Review: Cygnett InSound Active Noise Cancelling Headphones

Quality noise canceling headphones, which surround your head with white noise to create a virtual bubble for you and your music without outside noise interruption, are often priced in the two to three hundred dollar range. That makes the $129 InSound from Cygnett a potential value play. The all-black InSound looks like a fairly standard headphone product – until you turn it on.

Powered by a pair of AAA batteries inside the left headphone cup, the InSound offers an audio experience which is impressive for its price range. The higher and lower ranges are crisply enunciated, and despite a slightly emphasized bass, the audio is balanced enough that it sounded good with every genre I tested it against. The active noise canceling technology, while not as absolute as that found on significantly more expensive products, is enough to mostly drown out a noisy neighbor or an airplane engine.

InSound can also be used with the noise cancelling turned off. However, in this mode the treble goes a bit flat and the bass fades to the background. The headphones are usable in this mode, but it’s not ideal, which means that you’re best off leaving the noise cancelling turned on all the time, only switching to the off position when you’re not wearing them or when the battery is dead.

That said, noise cancelling headphones are aimed at users who want the noise cancelling technology turned on more or all of the time, and the InSound sounds great in that mode. Included are a zippered hard carrying case, an airplane adapter, and black and red headphone cables which can be interchanged. I’d like the InSound a little more if the cables included a mic and three buttons for full interaction with devices like the iPhone; as it stands you’ll need to control playback directly via your mobile device itself. But the InSound does have a volume wheel on right headphone cup, so you won’t need to go reaching for your mobile device for volume control.

Rating: four stars out of five • Price: $129 • cygnett.com