Customer Reviews

Panasonic RP-HC150 Noise-Canceling Headphones

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Here is my review on these inexpensive headphones after one 3 hour flight:

ADVANTAGES:

- Quality build and good materials

- Very comfortable over the ear design with large earcups. I'm sure you can use them for 10+ hours without pain, since there is no pressure on the ears.

- Lightweight

- Folds to a compact size and stores in an included leatherette bag

- Sound quality seems good although I'm not an audiophile to make a good judgement on this

- Only little hissing when noise cancellation is on (the Bose don't have any hissing by the way)

- Headphones even work without noise cancellation in passive mode (some other brands don't)

DISADVANTAGES:

- Noise cancellation is not very good. It does drown out very low frequencies on the airplane but you can still hear the jet engines and everything else. I tried the Bose QC2 and QC3 on a trip and their noise cancellation works much better. When you activate the Bose noise cancellation you get this numbing sensation and everything is calm and quiet. With these there is only a slight change in the noise, but enough of a change to make the engine noise less annoying.

- Since the noise cancellation isn't very good and they hiss, they're not something to use in the office to drown out background noise (again, the Bose are very good for that).

So overall I'm pleased, mainly because of the comfort and low price (you can get 10 of these for one Bose!). I tried several other brands and returned them because they were either uncomfortable, had ineffective noise cancellation or were too expensive.

These headphones are lightweight, large enough for my moderately-large dome, and have comfortable ear cups. Those are the only good things I can say about them.

There is no padding on the top piece, so baldies like me must endure the hard plastic directly on the cranium. Not good.

The noise canceling is nearly non-existent. Frank, my very loud neighbor in my miserable cube farm with his ceaseless, inane phone chatter can be heard loudly and clearly with these headphones on. I used to refer to my old NC headphones my "Frank Blockers," but these barely dim Frank's incessant cacophony, sad to say.

Also, with the supposed noise cancellation turned on, there is a very audible hiss in these headphones that is incredibly annoying. It's ridiculous that you must crank up the volume of your music or podcast to drown out the hissing produced by the noise cancellation function.

To round things out, the sound quality of this headset is extremely poor. I am reminded of my misspent youth listening to AM transistor radios when I use these headphones.

Oh, and I cut myself trying to wrestle these things out of the obnoxious bomb-proof plastic packaging.

I feel very cheated and ripped-off having purchased these. My goal is to inform you so that you don't make the same mistake. I hope you heed my warnings.

I have been looking for comfortable headphones for when I travel. I want to be able to listen to my iPod and maybe the movie in the airplane and have things quiet so that I could sleep on the plane (I always use earplugs). I have done alot of research and really wanted something like Bose but I can't justify spending that much money on something I will use probably only 1-5 times a year when I fly. So when I saw these headphones on sale at my local retailer, I took a chance (they were on sale for $32.00). I have not taken them on a trip yet but without listening to any music, I put the headphones on while my husband was watching TV at a normal sound level. It made things quieter but I could still hear the program and understand what was being said. When I turn on the noise cancellation feature, I could still hear the TV but it was difficult to understand what was being said and there was absolutely no hissing sound. When I played some music, I could no longer hear the TV or my husband trying to speak to me. I imagine though a loud sound like airplane engines might still come through a bit. If you really want to block out ALL outside noise then you will likely be disappointed in these. Personally, I don't mind being hear alittle outside sounds for safety's sake.

These headphones are comfortable and that is very very important to me. My ears get ichy and hot if they are covered and pressed down for more than 15 minutes (like some circular foam padded type of headphones) and ear buds fall out of my ears and end up causing me pain because I keep trying to push them in far enough that they will stay. But like one other person mentions here, there is no padding between the top of your head and the band on these. That would be nicer I think but for me, it was ok when I just moved the band forward or more back to get it in a more comfortable spot. They are a little stiff and just ever so slightly tight on me, but I do have a wider head than some I think. They are brand new as well so maybe they will start to give alittle after being used some, in which case they will be perfect for me as far as fit.

The sound is real nice, better than my Sony earbuds that were $50.00. I think, for the money, these are great. I'm sure I could have paid more for some others and not been as satisfied as I am with these. If I would be using them more or at work on a daily basis or if I was someone that is real picky, I would probably want to invest in Bose or something top of the line, but I am pleased with these for my intended purpose and the price paid for them.

we bought these on a whim at an InMotion kiosk before a flight to Hawaii. The sound without the noise canceling is okay, but when you turn on the noise canceling, the noise STARTS. Yeah, these don't eliminate noise, they create it. So weird. I thought we just had a lemon pair, but others have noted this very same thing.

We tried to take them back to InMotion but because they had offered to keep our packaging for us, we couldn't return them.

I bought this product that it would have good quality, but no. There is a lot of background noise, which probably means poor materials. Also the noise canceling is weak. I can still hear a lot of noise in the background. I should have shelled out for a more expensive one.

I purchased this headphone set for my son at a local electronics store, and am sad to report that they charged me $69.99 for a rather disappointing set of headphones. With the first use, the headphones seemed to work well, blocking out most ambient noise in the room, but as soon as we boarded a plane, my son plugged the headphones into his IPOD, and reported that there was a constant buzzing/static noise coming through the headphones that got worse by turning the sound reduction on and slightly better by turning the noise-reduction feature off. We tested the headphones with two different IPODS, as well as the airline radio system and concluded that the headphones were getting interference from the plane. This static sound could not be blocked out by turning up the music, so the whole point of sound reduction was not achieved. We had much better sound just using our standard Ipod headphones while on the plane. I am going to return the headphones to the local store and purchase a pair from Amazon that has gotten an average of 5 by reviewers. Hope we have a better experience.

Good sound, with mediocre noise canceling. these headphones only last a year or two with what i put them through. I'm on my third set and love them. and for the price you really cant beat them.

I use these at work and they work well as headphones but very poorly as "noise cancelling" headphones. That being said, I have tried on many expensive "noise cancelling" headphones and have found all of them to be poor at cancelling out noise. As such, these are basically as good as any more expensive brand you can pick up. Any noise cancelling headphones requiring a battery, I am dubious about. If you want true noise cancellation, look for a pair of headphones that fit completely over and around the ear.

I just bought these and I like them. I don't have any experience with noise cancellation headphones, in an office or on airplane. Canceling sound, academically speaking, is no mean feat. Frankly, I can't imagine the economics of creating a pair with that technology that truly works only costing the consumer about $30. Think about it, live Dolby noise reduction? Creating inverse waves in real time to cancel out aberrations in your environment without creating an audible hiss from the internal preamp or distorting the playback of the source material? That's really hard! If people want to feel like they're listening to live music inside a sensory deprivation chamber I think they should be prepared to invest quite a bit more than what these little fellas will set you back.

With that in mind I think these are quite nice. They fit all the way over my ears, not smushing my earlobes them like most padded headphones I've tried in recent years. They also don't feel like strapping on two soup cans like some great sounding but uncomfortable vintage headphones I've used in years past, either. These are light weight, very foldable for storage, and sound quite nice. I've never had a headphone experience that was as musically satisfying as listening to a nice pair of speakers in a well laid out room so I can't say I'm expecting that. With these headphones I can hear good frequency response from digital sources. I mean, jeez, I'm either listening to streaming music or 128mb sampled recordings so spending $400 on headphones to try to reproduce all the sounds that were sampled out or compressed away so it could be streamed to my laptop is just silly to me. If I wanted that I'd play back the CD or vinyl record through a home stereo, layback and let the gorgeous sound wash over me.

These headphones delivered what I was asking of them, something to mellow out the world around, hush the sound of my own typing and let me listen to my own music while I work on laptop and pretend I'm alone in the world despite all the people moving around in front of me. Isolation in public, isn't that the fantasy we're all striving for?

I listened to Mingus, Brubeck, Mozart and Emmy Lou Harris to test these out. They all sound pretty good. I will say that the noise cancellation feature is a neat trick but isn't blowing me away. During my test I was as happy to let the foam surround mellow my environment as the noise cancellation does make a hiss (that I noticed after I read all the reviews about. Upside is I learned you can turn it off. Silly me, I thought the headphones wouldn't work without it running.) They respond nicely to some EQing in iTunes. There's only so much you're going to get out of a mobile phone or laptop headphone jack, and I think these headphones are up to the task. If I could try out every headphone in the world I might be in a position to say which is better than another and why, but alas, I am but one man with one wallet. I picked these, and I think they're ok. Sound quality is one of the most personally subjective experiences I have come across. It's like judging the light in a room. Brighter is always better. My too much is your good enough. Let your own ears be the judge. My ears think these are good enough.

I've had these headphones for awhile now and I really like them. I wear them when I work at home and have had them on for hours without any problem. The ear area is wide so that my ears aren't getting flattened by the foam and the foam is nice and soft on my head. I tried the noise canceling feature but I really couldn't tell a difference with it on or off so I just took the battery out and have never turned it on since the initial testing. This is the reason I am not giving these headphones 5 stars. I think they are great even without the noise-canceling.