MSA Sordin DIGITAL SUPREME PRO X Headband Leather

Build quality of these ear defenders is excellent. They are very robust with metal hinges and battery cover without being too heavy. Plenty of size adjustment available for placing over hat. More adjustment is available but restricted by the cable length on my set. When initially tested in a quiet environment the abient sound quality was surprisingly good. Natural level sits somewere between level 1 and 2 with 3 and 4 giving lots of amplification. Could be useful in situations where enhanced hearing is useful such as wildfowling. When took them to the clay target shooting range I was a little dissapointed. They certainly cut out load noises but seem to do so to the extreme. This means that holding a conversation with alot of shots going off in the background can be difficult. They are much faster to recover than other defenders I have tried but I still missed a few "pull" calls when other shots were being fired. The storage is not great, other defenders allow the ear pieces to be folded up inside the headband but these do not. The instructions advise not to store with the earpieces pressed together, which is ambiguous because this is how the product is packaged.

In all honesty, I don't know why there is such a following for these ear defenders. The head band is short which, for me, makes them uncomfortable to wear. The battery compartment is a complete joke, making battery changing a stupidly difficult process. They certainly do suppress gunshot noise as tested in a tunnel, firing a .308 rifle. However, hearing other people speak and detecting range commands is useless, even if you do turn up the volume. If you are looking for electronic ear defenders, do not hesitate to buy Peltor Sport Tac. You will save yourself a significant amount of money and have far superior ear defenders that actually do a first class job and are comfortable to wear all day long.

After taking a Mk5 flashbang to the eardrums at "oh god it's between my feet" range in a tight space with metal walls, without any ear protection, I was briefly rendered disorientated and wandered into enemy fire. Not my best moment. A day later and I still had ringing in my ears. Not good, I thought, and set about trying to find some decent ear protection.I suppose I should clarify that I play airsoft, right?My first pick was musician's earplugs. They're cheap and are designed to attenuate noise without compromising the sound, but anyone who's tried them will know that this is absolute rubbish unless you're stood in front of the amp stack at a concert, and happen to pick up the more detailed sounds through the vibrations in your skull. Not much use in airsoft if you can't hear the guy around the corner.I then pondered what kind of a price I'd put on not having tinnitus, and figured I should at least give these a go. They arrived well-packaged, with batteries included, and I took them for a spin. My initial impression was that they are bizarre to use. The microphones sit behind you, so you tend to hear things behind you a little louder than in front, which is kind of weird at first. I tried to be clever and reversed them, only to discover the exact reason they put them on the back: if you run forwards, the air rushes past them and everything goes all white-noise. They have an amplification scale so that you can turn background noise up and down, which acts a bit like a normaliser in that everything is the same volume, from plastic packets rustling to people throwing grenades at you. This is great for airsoft: I can hear the enemy way before I normally would.After while you just stop noticing that things don't sound normal. Your ears adjust after 30 minutes or so of wearing them, and it all sounds fine. You can have conversations just fine, with no distortion. You even get pretty solid directional hearing back as you learn where sounds are coming from. Loud bangs and noise are attenuated low enough that they don't do any harm, and this has actually resulted in me getting more kills when enemies attempt to storm a room - the normal disorientation and shock is reduced hugely, so you can respond much faster.The audio in jack is also a really useful tool. I hacked together a cable for my radio so I could hear radio chatter on them, but you could also use them to listen to smooth jazz while sprinting into enemy fire.As far as comfort goes, they're as good as can be expected. The strap adjusts to your head size, and the cups are comfortable enough, though they do get a bit warm after a while. I hear there are after-market options for replacing the pads, but I've not looked into it. I wear mine under a helmet without too much trouble, though they do tend to mash my face mask straps into my ears pretty hard, though that's more a problem of my setup than these ear defenders.My only mild complaint is that the supplied batteries are a bit rubbish, and only lasted a couple of hours of use. I put some proper Duracell ones in there and they last 10h+ of use without problems.All in all, you should buy these if you're in an environment with potentially dangerous noise levels. They're incredible.

Good quality product, only downside is comfort as there is not much clearance inside the cups.

Having read about these ear defenders in various places I finally took the plunge and bought a pair.They are well constructed but for the price I do think that MSA Sordin might sell them with the gel ear cup pads rather than the pads they do issue as standard. If you wear eye protection or specs the gel pads help to prevent any "leakage" of noise past the pads and they add considerably to the comfort level.The amplification levels (5 in all) are quite high from level 3 through 5 and the quality of the sound reproduction is reasonably good. I could certainly hear sounds that I could not hear without wearing them (could be useful to use to eavesdrop whispered conversations but difficult to look casual wearing them away from a shooting ground or range!). Whilst useful on occasions it's not something I will be using most of the time as the levels 2 & 3 really are the most natural levels. The electronic noise reduction of shotgun and rifle reports to 82db is excellent and I much prefer it to the hard "clipping" of all sound that many other electronic defenders use to prevent hearing damage.My reason for not thinking they are as good as I expected is the hiss, or rather SSHHSSHH noise that accompanies the higher levels of amplification which I personally find rather intrusive and irritating especially at the start of a session with them. After a while my brain screens it out but it does mean the higher levels won't get as much use as they might have done.I had been set to return them thinking there was a fault but experienced users who I asked to try them for me assure me that the noise I am hearing is quite normal. It may well be that my expectations are unreasonable but I thought that the days of radio noise/ carrier hiss etc. were gone with the advent of "digital" sound circuits/systems.I will be happy to recommend them to others I think but will certainly be warning folk about the background noise.

Awesome.The dba reduction rating doesn't tell the whole story. I was affraid these muffs wouldn't reduce gun shot reports on a firing range as well as the non-electronic muffs I have with 29dba reduction rating. The MSA digital muffs actually do away better job. Way better.

Best ears ever