I'm not sure why the 2 options being offered here seem to be either Airpod-style non-sealing hard plastic or full on over-ear cans. What about standard IEMs with better sealing silicon tips? Or the foam variants sold by Comply and similar? Wouldn't that better allow you to isolate external noise and listen at a lower volume than the separate cans? Especially for public transit use cases they'd seem to be better, unless I'm missing something?

You should also factor in diminished enjoyment - if you're worried about bothering your neighbor by turning up the volume and are just keeping it lower out of courtesy, well, that's not really an ideal scenario either, especially if you have to put up with barely hearing what you're listening to as a result.

Additionally, many of the products being suggested here are not really rated very well and would be hard to suggest to someone listening on even using cheap stuff like the Philips TX2. I don't understand how these can be recommended by any reasonable measure.

$30 https://www.innerfidelity.com/images/PhilipsTX2.pdf

A few suggestions from the article, $50 and $200+ https://www.rtings.com/headphones/1-2/graph#617/2085/463