The pressure / motion sickness phenom is real; some people just can't take ANC in an over-ear headphone at all. Fortunately for me, I'm not one of them. I got

The pressure / motion sickness phenom is real; some people just can't take ANC in an over-ear headphone at all. Fortunately for me, I'm not one of them. I got some lower-end Sennheisers on a lark a while back, and found them AMAZING for use on planes. You don't realize how draining the plane's white noise is until it goes away, let me tell you. It was like a breath of fresh air. I had, for years, poo-pooed the idea of ANC vs. high-end in-ear monitor type headphones based on an imperfect understanding of how to measure sound isolation; I was just WRONG. I have a bit of a headphone acquisition problem, I admit. While I still have those Sennheisers, I also have the AirPods Pro (which are great for many things, but not really sufficient for airplane duty -- OTOH, they completely mask the noise of my bicycle trainer) and the AirPods Max (which are better than the Sennheisers in every way). The Max are expensive, but sound far better than any headphone I have except MAYBE the $400 wired pair of Sennheisers I have in my office. They're in another league. The white noise is gone, but so is most conversation around you, or other incidental noises, or whatever. Pre-COVID, I worked in hotel lobbies and coffeeshops doing very focussed work without distraction, which is pretty great. I'll also say this, which I found kind of hilarious. I recently bought some of those bone-conduction headphones (AfterShockz) for use when gravel cycing (no cars to worry about there). They don't even go in your ears; they sit your skull just outside the ear canal, and work pretty darn well. Their WHOLE REASON TO EXIST is that they DO NOT block external sounds, so they're safer to wear when running or cycling or whatever. However, so that you can still use them in other contexts where you might want to block out sounds, they ship with some earplugs. Ha!