Bose QuietComfort 20 Acoustic Noise Cancelling Headphones for Apple Devices (Black)

Product Information

This design makes it very difficult or impossible to feed the wire through the headphone ports installed on some motorcycle jackets; a male/female mini-jack extender is necessary. I’ll have to be careful to watch it and make sure the switch doesn’t break; it just doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in the way its designed, built or how it functions. Note that you do not need to have the QC20 system attached to a device to get the noise reducing function. Unfortunately, driving a motorcycle with those sorts of big sound isolating headphones would prevent us from wearing a motorcycle helmet.

The QC20s come with three sizes of flexible "StayHear+" eartips, each of which has wings to brace itself against the cup of the outer ear. The electronics system senses the sound in almost any environment and then measures, compares, and reacts — instant by instant — to produce an opposing cancellation signal. The QuietComfort® 20 Acoustic Noise Cancelling™ headphones let you enjoy better sound every day, everywhere you go. But the means of attachment are different; the StayHear® Max eartips wrap around the earbud acoustic package, which allows the bud to sit closer to the head.But the quality of the Bose QuietComfort 20 Acoustic Noise Cancelling Headphones appears to be very good. They deliver high-fidelity audio performance and world-class noise cancellation that allow you to hear more of your films and music – while travelling, at the office or at home.

However, with respect, I believe you do not understand the limitations of a ‘noise cancelling’ headphone while riding a motorcycle: none, especially the “earbud” types, can eliminate the noise we motorcyclists experience while riding. Thus, care must be taken to keep the in-ear headphones in place as the helmet is placed on the head.

To connect a device and learn about more features, you should download the Bose Music app to finish the connecting process.

The edges of drum thwacks are clearly defined, and there’s a real sense of dynamism as Zach Lind makes his way around his kit. However I have used these in my truck and passenger car and found the noise cancelling to be amazing and the road noise gone, gone. QuietComfort® Earbuds keep track of the last 7 devices you’ve paired so you can easily swap between them without reconnecting.In several ear plug reviews and motorcycle helmet reviews, the Editor wistfully pined for a company like Bose to partner with a helmet manufacturer to make some type of on-board noise-cancelling device. That, and after 7 continuous days of riding with them in and the ear pain that created taught me a lesson: helmet speakers in conjunction with standard foam earplugs. You will note this when I get to the part about riding with the Bose QuietComfort 20 system on a motorcycle, where the external sounds are reduced, but not as much as we’d hoped.

Bose has been a go-to choice for noise-canceling headphones since the company's original QuietComfort headphones debuted in 2000. High frequency sounds waves are easier to block, as their short wavelength can’t travel through physical barriers like lower frequencies can.

Just by coincidence, the neighbor happened to be mowing his lawn on a riding garden tractor — a perfect test! He's also an e-reader and e-publishing expert as well as the author of the novels Knife Music, The Big Exit and Lucidity. Aware Mode turns on the external microphones of QuietComfort Headphones and feeds ambient sounds into the headphones, enabling awareness of the sounds in the environment, such as cars and emergency vehicles, while still enjoying audio content.