At the recent press launch of the new QuietComfort 15 noise-cancelling headphones, Bose set up each person there with a pair of the old QuietComfort 3 headphones, plus a set of the new Quiet Comfort 15. They also rigged up a sound system to replicate the noise level passengers experience on an aircraft, around 90 decibels.
Now Bose famously don’t give specifications, so what I’d like to do is debut the Fitzgerald Noise-Cancelling Scale (FNCS) – the lower the score, the better (Note: this has no official status – it’s just me filling the Bose specs void). If the aircraft noise is given a FNCS score of 10, the old QuietComfort 3 headphones I rate at around a 3. The new QuietComfort 15? I’d give them an FNCS score of 1. They do a remarkable job of filtering out the cabin noise.
As opposed to the previous model running off an in-built battery, the QuietComfort 15 returns to run via a AAA battery, which will give you round 35 hours of power.
In case you’re wondering why did Bose jump from QuietComfort 3 to QuietComfort 15 – 4 is an unlucky number in both Japan and China, so it’s a tetraphobia-related product name.
Price and availability
The Bose QuietComfort 15 noise-cancelling headphones have an RRP of $499.
