A great pair of headphones can seriously improve your enjoyment of music, podcasts and audiobooks. Upgrading to a set of premium over-ear Bluetooth headphones can be a pricey affair though, with many of the best costing hundreds of pounds.

As a tech reviewer I am lucky enough to test many pairs of headphones and earbuds, often for long periods, and the pair I’ve settled on this past year has been the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones.

They usually retail for £449.95, but Bose has slashed the price all the way down to £299.95 for Black Friday. The deal is running until 3 December, just be aware that the deal will only last as long as stocks last. You can choose from black, white smoke, diamond and lunar blue.

I’ve also extensively used the Sony WH-1000XM4, Sony WH-1000XM5, Apple AirPods Max and Beats Studio Pro, and the Bose are the headphones I keep coming back to. They have industry-best noise cancellation, blocking out sounds in unbelievable fashion. I’ve worn these at home, at work, on the street, on the London Underground and on several long haul flights and the ability for the cans to cocoon me in audio has been amazing.

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They also have a great transparency mode to let noise in so you are aware of your surroundings or so you can talk to people, plus Bose’s exclusive immersive audio mode can transform the music track you’re listening to and create a virtual surround sound effect. It’s not always spot on, but when it works it sounds great.

Unlike the AirPods Max, the plastic (but premium) Bose headphones are lightweight enough to be comfortable to wear for hours at a time, backed up by 24 hours of battery life. This is a little shorter if you’re using noise cancelling or immersive audio, but it means they will last the length of any commercial flight without the need to recharge.

They fold up and slot into a relatively slim carry case that’s included, too. You also get a USB-C charging cable and a 3.5mm to 3.5mm headphone cable for plugging in directly to headphone jacks.

The Bose app lets you control connections to your devices and you can tweak the EQ to ramp up the bass or fine tune your audio to your tastes.