Noise cancelation is better than noise isolation
None is better than the other. They are completely different technologies that work in different ways. Noise cancelation is done via a set of mics on the exterior of your headphones earcups. The mics capture ambient noise and use algorithms to produce a response to that noise. When a response of equal strength is sent back to the music signal, the ambient noise is ‘canceled’ by the inverse noise (the response). Read more about how the tech works here.
Noise isolation has no electronic processes going on. It is done simply by the material of your earcups (memory foam, leather) physically blocking out ambient noise. There’s nothing about this process that makes it inferior to noise cancelation. If anything, noise isolation works for all kinds of frequencies, unlike cancelation, which is better suited for low-frequency sounds.
