I have QC15 from a few years ago when it was the only noise-cancelling headphone worth a damn. It's not a brilliant fit for my head, and not as clear for music as my late lamented Sennheiser HD25SP, but the active noise cancellation is magic
[1], and most of the time that I use headphones, that's a net win.
I've tried a friend's QC25, and they're basically the same, functionality wise, but seem a bit less cheap and plasticy and have a folding headband.
I'm not sure about other brands. I think they're still playing catch-up.
Beware of "noise cancelling" when used to describe headsets with a mic: They're probably referring to how much background noise gets into the microphone signal.
Not very useful, I know.
[1] Expectation management: Active noise cancellation works best on continuous noises. It'll kill computer fans and aircon dead, make planes trains and automobiles pleasantly quiet, and make a decent dent in the noise of an echoey crowded room. What it won't do is block out your nearby colleague's phone calls. Indeed, it'll probably improve the signal:noise ratio of their speech. Autistic people and people with auditory processing disorder use these to improve their speech discrimination in noisy environments, because speech mostly gets through the cancellation.