I purchased a pair of unkown-brand noise-cancelling headphones a few years ago. I bought them on spur of the moment whilst waiting at an airline gate in the US, for an overnight flight home, and seeing several families around me with potentially noise-generating babies.
They weren’t expensive (maybe £50 or so) and coupled with the price markup of airport stores, I fully expected them to be complete rubbish. Actually they were really good, made a huge difference to the cabin noise, and vastly improved the usefulness of in flight movies. We live by a main road and in the summer I used to use them if listening to radio 4 plays whilst sitting outside.
They lasted a few years before the cheap plastic started to go sticky and brittle, eventually crumbling beyond usability. Even so, they were one of my better spur of moment purchases. I’m sorely tempted sometimes to indulge in a decent quality pair, I’m sure they’d be even better.