AKG N60 NC

The AKG N60NC Wireless offers a surprisingly competent combination of excellent sound quality and noise cancellation. The headphones are well designed and built, and are much better looking than their competitors. All while sitting at a much cheaper price point. The only issue with these headphones is that they're an on-ear design, which means that they can start to feel uncomfortable over longer listening periods. This may be a problem if you intend to use them on flights.

Although they may not be quite as good as full-size offerings from Bose and Sony, the on-ear AKG N60NC are arguably the best compact wireless noise-canceling headphones.

Once I got past the price and sidestepped my prejudices about on-ear and noise-canceling cans, I found a surprising amount of things to like about these headphones. They're not for everyone, and you could acquire both OnePlus' Bullets v2 earbuds and Status Audio's CB-1 closed-back over-ears for less than half the asking price of $250 here, but if you want the best of both worlds in one, AKG's N60NC is the closest you'll come to that goal.

The AKG N60 NC headphones deliver balanced, laudable audio performance and solid noise cancellation in a travel-friendly design.