After testing Sony MDR-NC8 and was not too happy with it. This time I try another product with active noise cancellation: Philips noise cancelling earphones SHN2600. Since these are in-ear headphones, I hope it would be more practical to carry, less bulky, and gives me more space for other things in my bag.
Philips SHN2600 comes with 3 pairs of rubber ear caps with different sizes. As this product is designed for travel, the include 3.5 mm to 6.35 mm adapter and 2 pin airline adapter. These earphones are powered by one AAA battery. There is a processing unit for noise cancellation on this earphones located in the middle of the cable. It is bigger and heavier that what I anticipated because it needs to contain the battery. There is an on/off switch there. This earphones can be used as regular earphones with noise cancelling module turned off.
Have I mentioned that the processing unit is heavy? Apparently they are trying to solve this issue by designing longer cable then putting a connector to allow the cable being used as necklace. Some people from other reviews seem to miss this part. This earphones is supposed to be worn as necklace so the weight of that processing unit is properly supported. For me, so far I don’t really like the idea of wearing an earphones with necklace design. I feel that I have too many cables around me.
Sound quality… it’s not bad, but it doesn’t impress me either. What I have is an average sound quality with slightly muddy detail. It even got slightly worse when the noise cancelling feature is turned on.
For the active noise cancellation, Philips promises 75% of “less external noise”. To be frank, I’m not sure if that 75% is achieved by the active module, or it simply coming from the fact that this earphones has in-ear shape (which physically blocks some noises). I tried the earphones with noise cancelling on and off and honestly I don’t notice much difference. It was not the case with Sony MDR-NC8 where I can clearly hear the difference when I turned on its active noise cancellation.
Since I got this earphones on a very good bargain, I decided to keep it for a while and use it in actual flight. It’s small and won’t take too much space anyway.
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