The best ANC headphones I’ve ever heard are £50 off for Black Friday

If you’re just joining TechRadar’s Black Friday deals coverage (there’s plenty to get stuck into, friend), I’ve got an absolute corker of a Bose ANC headphones deal for you.

Bose’s formidable lineup of audio equipment rarely sees a decent discount – and its newest noise-cancelling over ears surely wouldn’t be getting slashed in price for the first time ever, right? Wrong, because Black Friday isn’t like any regular sale…

I cannot emphasise enough how rare it is to see a new, five-star, class-leading product in a significant Black Friday discount. And these really are that product.

As we said in the mini verdict of our glowing review, which was only published on October 22nd (that’s how new these headphones are): “The King of Active Noise-Cancellation is back with a product that’s just a mild improvement on the model it replaces – which is, frankly, all it really needed to be. Want the best premium noise-nixing cans on the market? Here you go.”

The design here feels premium too; Bose products deliver a significant serving of pride in ownership. You get a combination of physical and touch controls on the right ear cup here: a physical button taking care of power on/off and Bluetooth pairing, plus a second slightly larger button that can deal with play/pause, track skips and cycling through your ANC profiles. The ‘touch’ part includes a slider that controls volume, while a ‘touch and hold’ gesture can act as a shortcut to vocal info on the battery level, cycling through ‘Immersive’ audio options, summoning a virtual assistant or waking Spotify. You can choose and select which of these shortcuts you’d like, in the control app.

And the ANC? I’ll take from our review again here. The QCU Headphones (2nd Gen) are “fitted with the best active noise-cancellation you can buy at anything like this kind of money. In fact, they have better ANC than plenty of wireless over-ear headphones costing two or three times this amount. Somehow, Bose has worked out how to banish external sounds almost entirely from the experience, without altering the sonic character of the headphones in the slightest, and without introducing any sensation of noise-floor disruption or that weird ear-sucky-vacuum thing that less accomplished companies deal in. It’s remarkable, really.”

Sennheiser headphones deals, my more general Black Friday headphones and earbuds deals recommendations or our dedicated Black Friday headphones deals live blog. Happy shopping – and stay safe out there!