We wore each pair for a full week on a train, a bus and a walk through traffic. Noise cancellation separated them far less than fit and call quality did.
Manufacturer figures come from a sealed test chamber. We measured in a normal bedroom with a door, a window and a person breathing in it, and the numbers moved a lot.
The list came from a real fourth-grade classroom. Store brands closed most of the gap, and one category — backpacks — accounted for a third of the difference on its own.
We logged 400 miles across six pairs and measured midsole compression throughout. The shoes that degraded least were not the ones testers preferred at the end.