Heard about these Noisefighters products via Edgar Sherman Design, seemed like exactly the thing to remedy the precise issues I myself have found when discharging firearms and using electronic ear pro like Peltor Comtacs.
As with anything, my experience wearing these on civilian shooting ranges and in airsoft games to protect from gunfire and blank firing grenades is that, as always, there’s no free lunch. They absolutely do much better in terms of not letting your eye pro create a gap that breaks the seal and lets loud noises right through your ear defence, big plus there. They’re also much thicker than the stock foam pads with far higher end materials, hence more comfortable and give you a longer window of wearing your headset before any aches set in which is especially pertinent when wearing a helmet. Though keep in mind they are thicker so I would probably only pair these with a high or super high cut lid.
On the flip side they retain a fair bit more heat given the denser materials and the better seal and waterproof urethane outer layer means the trough in the pads will quite literally be a trough of sweat liquid that will build up over time. The hotter the climate and harder you work the more sweat. It’s not a giant waterfall but they do just feel more ‘sweaty’ in the heat, I’m sure most of you know that feeling well.
So what are they good for? If your eye pro has arms that go over your ears and you’re not in high heat these will be absolutely perfect and I’d definitely recommend them. If you’re wearing goggles with a strap though and working in high heat you may end up preferring the stock foam pads, potentially. Though I’d expect the cheap plastic on the Peltor pads to break down much more quickly. Look at your own kit and AOR and decide accordingly.
All the above aside, the mixture of silicone gel on top of memory foam built in to the Noisefighters simply feels luxurious and in an item like this that’s directly against the skin things like subjective feel do matter. They fit tighter in to the headset than the stock pads but still take a matter of seconds to install and again the plastic used for the pads to attach to is (in my estimation) clearly a higher grade than on Peltor or Sordin products.
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