Surprisingly Solid

Lately whenever anyone says the name "Sony", what comes to mind is a troubled company that has completely dropped the ball on one of their latest big name products (the Playstation 3), had millions of batteries recalled, and has been in a continual slide down in quality from the lofty perch they used to occupy. With all of that in mind, and with a pretty heavily embedded hate for anything Sony, I found myself buying the pair of headphones pictured on the left.

Being the forgetful person I am, I left my headphones at home when I left for Chicago this week. What this meant is that I had an extremely boring flight where I was *gasp* forced to read the entire way, as well as have some boring transport time since I couldn't listen to my MP3 player. I also had an entire morning of work that consisted of me working in silence, which just drives me batty.

Needing to fulfill my silence killing, I took an early lunch to visit Radio Shack, of all places, to pick up some headphones. Now I've never used noise canceling headphones before so I thought I'd indulge and get myself a pair. As I listened to the various sets that were available (and in my price range of under $50), I found that the Sony pair sounded the best with the noise canceling turned off, which was what I was most concerned with as the noise canceling will only be used when I'm in the car or plane, which shouldn't be too often.

Anyone else have any good or bad experiences with noise canceling headphones? I'm curious to see how well they perform on the plane ride home and if they're actually worth the $40 I spent on them.