Earplugs

​Noise-canceling headphones aren't always practical for those who work in especially loud environments or just like to mow the lawn while listening to tunes. Plugfone’s latest earplug/earbud hybrid combine the effectiveness of a traditional earplug with a convenience of a Bluetooth earbud.

​Earplugs may be handy for blocking out unwanted noises, but what happens when you want to hear some of what's going on, or even hear every little bit of it? Well, you pull the plugs out of your ears, of course. In the case of Knops, however, you can leave them in and just "turn up the volume."

​Are active-noise canceling earplugs – specifically, this US$200 pair from QuietOn – better bringers of silence than passive options like traditional foam or silicone plugs? If so, are they worth the expense? New Atlas reviews.

Last year we covered a wickedly simple product called QuietOn: earplugs with built-in active noise cancellation (ANC). This week at CES 2017, we got our first hands-on.

A new pair of electronic earplugs from Hush takes a novel approach to delivering peace through your ears. We recently got to try them out.​

In the last year or two we've seen several hearing wearables pop up, using the same smartphone-connected principles as smartwatches to augment, enhance or block out your ears' experience of the world. Let's look at today's best hearing wearables.

Noise cancelling technology, which is widely used in headphones, lets users drown out background distractions to hear their music better. But what if you don't want to hear anything at all? The new QuietOn earplugs use active noise cancelling (sans music) to minimize what users can hear.

Trying to get to sleep when there's unwanted noise in the background can be a fruitless and frustrating experience. You could try and block out the noise with earplugs, but sometimes that's just not enough. The new Hush earplugs are controlled by a smartphone and mask noise with soothing sounds.