The Best Noise-Cancelling Headphones Under €400 — a Price-Verified Comparison

Every “best headphones” list shares a dirty secret: it was true the day it was published. Prices move weekly, stock comes and goes, and the flagship it crowned gets quietly replaced by its own successor. So this comparison works differently. It’s built on a live research Stash: real products, scored head-to-head, prices checked against live retailer pages. The numbers below are what we verified at research time; the Stash at the bottom re-verifies them, so it stays honest after we hit publish.

The contenders — and why these

We didn’t start from a brand list. We started from the search a real buyer makes (strong active noise cancellation, over-ear, under budget) and let the scoring sort out the rest. Four made the cut: the current flagships from the two brands that own this category, a budget outsider that punches well above its price, and Apple’s luxury option.

• Sony WH-1000XM6, verified from €279.95, scored 84. Sony’s current flagship and the Stash’s top pick: the best sound here, LDAC hi-res streaming, and the lighter of the two flagships.
• Bose QuietComfort Ultra (2nd Gen), verified from €414 in black (about €345 in white), scored 82. The Stash’s pick for noise cancellation, and the one to beat on a long flight.
• Anker Soundcore Space One, €134.87 at bol.com, scored 74. The budget outsider that refuses to act like one: adaptive ANC, LDAC, and 40 hours of battery with the cancellation switched on.
• Apple AirPods Max (USB-C), verified from €419, scored 76. The 2024 refresh: USB-C at last, wired lossless support, and the most expensive product here: over the budget.

How the scoring works

Every product here is scored against the same headphone rubric: five dimensions fixed for the category (sound fidelity, comfort & ergonomics, features & tech, build & longevity, and usability & portability), each anchored to what a 90, a 70 and a 50 look like at that price. They roll into the one number you see above. A dimension with no evidence is marked not assessed and left out rather than scored as a defect: the data on the XM6’s build was too thin to assess, so its 84 rests on the other four. Since September 2026 the scorer also counts what independent reviewers have established about each exact model, which is why every number on this page moved a few points from our first pass. Owner ratings are context, not a dimension, and affiliate relationships play no part: every product on Huntli is scored by the same pipeline, and rankings never depend on them. The full method is in How Huntli Scores Products.

The winner, and the asterisk that matters

The Sony WH-1000XM6 takes it at 84, and it wins on the thing you hear every day: the best sound fidelity score here (85, against the Bose’s 75), comfort level with the Bose at 85, and the Stash’s Top Pick badge. Huntli’s head-to-head calls it for the Sony too: higher-fidelity sound over LDAC, a lighter frame, and adaptive noise cancellation from Sony’s QN3 chip. It’s also the cheapest flagship here, verified at €279.95 at bol.com, €134 under the black Bose.

The asterisk is the head-to-head’s own caveat: unless you need the extra battery endurance and cloud-soft comfort of the Bose for long-haul travel. That’s a real fork, not a hedge. If most of your listening happens on planes, read the next section before you buy.

Who should buy the others

Bose QuietComfort Ultra (2nd Gen) — for silence, and for long flights

At 82 the Bose is two points behind, and it leads where frequent flyers care most: the best features score here (90, carried by its noise cancellation), the Stash’s Best Noise Cancellation badge, and a usability score of 85 on the strength of its battery. It’s also the clear winner of its head-to-head with the AirPods Max, on all-day comfort, weight and battery life. What it costs you is sound (75) and a little weight against the Sony.

Then there’s the colour. The item in the Stash is the black one, verified at €414 at Coolblue: €14 over the line. The white one is the same headphone at about €345 at MediaMarkt. Huntli keeps a colourway’s price to that colourway, so the white offers sit in the black one’s list marked as another variant rather than quietly lowering its headline. If silence is what you’re paying for and white works for you, that is the version to buy.

Anker Soundcore Space One — the no-guilt pick

€134.87 at bol.com, scored 74: 88% of the winner’s score for about half of its price. It earns its place with a usability score of 85, level with the Bose: 40 hours of battery with ANC on, and five minutes of charging buys four hours. You give up refinement (sound, comfort and build all sit at 70), and the cancellation can waver in strong wind; you keep adaptive ANC, LDAC hi-res audio and multipoint pairing. First pair, travel spare, or a firm refusal to spend three figures on headphones: this is the one.

AirPods Max — only if you live in Apple’s world

The 76 isn’t a typo, and neither is the price: the cheapest verified new offer is €419, which puts the AirPods Max over the budget and makes it the most expensive pair here (Apple’s own store charges €579). Its comfort score is the lowest of the four ANC pairs (65), because at 385 g it’s heavy enough to tire you over long sessions, and its usability score (60) is the lowest on the page. The build is superb (85, joint best here), the sound is second only to the Sony (82), and the ecosystem tricks (instant pairing, audio handoff) are real. But unless those tricks are precisely what you’re paying for, one of the other three serves you better, for less.

The wildcard: closed-back without the ANC tax

Here’s the question no ANC roundup asks: do you actually need active noise cancellation? So we asked Huntli for the best closed-back option for noise suppression without it. The answer it came back with was the Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro, verified from €123.14 across 10 offers. It’s in the Stash below as the fifth item, so you can compare it against the ANC four yourself.

Its 69 is the rubric doing its job, not a verdict on the headphone. The headphone rubric rewards features and portability, and a wired studio monitor gives up exactly those two (50 each). On the dimensions it does compete on, it’s at or near the top: the best comfort score on the page (88), build level with the AirPods Max (85), and sound (78) behind only the Sony and the AirPods. It’s a studio fixture for a reason: unmatched long-term comfort on the legendary velour earpads, extreme durability with fully replaceable parts, isolation good enough for recording booths, and a soundstage more spacious than closed designs usually manage. The cons from the same analysis: it’s bulky and doesn’t fold, the cable is fixed, and the treble can run sharp for sensitive ears.

For a commute it loses to everything above: passive isolation is no match for ANC on an airplane. For a desk, a home studio, or anyone who resents paying for electronics they’ll never toggle, it might just be the best buy on this page, at under a third of the AirPods Max’s price.

Skip all of these if…

…you mostly listen at a quiet desk (see the wildcard above, or go open-back and get better sound per euro than anything with a battery), or you need something for sport, where over-ears are simply the wrong shape. Knowing when the category is wrong is worth more than any ranking within it.

How we verified

Every price above was checked against the retailer’s live product page, not a cached feed, and cross-referenced across sources. A vendor priced suspiciously far from consensus gets flagged, not crowned, and a price only counts for the exact product it belongs to, colour included. Prices will have moved by the time you read this. That’s the point of the live Stash below: check it before you buy.