The reviewer doesn’t say the noise-cancelling wasn’t effective against TV noise, though? She wrote “When I turned on the ANC mode, I could still hear the TV, but now only as a soft murmur. Turning up the volume of the music made the outside noise practically disappear.”

That’s pretty consistent with my experience with a few other models of noise-canceling headphones and earbuds as well — they don’t always eliminate TV or similar unpredictable sounds entirely, but do noticeably reduce them. Agree, though, that in general noise-canceling does a better job with engine sounds etc.

Anker calls them headphones, so that’s what we went with. Your point is valid, albeit rudely made, however, so I’ve switched “headphones” for “earbuds” in the title and text.