I guess I'm one of the non-believers. I have tried the QC2's on several occasions. I will note that they ARE very comfortable. The noise-cancelling is acceptable, but not anything special IMO - I never claim to be H :-). I have taken my $50 targus NC headphones into a bose store and up to a bose kiosk and let them try to sell me. Each time my cheap targus set cancels the noise better than the Bose. I even handed it to the girl at the bose kiosk at PIT and she was just dumbfounded. In any case, I walked away without a set of QC2, but with $250 in my pocket.

When my targus headphones broke and I couldn't find them anymore (stupid me - I sat on them) I evaluated the field all over again. I was so dissatisfied with what I found that I drove 75 miles to a compusa that still had two pairs.

My targus set cancels up to 16db. I can't say how it compares because Bose does not publish specs - a carryover from the fact that they don't publish specs for their speakers due to their poor midrange performance. I would strongly suspect that they are right around the 10db-12db camp.

The short of it: I wouldn't buy a set of headphones without listening to the competition. My requirements may vary from yours since I prefer use a seperate set of high-end headphones for non-NC use, but if NC capbility is your primary requirement then I don't think the QC2's are a no brainer.