I travel fairly often, and one of the tech items I never leave home without when I’m headed on a work trip or vacation is a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, the best headphones for traveling. They are invaluable for canceling out the loud hum of the airplane engine and enjoying entertainment, whether it’s from a seatback entertainment system or my personal device. If it’s a long-haul flight, I’ll keep them on, even without music playing, while trying to nod off for a few hours, quieting the world around me so I can slink into slumber.

I have tried countless pairs of noise-canceling headphones, but there’s a new pair that has become my go-to: the Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2s. They boast upgrades compared to the first-generation model that launched in 2023, and they remind me a lot of the old Bose QuietComfort 3s I had way back in 2006 and completely wore out.

Noise canceling is superb

The world really does melt into quiet

The Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2 wireless noise-canceling headphones from one of the best headphone brands offer precise active noise cancellation (ANC) through an ActiveSense experience when you’re in Aware Mode. This adjusts to filter out sudden spikes in ambient noise, like sounds in a busy airport or construction on the road while traveling as a passenger in a car.

I wore them the entire time on long-haul flights from my home in Toronto to Spain, including two flights there (through Paris) and two more back. The ANC was fantastic, even suppressing some of the loud cries from a baby near the back of the plane. The difference was night and day when I took them off versus had them on, and the quiet even helped me enjoy a quick nap. Comfort is a key feature to consider with noise-canceling headphones, especially if you plan to wear them for long periods of time. These are ultra-comfortable, too.

Back at home, I have tested these in numerous other settings. I wore them while vacuuming, and the loud roar of my Dyson became a faint grumble. While working at home, the furnace noise is virtually nil. In a coffee shop, a noisy fan that was above my head at the table was silenced enough that I didn’t feel compelled to change tables during the busy lunch hour rush. The chatter of other patrons as well as the background music was reduced significantly, as was even the clacking of my nails on the keyboard. Walking down the street by my house, construction workers were fixing a broken water main on the road, and their machines didn’t disrupt my walk with these babies on. Wind noise is also significantly reduced.

Customizable noise-canceling features

Adjust the settings to your liking

Not only can you turn noise-canceling on and off using the app or controls on the headphones themselves, but the app also has a neat slider to adjust, letting in as much or conversely canceling out as much noise as you desire based on the setting. I tend to always want to crank it up to high, no matter the setting. But it’s nice to only slide it halfway if you’re traveling with family and still want to be able to hear the kids, for example, or if you aren’t as sensitive to noise.

Cinema Mode is designed to enhance dialogue when watching movies or TV shows, or listening to the best podcasts or audiobooks, which I do often. This mode helps spatialize and balance sound, widening the soundstage so you can hear dialogue more clearly. Listening to my favorite podcasts like *Smartless, *it felt like I was right there with the hosts as a second fly-on-the-wall guest.

From a practical usability standpoint, you can program the press-and-hold shortcut on the volume slider on the earcup to toggle among noise-canceling modes. This makes it easy to turn on Aware mode if an announcement is coming from the pilot or the flight attendant wants to take your drink order. (You can also use the side button.)

Other useful features make them great at home

Enjoy lossless wired listening, and more

Credit: Bose

Along with an extended up to 30-hour battery life per charge, six hours more than their predecessor (23 hours when listening to immersive audio and 45 if you turn ANC off), there’s automatic Bluetooth standby, which puts the headphones into a low-energy sleep mode when you take them off, even if you don’t actively turn off power. It can purportedly last for months, and indeed, in the several months I have been using them, I have never turned them off. But the battery is always near the percentage I left it when I pop it back on a few days later. After about a week without using them, I put them on, and the audio assistant declared that the battery was at 90%.

I love the inclusion of a 3.5mm-to-3.5mm cable to connect to the seatback entertainment system on a plane to watch a movie. Remember, most planes don’t have Wi-Fi connections to the displays. With Bluetooth, there’s multipoint, so you can connect to two devices at the same time. Any time I pop them on at home, they declare "Connected, Christine’s MacBook Pro" then "Connected, Christine’s iPhone."

While the Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2s don’t rival audio quality from higher-end brands known for their prowess in this department, like JBL, sound is decent with booming bass. You can also adjust audio to your liking by choosing among custom listening modes (Quiet, Aware with ActiveSense, Immersion, and Cinema) and tweaking EQ options based on the music you’re listening to and your personal preference.

A wonderful inclusion for audio purists is a USB-C-to-USB-C cable for connecting them to a source device to enjoy lossless music, supporting files at 16-bit, 44.1kHz, or 48kHz. You can stream these from a variety of sources, like Apple Music, and now even Spotify has lossless audio. It’s an unexpectedly noticeable improvement in sound quality, a definite must for when you’re slinked back in a chair listening at home. But where these headphones really shine is with their noise-canceling capabilities. So much so that they have become the new pair I slide into my travel backpack for every trip.

Bose QuietComfort Ultra Gen 2 headphones

$399 $449 Save $50

Battery Life Up to 30 hours

Bluetooth Bluetooth 5.4

Foldable Yes

Charging type USB-C

Audio jack 2.5mm headphone port

The Bose QuietComfort Ultra Gen 2 headphones boast improvements over the Gen 1 version from 2023, and the noise cancelling is downright superb.