Sennheiser PXC 450 review

If you regularly listen to your iPod on a train or plane, or like to watch movies on your MacBook while you're travelling, you'll know that ambient noise can be very distracting.

For most of us, the solution is to turn the volume up to dangerously high levels or to buy a set of ear-canal earbuds. Sennheiser has come up with another solution. Taking its inspiration from Bose's range of noise-cancelling headsets, the PXC 450 is the product of all Sennheiser's technical expertise in the areas of audio fidelity and ambient noise reduction.

There are a couple of excellent features which set these headphones apart from their competitors. The first is a switch on the side which allows the PXC 450 to keep operating as a regular headphone if the AAA battery dies. You don't get the noise cancelling, but at least you can still listen to your music. The second is a talk-through channel. Now you can order that in-flight gin and tonic or listen to station announcements without having to take the headphones off. Just press the button and a channel opens up, allowing you to hear human voices but still keep out other background noise.

The PXC 450 headphones fold up in a number of different ways, making them easy to transport, and come with a hard shell case to protect them in transit. The cable is detachable and replaceable, and the headphones themselves are incredibly light and comfortable.

Like other noise-cancelling headphones, they don't eliminate background noise completely, but they reduce it beyond the point where it is noticeable. In our tests we found the sound quality to be excellent and the noise reduction to be very impressive. They're very comfortable to wear and the talk-through feature is genuinely useful - although it does make everyone sound like they're talking to you from the cockpit of a plane at 40,000 feet.

At £299, these headphones are far from cheap, and they're probably not ideal for everyday listening. But if you regularly travel on long train or plane journeys, they could be a very worthwhile investment.