Sony has a history of making great, long-lasting headphones and its h.ear on Wireless NC headphones are no exception.

The company’s big push in the past couple of years has been for high resolution music delivered by its range of Walkman devices and Xperia smartphones. These new headphones are some of the first to deliver that high resolution music wirelessly, but HiRes music isn’t required to enjoy them.

Smooth lines

 The h.ear ons come with the colour-matched carry case, here the black headphones with the blue carry case. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian

Depending on the colour you choose the h.ear ons are either bold and eye-catching or simple and subtle. The charcoal black versions that I wore for two weeks were the latter, which was fine by me. They looked good, without being as ostentatious as many other large headphones. .

The bold viridian blue - a blue-green colour - versions stand out, and while not as loud and shouty as a set of brightly coloured Beats, require a certain level of confidence to pull off.

The over-ear headphones, which encase your ears fully in a padded cup, are relatively light for full-sized headphones, sit well on your head and are comfortable for extended listening periods. The headband also expands within itself, so there’s no possibility of catching hair in it.

Controls and connectivity

 The little joystick switch and volume buttons are responsive and easy to use. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian

As with all of Sony’s Bluetooth devices, set up was a breeze if you have a smartphone with NFC. One tap with your device on the little “N” symbol and it’s paired and ready to go. The connection strength was excellent throughout, without dropouts or skipping, which is often caused by wearing other Bluetooth devices on your wrists, including smartwatches and fitness trackers.

They support Sony’s new Bluetooth high resolution format, but it requires a Sony Walkman or smartphone, neither of which I had at hand to test. Music quality using either a Google Nexus 6P or an iPhone 6S Plus proved great without requiring the special codec.

On the side the left ear cup there is a power button, button to switch the active noise cancelling on and off, a microUSB port to charge them and a headphones jack for using them without Bluetooth or when the battery has run out. The right ear cup has a volume rocker and a small sliding joystick: flick it up and down to change tracks or push it in like a button to pause or play.

All the buttons were easy to reach, use and were responsive, which you would expect to be the baseline, but it’s amazing how often wireless headphone makers get it irritatingly wrong.

Isolation and noise cancelling

 The power and ANC buttons, with the microUSB port below it and a couple of LEDs for displaying on-status. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian

The h.ear ons have active noise cancelling (ANC), which uses microphones on the outside of the headphones to detect ambient noise and cancel it out using the earphone speakers.

The ANC is very effective at blocking out low-range hum such as aeroplane or train noise, but I found it wasn’t good at blocking other noises such as the people around me chatting. In fact the passive isolation - the materials of the headphones acting as a physical block to noise - wasn’t great. For instance, on my train-based commute without the ANC active I couldn’t hear the other end of a phone call happening slightly further down the carriage. With it active I could hear it clear as day. That’s partly due to the fact that it blocked out most of the train noise, but left voices clearly audible.

With music playing the effect is dampened until you get to a quiet bit in the track. It’s better than not having ANC, but the h.ear ons aren’t as good at silencing the outside world as the Plantronics BackBeat Pro or market leaders Bose QC25.

 The padded ear cups and deep enough to encase my ears without touching them, and are comfortable for extended listening periods with a padded headband. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian

More or less every pair of Sony headphones sound decent. The h.ear ons have a fairly neutral or flat sound profile that I like. Given a push there was plenty of tight bass to be found, but it didn’t dominate the audio – bass heads should look elsewhere. Separation of instruments and sounds was decent, if not amazing in the mid and highs, with a reasonably wide soundscape that made extended listening easy on the ears.

The headphones highlighted some interesting pieces of songs that I hadn’t heard before with a variety of different headphones. For instance, I could hear the thump on the skin of the drums during Gotye’s Eyes Wide Open.

The ANC also had no noticeable effect on the audio quality, which is good, as some headphones with ANC lose range within the low-end of the spectrum with the feature switched on.

Battery life

 A headphones cable can be plugged in for wired listening. The small ‘N’ denotes the NFC area. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian

Simply put, battery life was stellar. They lasted well over 25 hours between charges with ANC on, meaning they’re in the range of being able to forget about charging them for your average daily listening. Charging took a good hour or so via microUSB. If the battery does run out you can use the headphones cable, which is also a lot easier to use than Bluetooth if you’re trying to connect to a computer.

Observations

• The headphones socket is relatively narrow, which means I could only get the supplied cable to fit
• The headphones provide clear audible and voice feedback for connections and when it’s time to charge them, with a female voice with a strange US-Asian accent, which was difficult to place
• There’s no way to check charge apart from when it runs out
• They fold up relatively compact, but not flat and have a shell carry case
• Call quality through the headphones was decent

Price

The Sony h.ear on Wireless NC headphones cost £220, which makes them £90 more than the Philips SHB9850NCs, £30 more than the Plantronics BackBeat Pro, but £79 cheaper than the Parrot Zik 2.0 headphones.

Verdict

The Sony h.ear on Wireless NC are a good set of Bluetooth noise cancelling headphones only slightly shy of excellent.

They’re comfortable for extended periods, the battery life is very long and they have good controls. The noise cancelling isn’t quite as good as the best available, and their sound profile won’t suit everyone. I would have liked a little more sparkle and liveliness, something characteristic of good high-end headphones, but they make decent all-rounders for multiple music genres.

They’re neither expensive nor cheap for wireless noise cancelling headphones and offer similar if not better performance than some much more expensive competitors making them definitely worth considering.

Pros: great battery life, good controls, good connectivity, comfortable, noise cancelling, hi-res support, folding for travel

Cons: passive isolation could be better, noise cancelling not quite as effective as high-end competitors

 The headphones are flexible and adjustable enough that they should fit most sizes and shapes of head comfortably. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian