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Strengths: Very good cancellation in most cases.
Excellent for train noise.
Battery life good, rugged construction.
Can be used as "normal" headphones if cancellation turned off.
Very good audio quality too.
Weaknesses: They reinforce sub-sonic sounds - trucks outside an office building - making them not useful in some situations (see below)
Separate battery module on cord is cumbersome.
Summary: By far these perform best for subway noise. Deafening squeals are tolerable, and the 'roar' or 'rushing' of normal wheel clatter is almost completely supressed. They're also very good on jet planes. Really very nice.
Audio quality is excellent in my opinion. Unlike the Bose NC headphones I looked at (a long time ago) these *will* allow you to listen to music with the NC circuitry turned off. That also means if your batteries die, you can still listen. But, in that case, the audio frequency response becomes noticeably reduced for highs and bass. It's a lot like the difference the "loudness" compensation switch makes on stereo equipment.
One other nice thing is that in situations where nearby conversation would be distracting (e.g. nearby cell phone yacking while trying to read a book), these help. You can still hear conversations just fine, but the cancellation circuit breaks up the directional phasing of the voices, so they always sound like they're "way over there", rather than right next to you.
These have a problem in situations where there's lots of low frequency noise, especially sub-sonic stuff. Turbo-prop planes, an office building with trucks outside etc. In these cases, they actually reinforce the noise, and make your ears *feel* uncomfortable. You don't hear the stuff so much, it just feels very strange.
For this form factor, probably would go with the Bose next time, since I think Bose units have better reduction, and battery is integrated in to the phones body.
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