I have some really nice bose headphones.

They're not noise-canceling, but they sound amazing (lots of good low eq range) and they are super confortable.

They're kinda pricey, but if you wear headphones a lot, you might as well get a nice pair

http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/shop_online/headphones/audio_headphones/around_ear_headphones/index.jsp

Steel and dom are absolutely right, designer headphones look great (for about 5 minutes - also pretty dubious on those skullcandies!) and sound lousy. as for a recommendation, I've used a few different Sennheiser headphones and they consistently have sounded pretty great. Apparently they do a range of portable headphones too so that should be good for your usage, right?

DietCoke: bose do not make high quality audio equipment. the price you pay for bose hardware is way more than the quality would dictate. they might be half decent but you're throwing away money by buying them. bose is what you buy when you want the most expensive shit possible, because its GOTTA be good if it costs more.

bose do not publish tech specs about their hardware. why would you buy something without knowing anything about its quality? criticisms levelled at bose are well founded, and anyone who suggests buying bose rather than the far better alternatives is gay

well yeah I know that, but Bose is nowhere near the most expensive stuff on the market. My wife and I bought the bose over-the-ear and earbud headphones for an overseas plane trip out of a best buy vending machine(lol) because all the Shure sets were gone and all we had were regular earbuds and you can't hear those things on a plane. They're decent enough IMO and comfortable to wear for extended periods of time and that's pretty much all I said about them other than people like you seem to have strong feelings about them.