Ask HN: Favourite Headphones at Work

2 points·Insanity··3 comments

Just curious what headphones you would recommend, especially for open floor plans which seem to be so dominant.

I am guessing the Bose QC35 or Sony xm3 will be popular options for the Active Noise Cancellation. :)

I have a pair of Sony MX3 that I really like, but I chose them because they felt better than the Bose QC35. I wear glasses, relatively large ones to better hide the humongous lenses, so they can be a bit of an issue with headphones, but they haven’t been with the MX3s.

I’m sure both the QC35 and the MX3 are excellent. I’m also sure you may not agree with me on what feels better, so I’d find a shop that lets you try them on for more than two minutes. I also made sure to buy them at a place where I could have traded them back if they didn’t hold up to hours of wearing, so do that if you can.

There's a split in the office I work in. I have the QC35's along with a few others, but the rest have XM3's. I don't like the XM3's as I find them to be too tight (plus I wear glasses and it pushes the frames into my temples), but the ANC on the XM3's is better than the QC35's.

So it's basically down to how they feel when you wear them - consider the fact you might be wearing them for 7+ hours.

I think both companies do ANC in ear headphones too, if you don't like massive headsets.

The QC35 is what I tried before but never in an office environment. How does the ANC deal with talking colleagues? :O

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