Ask Paul: June 28 (Premium)

Hola from Mexico City, and happy Friday! We're heading home tomorrow, so here's one last Ask Paul for the road. See you on the other side.
Shutting out the noise
jeroendegrebber asks:

On my recent flight, I tried my Buds 2, and found their noise cancelling to be ... wanting. My old MDR1000X were excellent and made the flight so much more pleasant, because the airplane noise was really cancelled out. The comparison is a bit unfair given in ear vs over ear. What do you use in flight and what are your experiences?

I had been using a pair of OG Bose QuietComfort Earbuds for a few years, I guess, and I tried to upgrade to a second-gen pair last year, but none of the tips fit my ears well, and they didn't seem to have the same level of active noise cancelation (ANC), so I gave them to my wife. More recently, I got a pair of Apple AirPods Pro 2 earbuds and was surprised that the ANC was slightly better at the gym and on planes. And so I've worn those on the past few trips, I guess. The battery life is better too.

That said, earbuds are easy to lose, especially on a plane (though the AirPods being white helps; the Bose earbuds are black and it's a nightmare when one falls out on a plane). And even though I hate over-the-air headphones, I've been thinking about getting something with ANC just for flights. But I'm not even sure what that would be, and will need to research it.

(Semi-related, my daughter's headphones recently broke and in discussing this with her, I was surprised that she wasn't an earbuds fan: But they fall out too easily, which makes sense. She ended up getting a pair of Beats Solo 4 headphones on sale, but they don't have ANC.)
Doomed
anderb asks:

How do you feel about buying Doom 2016 the day before it was discounted by 80% in the Steam store?

I don't even understand the question. :) I just wanted to test a game, and it's a work expense. I don't "feel" anything.

That said, Doom (2016) for PC is on sale for just $3.99 right now on Steam (and Doom Eternal is just $9.99), so if you don't have either title and are interested, this is the time. Many other games are on sale as well, of course: The Steam Summer Sale runs through July 11.
Efficiency
spacecamel asks:

Since Apple can integrate their OS so tightly with the chip, do you think Microsoft will be able to get the same power efficiency results from their laptops or will they just get close?

When I started writing about my first Copilot+ PC experiences, I plotted out several articles, and the one I published yesterday, Snapdragon X Copilot+ PC: Early Thoughts on Battery Life, was originally focused on efficiency, which is sort of a vague target that encompasses more than just battery life. But it kind of took on a life of its own, which is fine, as I was struggling to explain why efficiency—which we might see as a "performance per watt"-type thing--even matters. Well, that and the fact that I'd been comparing the Snapdragon X to what we used to c...