Philips HN060 Noise-Canceling Ear Bud Headphones

Rating:
Summary: Don't buy
Review: Don't buy this. It doesn't work and I tried returning it to Duane Reade and they won't take it back. I tried calling my credit card and Philips they won't take it either. I bought another noise cancelling headphones by Virgin for $50 and that works great. This is a cheap headphones not worth $5 bucks. It doesn't block out any noise and is uncomfortable to wear.

Rating:
Summary: Good for the price
Review: I agree with two of the previous reviews that it can be uncomfortable to wear this. Please understand these are not like the normal earbuds that sit inside your ears, they actually go a little INTO THE EAR CANALS. If this is not for you, don't bother with it.

Generally for noise-cancelling, there are two ways for doing that, one is to electronically generate sort of a counter sound wave to cancel the background noice; the other is much simpler, just block everything from outside by an oversized seal or something like these that stuffs into your ear canals. These headphones obviously do some of both, but not really great at either. I have also tried the Sennheiser PXC250 and the Bose Quite Comfort 2, this actually works as well as, if not better than, both of them as far as allowing to hear what you want to hear, at a fraction of the cost.

It does introduce an obvious hissing background noise as part of noise-cancelling mechanism, but not overwhelming, and that's the only reason I am not giving it 5 stars, because these are the cheapest Noise-cancelling headphones out there and they do a good job at that. So if you are a book-on-tape person and not a music-listener that wants to hear bass clearly, these would serve the purpose beautifully.

Bottom line, if you can live with the discomfort (which I got used to quickly) and don't mind the hissing, these are the best product you can get for the price, period. Hope this helps.

Rating:
Summary: Poor sound quality with iPod
Review: I bought these for my wife for her iPod because she has small ears. The "ear bud" style earphones that came with the iPod were a little large for her, making it difficult to keep them in her ears, while creating some discomfort.

These Philips earphones were more comfortable for my wife; however, they sound awful! There is very little bass and a lot of the sounds in the music are simply lost. I wondered if the problem was just my wife's small ears so I tried them also, with the same poor sound results. While the fit is better with these Philips in-ear earphones than the iPod ear buds, it is too much of a sound quality sacrifice--so we won't be using them.

The noise cancelling feature doesn't really seem to be very impressive either. However, this isn't why I purchased these earphones, so I didn't care about the feature. If you're looking at these because of the noise cancelling feature, you'll probably be disappointed in that also.

For me, the comfortable fit of these earphones can't overcome the poor sound quality. I'd strongly recommend steering clear of purchasing them. This purchase was definately a waste of money!

Rating:
Summary: Very uncomfortable
Review: I tried using the headphones in the presence of machines that make a continuous backgroung humming noise. The noise level and character was similar to what you experience in an airplane. The headphones diminished the noise somewhat, but very little. It also creates its own (annoying to me) white noise and the sound quality was significantly poorer than that of a $10 pair of sony earbud headphones. In my opinion these Philips "noise cancelling" headphones are little more than a gimmick.

Rating:
Summary: Better than nothing, barely
Review: If you're looking for significant noise canceling activity, these are not the earbuds you want. There is a barely detectable decrease in outside noise when you switch them on. They mainly work by introducing a lot of background hiss and boosting the volume of the music. 10 dB ? Maybe if you glue them in with epoxy. Still, they are better than airline-supplied headsets. Just don't expect too much.

Rating:
Summary: phony hn060
Review: Part of my career as an engineer was in the field of vibration and sound. The hn060 I received as a gift is a phony. The only outside noise this unit suppresses is the fact you have a plug in your ear. The so called noise reduction is a filter on the low frequency of the sound coming in through the wire plug. If you like your lows suppressed and the highs screetching, this is the unit for you. Anthony Lin of Audio File explains the technicalities of a true noise suppression system and after some non-related story telling says this thing really helped him during a flight. My reading between the lines is that he really felt he had to strech things abit. But things are tough all over.

Don't bother to buy this "technical marvel". It is not worth carrying around even to save money renting a headset from the airlines. My set is going into the trash next Monday, garbage pickup day.

Rating:
Summary: product not perfected
Review: The HN060 noise reduction has some positives and negatives. At first I wasn't sure if the earbuds things would fit into my ears in the beginning according to the previous review. Yet, they fit well enough (not perfect), and don't seem to hurt, but of course it depends on your ear I suppose. With the noise cancellation off, the sound is somewhat less than the source audio. Yet, if you turn on the noise cancellation, the source audio may sound slightly louder. With noise cancellation off, there is a good amount of mid to upper response. The base is not that strong, and would need a equalizer to adjust for this. When the noise cancellation is on, the base comes in with a slightly more punch, and lower end response. I may need to get used to inserting these in the ear, but I don't think you need to shove them to where they disappear into your ear. Noise cancellation does cancel out a certain range, but the range it cancels out doesn't seem be a wide enough frequency.

It is true the noise cancellation doesn't seem to work at all, but I think the design of the ear bud is supposed to minimize the majority of noise (around %15). I have tried it on the airplane, but it cancelled only a narrow frequency of noise. There exist a soft hiss when noise cancellation is on, likely from the slight amplification of the source sound I mentioned earlier. But you will notice it only when you are in a quiet environment.


I think certain design modification could make this model a decent buy. For example, allow the earbuds to be removable so you can plug in another set if the current set ever broke (The design seems to handle abuse well). Even if you could plug in a standard set of earphones/earbuds, then you could use the volume control on the box (handy when volume control is not easily accessible ex. pda).

Overall, I would not recommend, because the noise cancellation frequency band is not wide enough. I am sure their R&D dept knows this, but I am sure this is another scheme to milk the customers, and they might have an improvement in a newer model (Marketing probably had a brainstorm and will call them HN065 and advertise them as "second generation"). I seem to grown accustomed to these earbud phones, since they designed the weight to be carried by the earbuds to be on the neck strap not the earbuds (the earplug phones comes out of the strap near the top of the strap).

Thanks for wasting my time and money Philips. I will remember this next time I plan on buying any of your products. I would recommend this if they were both cheaper or provided a better noise cancellation system.


Rating:
Summary: So far so good
Review: These earbuds fit down in the ear canal, that can bother some people, these are not for you. As for me I am fine with this. The headphones work great and do just what you'd want them to do, create good sound and deaden the ambient noise like the shoud. Of course you can get better headphones, but for the price theser are just right.

The only reason they don't get five stars is because they don't produce the music as loud as other speakers do, this must come from the noise cancelling electronics, but even with the feature turned off the problem is still there. Not a big deal though, because you would want have to want to listen to your music extrememly loud for this to become an issue.

Rating:
Summary: does a good job for the price
Review: These headphones, in my opinion, are not as bad as most people say... I think it depends what one will use them for. I bought these headphones _specifically_ for airplane travel. I don't use them on the street or at home or anywhere else except on a plane. I flew over 50 hours this past christmas and I have to say they worked reasonably well. Noise cancelling headphones are _not_ noise eliminating headphones and these are not the exception. They cancel low frequencies to low-mid frequencies pretty well. The "in ear" design is similar to more expensive earbuds (like fontopia or shure) BUT it obviously does not do such a great job as fontopia or shure do (fontopia and shure are all 200+ for the high end phones). Once you turn the noise canceling "on" most low frequencies drown and you are left with a pleasant faint white noise (to me its pleasant) which is really not a problem when in a plane.

They seem pretty durable. The cord is covered with a seemingly durable nylon wound cloth thingy... the headphones seem pretty strong, and the noise canceling unit operates on one single AAA battery. The frequency range is adequate but as with most earbud headphones bass is a bit lacking... not too bad for movie watching on the plane and millions of times better than the headphones they give you on the plane.

Finally the cost really makes them appealing. (...)