NOISE-CANCELLING
Here’s our pick of the outside-world-eliminating bunch to help you create an impenetrable sonic forcefield for just you and your One Direction playlists
BOSE NCH 700
You can’t really talk about noise-cancelling headphones without bringing up Bose. It’d be like interviewing Usain Bolt and not mentioning running. Dr Amar Bose came up with the idea in 1978, when he was on a transatlantic flight and couldn’t hear the music in his headphones over the drone of the plane’s engines, and his company’s active noise-cancelling tech is still the gold standard.
These over-ears have eight onboard microphones and 11 levels of hiss-free ANC, so you can find the perfect balance between blocking out the world and making sure a double-decker bus doesn’t sneak up on you when you’re lost in the music. Two of those microphones are dedicated to listening to your voice, while the others look for noises to banish, so if you choose carefully you should be able to join your afternoon catch-up meeting from the pub and your boss will be none the wiser (just make sure you keep your camera turned off). It makes using Siri, Google Assistant or Alexa more reliable too.