The PXC250's are rather special, they have some big claims made about them which matches the increased price, the active noise cancellation is meant to mean uninterrupted listening while in the most hostile environments. So we've spent a week giving them a real test on a mixture of public transport and even a construction site.

The Sennheiser PXC250 headphones are closed, dynamic, supra-aural stereo mini headphones and they are small folding up in a kind of technical origami to fit in their little pouch making a 65 gram easily transportable package. before we get onto our noise blocking tests we first had the chance of hooking the PXC250's to our Ipod for some qualitative assessments, using 192kbit encoded MP3 files we tried a range of music and found the Sennheiser to perform best on tracks that needed a bit more bass than average, while the whole range is clear and well delivered the bass had a smidgen more weight that we expected.

The PXC250 has a bass tube which seems to give that extra kick which made the most difference on dance and R+B tracks, there is a bit of muddiness as heavy bass tracks smears across the rest of the range but it is a fair trade. With the noise cancellation switched in circuit the sound quality does seem to improve with markedly more bass and also treble and the overall sound becomes that bit more punchy.

So that leads us to the main feature of the PXC250 headphones the noise cancelling technology, in essence it tries to block out low level background noise by reducing sounds sub 1,000 Hz by a maximum of 15db, this should remove the low rumble of trains, busses and aeroplanes.

On our first test on the London underground we first tried the PXC250's with the noise cancellation switched off the usual grinding of carriages and general vibrations disturbed the music but with the switch in the on position the combination of the filter and the enhanced sound did deaden the background. Lets be straight at this point the PXC250's do not filter out all background noise they are not noise isolating but they do managed to dull the constant rumble of the underground, in compassion with the Shure units we tested a few weeks back they are a different kind of noise reduction.

You still hear things around you where as the E2c's block out the world the PXC250's just reduce the most annoying parts of daily life. There is a downside of course, the active noise suppression requires power and there is a bulky unit inline with the headphones which contains the 2 AA batteries required. Instead of being at the base of the cable it is about a third of the way up meaning if you have the cable at full length the battery compartment dangles placing strain on the headphones.

As if to prove the ability of the PXC250's to block low level sounds we happened to pass a building in central London undergoing some serious alterations (the jackhammer kind) and with the noise cancellation switched in it was very obvious that they took the edge of the hammers pounding sound but did not block it.

In summary we'd have to say the PXC250 headphones are a cool bit of kit, but they do not really offer the kind of sound isolation the price warrants, they are comfortable and yet the battery compartment can be a real pain, they are light but with the noise cancellation control they become a bit cumbersome.

Ultimately if you want real sound proofing for travel on aeroplanes and on the tube we'd stick with the Shure in ear units, the appliance of noise cancelling filters may be interesting but at around £80 paying for technology without the desired results is not cool.

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