Noise cancelling headphones you can turn the noise cancellation on/off in

score:6

Accepted answer

All active-noise-cancelling headphones can have the noise-cancellation turned off, to save battery while they aren't being worn.

I suppose a really poor design might combine the ANC power and either amplifier (if wired) or radio (if wireless) into a single switch, but I've never seen one like that.

Upvote:1

I think this is a bit off-top for this site, but I'll relate my experience.

My Sony WH-1000XM2 wireless/wired headphone have this feature. There is a dedicated button that toggles ambient/noise canceling. It's good for walking down a busy sidewalk or, I suppose, if one wanted to eavesdrop on strangers in a cafe.

The newer model WH1000XM3 is said to have even better noise canceling and appears to have the same feature. See the user guide.

They're not particularly cheap, but come on sale frequently.

Upvote:2

Turning the Noise Cancelling off is NOT the same as "hear through". ANC headsets use a combination of active and passive sound isolation techniques and you can only turn off the active part. If you do this everything will sound very muffled and potentially boomy. This may be worse for "awareness of surrounding" than having the ANC on. With the ANC on, everything is quieter but its about the same at all frequencies.

The feature you probably want is often called "hear through" or "Listen through". It's a combination of reducing the cancellation and actually using the outside microphones to playback external noises through the head set

More post

Search Posts

Related post