ATH-ANC25 a good budget headset?

[Tsumi]

As title says. It's currently available for $35, and I've been thinking about getting a noise-canceling headset. My primary usage for it will be for travel with my laptop, phone, or tablet. I will be using it on cars, buses, and the occasional airplane. Before I have primarily used IEMs, specifically the MEElectronics M6P.

Reviews on Amazon and other sites are generally mixed, some saying that it works really well, to others saying the noise cancelling doesn't work at all.

So my question is this: is it a good value for what it is? Does it work at least moderately well? Can anyone make any comparisons to other noise cancelling headphones?

 

[spaceman]

An iem at that price will sound better. IEMS are generally the best bet for noisy environments. Noise cancelling is generally gimmicky until you get an active aka powered noise cancelling headphone which are more expensive.

 

[Impulse]

Umm, the AT headphones he's looking at ARE active noise canceling headphones. I'm guessing you figured they weren't based on price alone? Even the denomination is AT's standard nomenclature for their active noise canceling line.

Having said that, I wouldn't expect anything great out of them, it's hard enough to design a good portable headphone at that price point, let alone one that also does NC. Never been a big fan of active NC myself, even on much more expensive models it changes the sound and creates a strange pressure effect against your ear...

Frankly I don't think active NC is necessary unless you fly every week and don't care for IEM... There's a lot of good portable closed headphones that will easily drown out mass transit/outside noise once the music's playing. Beyer DTX 501p, AKG K81 / K518, and MEElectronic's own HT-21 are all pretty good (though the last one isn't very isolating).