I have bad luck with headphones. I have had maybe 10 in my life time, all of which have been terminated in some form or another. Two pairs of earbuds got dragged on highways for an extended duration. Two other pairs of actual headphones have broken under the pressure of my huge head. Then the other pairs of earbuds were excrutiatingly painful to use, due to the overly large plastic digging into my ear.
In essence: bad luck.
Enter the Philips HN050. They’re different. Why? Because 1. they’re not painful to use and 2. I bought the warranty: if they break in two years, I’ll get them replaced!
They’re also noise cancelling headphones (and inexpensive ones at that). Its amazing how much ambient sound these buggers cut down. They do not eliminate most sounds, but the ones you do hear will be much softer.
However, it does cause pressure in the ear. Sound is essentially pressure variations. So that silencing destructive wavelength the headphones send out to your ear to cancel ambient noise still creates an additional layer of pressure to your ear. It cannot be heard, but is definitively felt.