I have Bose qc35 bluetooth headphones that I use several hours a day. Let's get the naysayers out of the way first about Bose making expensive items from low quality parts. Perhaps, perhaps not. But whatever, they do use excellent equalisation technique to get beautiful sound quality and sure they market the heck out of their items as if that's a bad thing.
And now to the good points of which there are several: excellent sound quality, supremely comfortable to wear for long periods, very good build quality (no squeaking even after several years of bashing around). Bluetooth connectivity is good and battery life is excellent.
I wear my headphones very frequently, including in the hot and stuffy London Underground, in hot weather walking up hills where I get sweaty and the occasional off-road bike ride). After about 3 or 4 years of this, the cups have opened up and the sponge has come out but I still continue using the headphones and will get round to ordering new cups shortly (official ones from Bose, the after-market ones I heard were almost as good, but I'm not an "almost" kinda guy).
I *think* the current model of these headphones have google search integration which really put me off but you can disable that.
Note: I also bought a pair of Goldring NS1000 shortly after buying the Bose so I can bash those about instead. They were far cheaper and the reviews said they were as good as Bose. The sound quality was almost there and for the far cheaper price, I would have dumped the Bose BUT after only a short while, the Goldring started to squeak which was highly irritating. I also considered Sennheiser (whatever the model was equivalent to Bose) but they were not in stock.
EDIT: duh, i forgot to mention the noise canceling. I've not used other headphones so cannot compare, but as the Bose stand, they cancel noise very well. Juut like all noise canceling systems, they drown out the background hums very well, but noises with undulating wavelengths (or should i saw amplitude?) are less effective. I deliberately went for full-cup size (covered ears) style headphones to mitigate from such ghastly audio intrusions.
EDIT 2: duh again. Now that I've read your post, I see you wanted to compare headphones with loudspeakers and here I am giving a full-blown headphones review. I prefer headphones for most types of music as my room is acoustically challenged (the head accountant doesn't get on well with the futuristic design paradigms of the lead designer and Chief Sound Architect at my place of residence) but sometimes (ahem, this classical nutjob prefers the bass) I not only want to listen to the music, but feel the soundwaves of the low frequencies hitting me with a jolt that defies the mannerisms of a well-to-do lady-fo-art and for that, some kick-ass bass boxes would play well on Phantom of the Opera (the new one) but sometimes things get ridiculous. So in conclusion, I just have headphones. (Shrugs).
EDIT 3: and now, I must go through the spelling mistakes...
EDIT 3B: ... and the grammar.