Love these new Headphones

It's always been a conflict between hearing protection and entertainment. There is power tool noise about 10% of the time. I listen to audiobooks but have to pause them pretty often, and the phone times out so it means putting in the password about 20 times a day. Aaaargh!

And I use earplugs for hearing protection so that doesn't happen as often as it should.

Last week I bought Bose QC35 II headphones. They provide good noise cancellation, but I can carry on a conversation. And as long as my phone is in or near the shop I can start, pause and play an audiobook, or take a phone call etc with just the buttons behind my ears.

Huge improvement.

Those are great headphones, tested a pair in the Bose store over the Holidays, couldn't bring myself to buy them having a couple of pairs of bluetooth headphones currently, but I still predict owning a pair sometime soon.

I have some Bose QC-15's that I use. I'm deaf and use a cochlear implant to hear. As such, I don't have the advantage of the mechanical inefficiencies of the 3 bones in the middle ear to help reduce noise. The electrical stimulation to my auditory nerve is direct thus Jet noise when I'm traveling is a real issue. My Bose headphones reduce that to a very tolerable level and yet I can hear the announcements from the overhead speakers. It prevents a safety issue that would arise if I just turned off the sound processor for my CI.

I have an early pair of Bose Quiet Comfort bought ~ 2000 when I was traveling a lot. They’re great for 6 hr flights but ineffective for shop work IMO. I recently bought a pair of MPOW NC phones with Bluetooth that work great with moderate sound levels but I haven’t found anything that can beat my 3M X5A muffs for loud noise.

Very nice headphones for about $350.

I'm also an audiobook listener. I've found that if I use an LG bluetooth headset with ear buds, they provide ~30 db noise reduction, and then I put my standard ear protection on over my ears, in this case an old set of noise reducing earmuffs (another ~30 db), nearly all of the machine noise is removed (though I can still hear some machine noise), and I can listen to my books with no problem.

I can't carry on a conversation but it only costs ~$80 total.