I love my sony's over my boses. The sonys have survived 3 years of being sat on, run over by the chair, yanked on and off, cable tied around me and dragging my aeron across the room and out the door, etc. And you CAN get replacement parts for them. Heck they come with a diagram of how to take them apart and replace parts.

My bose QC's lasted 6 months of mild air travel and then the headband broke in half. Only way to fix em was buy a new pair. Also I could wear my QC's for about 4 hours and then my ear would hurt. I can wear the sonys for 12+ hours no issue. But that's just my freakish shaped head so it's personal.

That said I don't really give a crap about the sound quality. They sound good to me and they're a good price. My previous pair lasted 10 years.

All the audio engineers I've ever asked have a set of the sonys because they're supposed to be a good representation of a middle of the road system that everyone has. They're good but not amazing. But that's what you want when mixing. A representation of the middle and one of the high end. Most people will be listening on the crap to good stuff.

Hmm, interesting. My wife has a pair of the noise canceling headphones. They seem fairly sturdy to me.

Those Sonys are great phones designed to be tough. They're mean to be used in a studio, get sat on from time to time. Have the cables yanked, etc. They don't have noise canceling and they don't run on batteries, so I consider them a different piece of gear from the Bose noise canceling phones. But I have no doubt they're probably tougher than most phones, Bose included.

An audiophile tube amp is not going to take abuse either - it's meant to be treated in a delicate way. The tradeoff for that is that it will deliver pristine quality. The Bose stuff is not quite that fragile, not quite that good either. But the point is that all gear is designed for a certain purpose and comes with certain tradeoffs.