that likes your music with a lot of thump, this will suit.
As for the actual noise-cancelling, there is a switch to activate it and you need to turn it off as well when you turn the headset on as it does use up battery.
How well does it work? Switching it on when I was by the side of a busy road, I found myself unable to hear the whoosh and whizzing of passing vehicles. So do not wear these while crossing the road.
On a plane, while it does dull out sound to a fair extent, you would need music on as an aid as it doesn’t quite block out the piercing sound of a screaming child or obnoxious loud people in an airport lounge.
Last impressions
If you have the money, of course Bose and Sony offer far better alternatives and if you’re really counting the sen, you might be better off with inner-ear headphones.
The overly bass-optimised sound might turn off people who listen to less noisy music but if you like your bass, the Edifier W860NB is, for the price, a nice alternative for those who want an entry-level pair.
The Edifier W860NB is available now on Lazada and Shopee for RM499.
