It's like this: Beats headphones are worth about $50, at the most. Noise-cancelling in an office, you barely need to pay anything, because "noise-cancellation" is achieved by the headphones picking up background noise with a small microphone and then playing a dampening noise in reaction to a sound wave. This is easy when the background noise is constant - that's why "white noise" in offices works so well. But if the noise is varied, it's impossible to predict how loud or soft the next sound wave is going to be, and headphones are always slightly behind in reaction, as it is. So that's why sometimes it seems like noise cancelling headphone work awesome, and other times the seem like any other pair of headphones.

So you're not paying for better noise cancelling when you pay more for headphones. You are paying for superior sound quality.

If you are going to drop $200 on a pair of 'good' headphones, even noise canceling, I'd suggest getting some Audio-Technica, which are superior to everything out there, even Bose. Most are less than $200.

My experience: I own a small broadcasting company.