Let's get something out of the way immediately. The new Sennheiser PXC 450 NoiseGard headphones are excellent, but they are too expensive—way too expensive. That's why they narrowly missed our Editors' Choice award. Even so, Bose's QuietComfort headphone series has finally met a worthy competitor. I believe the PXC 450 (does the 450 refer to its $450 price tag?) is the best noise-cancellation set I've heard . . . but it costs $100 more than Bose's already-expensive, top-of-the-line QuietComfort 3! What's more, it's a full $150 more than Bose's QuietComfort 2—the sealed (circumaural) pair it's most fairly comparable with. True, I gave an Editors' Choice to Grado's $1,000 GS1000 headphones. That model, however, is really priced for audiophiles looking for the very best pair of phones available. Noise-cancellation headphones generally don't come close to achieving audiophile standards. They are more of a tool and should be priced accordingly. I think $450 is a ridiculous sum of money to ask for any set of headphones that are not truly audiophile-level quality.