Can an upstart sound-canceling headphone match the performance of the vaunted Bose Quiet Comfort 15 at a third of the price?

That was the claim made by makers of the NoiseHush i7 headphones, which cost $100, or about $200 less than the Bose.

To test the claim, I took both headphones on a train trip. I tried them out in the quiet car because noise-canceling headphones do a good job with consistent background sounds, like the rush of wind, but do little to shut out chatty travelers or a crying baby.

The simple test is to turn the noise canceling on and off without any music playing. Headphones dealt with four distinct sounds there: a whirring ventilation fan, a low rumble, the wind rush and the clatter of the tracks.