Honeywell Howard Leight L3 Review – 2024

Our Comprehensive Review Of The Howard Leight L3

The Howard Leight Leightning L3 is a set of passive earmuffs. They offer a whopping 30 dB of noise reduction with no frills or fancy features. Instead, what you get with the Howard Leight Leightning L3 is a set of comfortable, durable earmuffs that you can use for shooting, work, and more.

When it comes to protecting your ears, noise reduction rating is a very important factor. This number determines how much external sound is blocked by your earmuffs or earplugs. Decibels are a logarithmic scale, which means that for every 3-decibel increase, the power carried by sound waves doubles. Because of this, there’s a big difference in the protection provided by a set of -30 dB muffs and a set of -21 dB muffs.

Features & Benefits At A Glance

* Patented Air Flow Control technology reduces sound across all frequencies without increasing earcup size or weight; includes multiple attenuation levels.

* Durable headband constructed with strong steel to stand up to demanding work environments; telescopic height adjustment stays in place during use.

* Padded foam on headband minimizes pressure on the head for long-wearing comfort.

* Snap-in ear cushions allow for easy maintenance and replacement.

* Noise Reduction Rating 30; Recommended industries: aviation, farming, construction, lumber, steel, transportation, military/law enforcement, manufacturing, sporting, do it yourself projects, general contracting etc.

The Howard Leight L3 muffs do not have any electronics at all. This means that they don’t do active noise reduction, so they’ll be a little bit less effective against steady noise than a set of muffs with noise canceling features.

Similarly, they don’t have ambient sound pass-through. You’ll be hard-pressed to hold a conversation while wearing these. If you want to talk to people while protecting your ears against sharp spikes in noise, check out the Howard Leight Impact series.

Sound Features, Sound Quality & Noise Reduction

The Leightning L3 offers excellent attenuation across the whole frequency spectrum. Notably, the L3 muffs block sound between 100 and 250 Hz much better than the competition. This band includes lower buzzes and rumbles that you might expect from large engines.

As far as shooting is concerned, the L3 muffs are the number one choice of many indoor ranges across the country. At indoor ranges, noise gets trapped inside and echoes around, making guns effectively much louder than they would be outside. The extra few decibels of noise reduction offered by the L3 muffs is especially important.

The Howard Leight Leightning L3 is fairly comfortable for most people, too, making these a great choice for renting out (if you operate a gun range) or just keeping in your bag to lend to friends.

If you’re looking for the best possible hearing protection, you can pair up the L3 muffs with a set of earplugs. This will completely deaden your hearing and keep you safe against the loudest of noises.

This combo is a great trick for shooting big guns indoors or just really making sure you can’t hear your roommate sing. While the Leightning L3 muffs will work fine on their own, some situations will still call for the extra hearing protection.

Comfortability

I’ve alluded to the L3 muffs being extremely comfortable a few times. While they might not be your favorite article of clothing to wear, they’re incredibly comfortable given their noise reduction rating. The ear cups themselves are lightweight and well padded.

The band is easy to adjust and designed so that it applies enough pressure to provide a solid cheek weld without squeezing your head too much. Finally, the band itself is padded to prevent it from digging into your head. When you put all of these factors together, you get a set of earmuffs that you don’t mind wearing for several hours at a time.

The Main Flaw

That said, the Howard Leight L3 muffs don’t fit people with large heads particularly well. One of the biggest complaints that people make (or one of the complaints that the biggest people make) is that the band doesn’t stretch enough to accommodate exceptionally large heads.

This means that the ear cups ride too high on the head, which creates a pretty uncomfortable fit at best and one that doesn’t properly reduce noise at worst. If you’ve got a big head, you definitely want to try on a pair of these before you buy them. On the other hand, if you’ve got a big head, you’ll want to try on ANY pair of ear muffs before you buy them.

Overall & Final Thoughts

Overall, the low cost, great comfort, and powerful noise reduction that the Howard Leight L3 muffs offer is tough to pass up. If you’re looking for reliable hearing protection, you’ll do well to add these to your arsenal of protective gear. They’re great for shooting, mowing the lawn, working on machinery, or just drowning out the office.

Even if you already have fancy electronic hearing protection that’s better suited for the activities you engage in, it might be worth picking up a set of L3 muffs to use as a backup or to lend to your friends. It’s important to keep their ears safe, too. If you don’t, you won’t have anyone to talk to. Okay, we’ll stop with the jokes now…

For more information about shooting and shooting hearing protection visit here.

 

---