These earphones act as a combination of earplugs (protecting your ears from loud noise) and headphones and allow you to listen to music or "white noise" at low volumes.
Why not just use earplugs instead? It is worth a try, but most people find them acutely uncomfortable to wear and they do not provide the "silence" that one would expect. Instead they draw attention to the sounds of your own body and you might find it more distracting noticing your heart beat or your jaws grinding than putting up with the chatter of your workmates.
There are many excellent isolating earphones around, many of them used by professional musicians as "personal sound monitors" for playing live without damaging their hearing.
Generally speaking you get what you pay for and these devices do not come cheaply ranging from around $100 to $500.
I have personally made good experiences with the Shure range of "isolating earphones", which currently begins with the SE115 model and reaches its stratospheric heights with the SE335.
A practical consideration in deciding on whether to give them a shot or not, is whether it is socially acceptable for you to wear them at the office. If need to answer the phone or talk directly with your colleagues a lot, isolating earphones might prove to be a poor match for your work environment. Since they go directly into your ear canal, they take longer than normal earphones to "put in" and you will need to take them out in order to able to answer the phone or talk face to face.
Some people have a lot of problems getting used to this type of earphone as they are worn directly in the ear canal.
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