The Plane Quiet NC-7 is a pair of noise-canceling headphones that offer the convenience of being able to take them wherever you go. When evaluating noise-canceling headphones, we usually examine two main things: how well the noise-cancellation feature works and whether the headphones have good sound with the noise-cancellation feature on or off. If the product can nail these two down, then we’ve good a product.
A Closer Look
The product came in a small black box. When opening the box, everything was contained in a soft, but hard-shelled case. I’d say it is about twice the size of a typical eyeglasses case. Still, this case is still something you can carry around fairly easily.
When opening the case, the headphones were neatly folded within. When folded, the headphones are in its most compact form. The headphones consist of two pieces: you have the headphones themselves and the noise-canceling unit. The headphones connect to the noise-canceling unit and another wire protrudes from the unit that will be used to connect to your device.
The headphones are quite thin and small. There are cushions at the left and right sides of the headband to support your head. The pads on the headphones are much thicker and are of a different material. The pads are very resistant even if you sweat a lot around the ears or have an oily head.
When worn, the headphones press on the middle of your ear, but is still comfortable for long periods of time.
Sound Quality
I found these headphones to be mediocre in sound quality. They are neither bad nor extremely good. The headphones are good in reproducing the mid to high treble sounds. When reproducing the lower bass sounds, we begin to run into the headphone’s limitations because of the small headphone size. The lower frequency sounds sometimes seem a bit weak and muffled. This varied depending on the material being played. In other words, those who like to listen to hip-hop or a lot of rock music may find the bass a bit unfullfilling. On the other hand, these headphones do better for music whose pitch focuses on the higher sounds such as classical music.
The noise cancellation feature does work well in terms of canceling noise. In fact, it even seems to help the sound quality a bit. It will make sounds seem more spacious rather than feeling shallow and cramped. At complete silence, you will hear a slight hiss with noise-canceling on, but can be easily ignored once you start listening to music. With my computer about a foot away from me, the fan of my computer was reduced to a very low rumble with noise-canceling on.
A potential problem I found which may or may not be true for others who buy this product is that I found that the connector from the headphones plugged into the noise-canceling unit could affect the sound heard in the headphones. Just by twisting the connector or moving the wire, it would affect the sound making it seem like there wasn’t a solid connection there.
Included with the headphones was a battery and an adapter commonly used on airplanes.
Conclusion
This product can be purchased at ProTravelGear.com at a price of $79.95. At this price, this product stands as an entry-level noise-cancellation product. If you’re looking for decent headphones that provide noise cancellation, these may be for you. If you are a stickler for sound quality, you might have to consider other brands. The compact design of the headphones is something to admire. If the sound quality of these headphones could be improved just a bit more, these would have been one of the better noise-canceling headphones.
