Sony’s best headphones just got [a little] better 🎧

Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Sony’s best headphones just got [a little] better 🎧”.
Sony has a new set of flagship noise cancelling headphones. These are the wh000x m5s and i know we’ve made fun of sony’s awful product names for years now, but i think when it comes to the 1000x series, people get it. These are among the very best noise-canceling headphones you can buy today, sony’s been competing for years against bose and more recently apple to win over frequent flyers and commuters, and everyone else who can’t live without active noise cancellation and as more jobs. Move to this hybrid work model, i think noise. Cancelling headphones are essential for peace and quiet, whether it’s your real office or your home office, sony’s thousand xm5s have a fresh design, cleaner, sound and even better anc, but they’re.

Also 50 bucks more expensive than the m4s which are staying in the lineup. Are they worth that upgrade potentially? But it’s not slam dunk. So, let’s get into it for the first time in many years, sony’s overhauled the entire design. These thousand xm5s look totally distinct from their predecessors.

The headband is thinner for one and instead of arms that cradle the ear cups at both sides, there’s now a stem that runs down the middle. If you look at some of sony’s competition like apple’s airpods max or bose’s noise, cancelling headphone 700, i think you can see where they got some inspiration. This new style definitely looks cleaner with fewer obvious seams and such, but i’m not convinced it looks very premium. The thousand xm4s had some metal on their ratcheting ear cup sliders, but everything you can see or touch on the thousand xm5s is all plastic, that’s not to say, they’re, not durable.

I twisted the hell out of these headphones and they held up perfectly fine, but for four hundred dollars i would have appreciated some nicer materials. My sennheiser momentum, threes are just on a different level of fit and finish, but you can also overdo it. Some people would say the airpods maps are way too heavy, so clearly, sony favors comfort over a lavish design, both ear cups, still pivot and turn just like always so you’re not losing anything there. But one thing: sony’s new headphones can’t do anymore is fold.

This is one of my biggest disappointments with the thousand xm5s, instead of folding down for convenient portability. These headphones just lay flat in their case and as a result, that case is large, whereas i had no issue putting the old case for the thousand xm4s in my bag. The thousand xm5s would not fit in that same slot, so they had to go in the main compartment in my bag. That’S not ideal.

Look. This case is just too bulky and i think sony could have done better even boza’s case for the noise-canceling headphone 700, which can’t fold up either is smaller and makes better use of space. People travel with noise-canceling headphones all the time, and so i think sony’s ginormous case is going to cause some frustration, but it is at least a functional case with storage for the usb-c and headphone cables. One thing you won’t find in the box anymore is the dual prong airline adapter, which feels a bit stingy for 400 bucks, but it is what it is now.

Let’S talk about sound and there are bigger changes here than you might expect. Sony switched from 40 millimeter drivers in the thousand xm4s to 30 millimeter drivers, and these new headphones now driver size isn’t everything, but i can’t think of the last time a pair of sony headphones sounded this different from their direct predecessors, based on my time with them. So far, i’d say that thousand xm5s are tighter, more detailed and clean up the sometimes muddy base of the thousand xm4s, but they also have less oomph to them, they’re less in your face and less potent out of the box now those are not audiophile terms, obviously, But i hope it makes sense.

I’Ve been doing a lot of comparisons with the same songs on both headphones and in most cases i do prefer the new ones. When i put on spoon’s new record, for example, the m5s just sound more crisp and detailed, but if i put on hip-hop or dance or soul music, there are times when i do lean towards the older m4s. And so i think it’s inevitable that some people are going to prefer the sound of the previous headphones and maybe that’s part of why sony’s keeping them around.

Take your pick. If you want cleaner and tighter sound go for the m5s. If you need that boom factor and the powerful excitement, maybe the m4s are more your style.

As for noise cancellation, these actually have the same qn1 ship that was in the m4s. Only now there are two of them, and so sony says the anc performs. Similarly, on a plane, but should be better at handling street noise and cutting down on nearby voices – and that’s all been true in my experience so far – it’s still not enough to give you a private bubble of absolute silence if you’re in a coffee shop. But it’s an improvement over was already fantastic noise cancellation. One tiny thing to note: on the hardware past sony headphones had an optimize button that would adjust the anc based on factors like air pressure and fit your hairstyle if you wear glasses and so on now the button is gone and that all happens in the background Automatically says sony and, while part of me does miss the button, it was a fun trick and who doesn’t love buttons. This does make a lot more sense. For simplicity’s sake.

Now we come to voice calls and my friends sony is going for broke. The thousand xm5s have eight microphones in total, and four of them are used for voice. So when you combine that with supposed ai noise reduction algorithm improvements, the results should be good, but the only way to know is to put the m5 through a voice test. So shall we okay so we’re starting out with a thousand xm5s.

They have more microphones and various ai enhancements like i said so. This is pretty ideal scenario, we’re in a quiet office, but should give you a good sense of how they sound voice quality. Are you impressed? Are you meh either way? This is the best sony’s managed to do so far. Okay, now we’re going back in time to the 1000xm4s sony’s older headphones their last gen model.

Some people like these for voice. I was never really that impressed, but again we’re in ideal circumstances a quiet office. So if you’re working somewhere trying to get on a meeting and talk to folks, this is how the m4s perform, and so now we’ve got the airpods max even more expensive than the m5s.

These are apples flagship, headphones, they’ve, gotten good marks for voice quality. So tell me what you think: do you prefer these or sonys, but these are a lot more money, so got ta factor that in too and these are bose’s noise. Cancelling 700, like the sony’s they’ve, got a lot of mics they’ve, gotten good reviews for their voice. Quality they look similar too.

So it’s up to you to decide whether sony sounds better or if bose has a leg up again we’re in a very quiet office. So i think all these are going to sound pretty good, but it does come down to the details. So let me know what you think in the comments last up are sennheiser’s momentum. 3 wireless. I love how these headphones feel and sound and look, but they don’t have the best mic, so i’m sure they’re not quite as good as the airpods max or the sony’s.

But just another comparison for you to hear and see how they come out. The thousand xm5 still support ldac sony’s codec for higher quality wireless audio. So if you can’t plug in helldeck, is the next best thing for hearing high-res, music from apple music, amazon, music and other services, but only on android mind you if you’ve got an iphone you’re stuck with good old, lower quality, aac and sbc for bluetooth.

These headphones. Also support multi-point, so you can pair them up with two devices at once, say your phone and your laptop. Unfortunately, sony still makes you choose one or the other.

You can enable either ldac or multi-point, but you can’t do both. At the same time, the thousand xm4s had the same restriction and it’s back again here. Battery life is still the same 30 hours, which is more than enough to cover pretty much any long-haul flight. If you turn off all the bells and whistles, you can stretch it out even longer last i want to talk about missed opportunities. All of those things i was hoping sony might add this time around, but still hasn’t. First, it’s getting silly that these headphones can’t work.

Wirelessly with the playstation 5. they’re, both sony products. What are we doing here? Second, the usb-c port is still just for charging and a number of other headphones. Let me use it for audio as well.

There’S also still a complete lack of water or sweat resistance. So keep that in mind. I know these aren’t workout headphones, but some progress would be nice, maybe by the time the thousand xm6s roll along in two years. Some of these points will be addressed, but i’m not going to hold my breath, and so all of that, in a nutshell, is sony’s 1000x m5s they’ve got a new sleeker design that still doesn’t rise up to their 400 price.

The active noise cancellation is better than it’s ever been. They sound way different, which might prove somewhat divisive for anyone that already has the thousand xm4s. There is zero reason to run out and upgrade to these. Your headphones can do everything these can, but if you’re on older sonys like the m3s or m2s, then it starts to make more sense, you’re getting multi-point and the best anc sony’s pulled off.

Yet i don’t love that the price has gone up and i have no idea what sony was thinking with this case. For those reasons, take a look at the m4s and maybe save yourself. Some money i feel like sony, might have gotten confused about what it wanted. The m5s to be they’re like the strange half step between the m4s and even more expensive headphones like the airpods max, but at the end of the day, there’s still a damn good set of noise cancelling headphones.

Hey there, everybody. Thank you a ton for watching. As always, right now, i’m outside a coffee shop in new york city. So you hear how the m5 will sound in a much louder environment, but for the full review go to theverge.com and for more videos like this youtube.com .