I spent $7,000 on ANC headphones so you don't have to – 2026

Hey, it's Jasper. And today we're

talking about the best premium active

noise canceling headphones. And as you

can see, I have basically all the latest

greatest options from Bose, Apple, Sony,

Sennheiser, Bowers & Wilkins, and more.

And I've been doing some testing. So, of

course, I've been using them outside to

get a sense for how they all perform

under real-world conditions. But then

I've also been doing some testing

inside. So, for example, this is my good

pal Mikey. He's a headphone testing

microphone. And I've been using him to

measure the active noise canceling

performance in all these. And I have

some pretty interesting results there.

Then I also have Clampi. He's a little

sketchy. I may have built him myself,

but he allows me to measure the clamping

force in all these headphones. So, I'll

talk about that as well as my overall

impressions on comfort. And then I've

also done some pretty extensive testing

on their microphones. So, you'll hear

how they all perform under both quiet

and noisy call conditions. And of

course, we'll talk about sound quality,

build quality, features, connectivity,

basically everything you'll need in

order to make an informed buying

decision. Before we dive in, one quick

note. I'm also working on a mega review

where I'll be comparing the premium

options against some of these budget and

mid-price ones. And yes, there are

actually a few that I really like. So,

be sure to subscribe so you don't miss

out on that. All my videos have no

sponsors. It's just my own testing, own

research, own opinion. And your support

really does go a long way. But, enough

of this groveling. Let's now get into

the video. To kick things off, let's

first level set on the prices. And

remember, this is as of recording in US

dollars in the United States. But also

remember that these prices do tend to

change pretty frequently. So, be sure to

check the latest. And I have included

links to all of these in the

description. Also, if you want to sign

up for deal alerts in any of these, be

sure to check out Dip. It's actually the

service that I built myself. And it just

allows me to send you an email if I ever

spot a good deal on the headphones that

you're interested in. So, then you can

buy them when their price dips. But now,

let's talk about active noise canceling

performance. To test this, I used Mikey

first to get a baseline measurement

where I'd have no headphones on. And

then I'd play a sound. And here's an

example measurement that I got with pink

noise. The Y-axis shows how loud. The

X-axis is the sound frequency. And then

I'd repeat this process but with

different set of headphones on his ears

and ANC on. And the difference between

the lines would be how much sound is

blocked by both passive and active noise

cancellation. And to try to avoid any

anomalies, I did it with jet engine

noise as well as pink noise. And I took

multiple measurements over multiple

days. So, I'm pretty happy with what I

got. But do keep in mind, I am just a

dude in a room and I'm not some

million-dollar lab. But now, let's look

at my preliminary results. This table

shows the average decibel reduction for

each headphone with ANC on. And as a

reminder, the more decibels reduced, the

better. I do say these are preliminary

results because after comparing them

with my own anecdotal testing, I

realized that it's only telling a

partial story. So, the good news is I

figured out why and I have some better

results that paint a more accurate

picture. The bad news is we're going to

have to align on the fundamentals of ANC

tech and some quirks of human hearing in

order to get to that. So, I'm going to

try to do double duty where I'm going to

explain all of this while testing the

microphones on all these so you can hear

how they perform. So, first, you'll hear

me using them in a quiet room. And then

about 10 seconds into each segment, I'll

play some background noise and you'll be

able to get a sense for how the

microphone handles noisy conditions. And

for reference, this is what that

background noise will sound like.

A lot of people say active noise

canceling works by playing an opposite

sound. But what does that actually mean?

Let's say you want to block an external

sound that's around 500 hertz. What's

the opposite of a 500 hertz sound? Well,

that doesn't exactly exist. But what

does exist is a 500 hertz sound that is

phase shifted. So, it's actually just

another 500 hertz sound, but it's timed

perfectly so that the peaks of the sound

waves that you want to neutralize are

perfectly out of sync with the peaks of

the waves you're creating to cancel it

out. When these two waves interact, they

end up netting out to silence. And this

is a process called destructive

interference. But crucially, this phase

shift mechanism gets a lot harder to

pull off above around 1,000 hertz or so.

And just for reference, this is what

1,000 hertz sounds like.

It's harder to cancel at higher

frequencies because they physically have

much shorter wavelengths. So, for

example, a 1,000 hertz sound wave is

around 1.1 feet long. And a 100 hertz

sound wave is 11 feet long. So, this

means that your margin for error with

producing that phase shifted sound is

much smaller for higher frequencies. If

you have an 11 foot long sound wave and

your phase shifted sound is off by,

let's say, 6 inches or so, you're still

going to cancel out most of that sound.

But if you're off by 6 inches on, let's

say, a 12 inch long sound wave, you're

not going to be canceling out much. And

it's really unfortunate that phase shift

ANC gets less effective above around

1,000 hertz or so because it turns out

that human ears are actually most

sensitive to sounds that are between

2,000 and 5,000 hertz. And to illustrate

this, I'm going to play two tones that

are actually being played at the same

level of loudness.

[Laughter]

See how you can hear the 2,000 hertz

tone much more clearly? Bringing this

back to ANC, since not all sounds are

created equal to human ears, this also

means that not all sound reductions are

created equal. And that means that

you're more likely to notice a sound

reduction that's around 1,500 hertz than

150 hertz. When we look at my revised

ANC results next, you'll see I applied a

weighting system that's actually called

A-weighting. And it more heavily values

reductions in sounds that humans are

more sensitive to and values reductions

in sounds that humans are less sensitive

to a little bit less. And I'm sure some

of you are probably screaming at the

monitor saying, "Hey Jasper, if phase

shift ANC basically stops working above

1,000 hertz, wouldn't that mean that all

ANC headphones would basically perform

the same above 1,000 hertz, too?" And

that's actually the really interesting

thing. Turns out, no. In these higher

frequencies, it's actually kind of where

the real ANC battle seems to be doing

its part.

I can see in my test measurements that

some headphones are more effective at

canceling out these mid-range sounds

than others. And I can prove that it's

not just from better passive isolation.

And while this mid-range ANC is not as

powerful as it is with those lower

frequencies, since humans are more

sensitive to that mid-range, even small

reductions here can make a meaningful

impact.

There's not much public information

about this, but I've been told by an

expert that in addition to phase shift

ANC, there's actually another mechanism

at play. It's called active damping. And

it works by using the diaphragm of the

speaker in the headphone to absorb sound

waves around the head.