The Bose QuietComfort earbuds are an odd product. They’re Bose earbuds, but they’re made by a separate company for Bose, and though you wouldn’t know it by the design language, there are some clues.

For example, they use a different voice for battery level announcements, and it sounds much cheaper than the standard Bose one. They also don’t work with Bose’s app and require you to download a new app just for these earbuds. The benefit, though, is that the case has wireless charging—something unfathomably absent from Bose’s actual earbuds.

They also just aren’t up to par with actual Bose earbuds. The sound quality is pretty good, with decent bass and midrange depth, but jumping back to the QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds—actually made by Bose—and you see that you’re missing out on so much nuance, clarity, and instrumental precision. The noise canceling is also quite strong for a pair of earbuds, but nothing compared to the world-erasing quality of the Ultras, which no other earbuds can really compare to.

That’s not a fair comparison, of course—the Ultras are almost double the price—but Bose has made a reputation for beating every other product in their category. And these don’t.

The QuietComfort Ultra headphones don’t just sound better than their competition; they have better noise canceling, a more premium build quality, and travel easier. The Ultra earbuds are bigger than other competing earbuds, but the sound quality and noise canceling more than make up for it, as there are no earbuds that come close to being this good at both.

Despite sharing the family name, the QuietComfort don’t really beat out their competition at anything, but they’re also a pretty well-rounded pair of earbuds, benefiting from Bose’s tuning, and are extremely well priced.

The closest competitors for “sealed, noise-canceling mid-range earbuds” are the AirPods Pro, Pixel Buds Pro 2, and Samsung Buds 3 Pro, and all of those are $50 more at $230. Though they have benefits—namely, smaller buds on the Pixels and better call quality on the Samsung and Apple earbuds—it’s not $50 worth of difference. AirPods Pro have the best noise canceling of that bunch too, and the Bose are bang on par with them, and I prefer the tuning on the QuietComfort.

And again, those are $50 more. If you actually want to shop in the $180 range, you can either choose passive-seal earbuds like the Samsung Buds 3 or standard AirPods 4—which have way worse noise canceling and significantly less bass—or the Nothing Ear for $140. Those are $30 cheaper, look better, and are way lighter, but their noise canceling is significantly worse, and they fit worse.

Conceptually, these are an odd product, but at this price, it’s hard to find a pair of headphones that combine better audio and noise-canceling quality. If you cap your earbud budget at $200, it’s hard to do better than these.