Walker's Extra Protection Folding Range Ear Muffs (NRR 30/34)

Since I already have a little hearing loss, and horrible tinnitus, I wanted to find some decent ear muffs, without spending a fortune. The man I talked with at Earplug Superstore was very helpful and pleasant. I'm very pleased with the Walker's Extra Protection Folding Range Ear Muffs. They block out more of the damaging noise. I highly recommend Earplug Superstore.

excellent for protecting your hearing. I bought these to wear while riding a very loud zero turn mower and these helped immensely.

I recently bought these for two reasons. The NRR 34 rating grabbed my attention and also they said that these were very comfortable. These quiet things down very nicely. I use them for operating power tools, tractors, heavy equipment and so on. I am very pleased with how quiet they make things. However, as far as comfortable, I think they make these for people with little heads, wow are they ever tight! So tight that I can only wear them for a very short while because they give me a terrible headache!. I hate the molded plastic that has no adjustments for head size at all! They need to rethink the size issue because I for one will never buy these from this company again!

I recently bought a pair of these for use around the house and for commuter trains, traffic noises, and the like. I don't do any target practice type of use. I also have a brand new set of 3M Peltor X5A (NRR 31) here to compare them to. I bought the Walker's based on the very high NRR 34 rating. I tried them outside near noisy traffic. I have good (classical musican's) ears, and could not detect any better silence than with the Peltor NRR 31. In fact, the Walker's seemed slightly less quiet (about like a -29 NRR muff). In the hand, they feel slightly lighter than the Peltor X5A. I looked inside the Walker's and, the earpad is conventional (no special down-filter traps under the ear pads like Peltor's), and, the Walker's cups are lined with a feather-weight loose fitting dry airy couple of pieces of foam. The Walker's cup DOES feel dense when you rap it with knuckles. BUT, it is a cup identical in size/depth to another brand of muff that is NRR 28 dB. The Walker's have too-slippery sliders, but, the clamping force is excellent!! I later added a wedge of camera case dense gray foam to mine to improve internal damping. I made sure the foam does not touch my ears. The Peltor x5a's internal foam is very dense white, almost "gooey" rubbery to the touch foam, which is very robust. Their huge cup also has space for a bit of extra foam down in the bottom middle if you wish to add a small 1 inch cube. In terms of the NRR, here's what might be happening: The Peltor X5A is probably the real deal at NRR 31. (You can tell that a huge amount of new engineering went into them, to get past their previous model of NRR 30). I noticed that in Europe, under their rating, the X5A Peltor is called "SNR 37". It's a difference of 6 dB - the two kinds of scales (SNR vs NRR). So, what might be happening with the Walker's, is, if you apply the same 6 dB subtraction, you get with the Walker's what could possibly be: "SNR 34" = "NRR 28". (NNR is typically 6 dB more conservative than SNR). Looking the Walker's over carefully (size, weight, pad design, foam design, cup thickness & heft) and trying it outside in traffic noise - it seems very much like a NNR 28 - 30 dB muff. It could be higher - I have no way of accurately measuring such things. If it's NRR 34, I would be very very surprised. It's a good muff, and it will be my spare set for around the house (tools, vacuums). On trains, the noisy city buss, the X5A will be my go-to. I can wear them over top of some quiet music canal phones. They look crazy (huge), but I'm saving my hearing, the on-lookers are going deaf. I hope this review is helpful. -Brian.