>>Why would someone buy noise cancelling headphones if they don’t need that feature?

You don't ALWAYS need/want that feature.

Some reasons:

* Safe battery life

* Hear conversation or important sounds in the background

Most headphones (all I've purchased) have a dedicated hardware button. In fact, all of them have 3 modes: Noise cancelling ON, noise cancelling off (Switch), noise cancelling off + enhanced microphone (quick transient button, to quickly hear e.g. captain announcement etc). Can't imagine having to do that through software, it'd defeat the convenience.

That being said, fully agree; my Sennheiser HD380 with 3.5mm jack have lasted a decade and I don't know when or if I'll ever need to replace them. They sound and feel as good as new.

The expensive Bluetooth headphones and headsets are a disposable commodity with inferior user experience for at least some use cases (Pairing? Latency? Battery? Software? You don't have to worry about those with 3.5mm:). Yet, there's a positive ARMY of people who always join in to defend the removal of 3.5mm jack - even though they gained nothing from it, and some of us lost a lot :-/

huh, my Sennheiser headphones can control the noise cancelling with buttons on the headphones. Some limitations were annoying (2 connected devices at once, it gets very confused by my dual boot machine) but sounds like I dodged a bullet with brands requiring custom apps

They may want to disable that feature occasionally.

I sometimes wear glasses which prevent the headphones from forming a perfect seal. If I walk around with the headphones on, I get a "wow" going on which is quite tiring. Turn the NC off and they're ok. I only rarely do this, so I wouldn't have bought a dedicated pair only for this purpose.

Exactly. If you are disabling noise cancellation on the QC II, you bought the wrong headphones. There are much nicer ones without noise cancellation for less money.

I toggle NC on and off all the time depending on the situation.