Sony WH-1000XM5 Wireless Noise Cancelling Headphones

I found the reviews to be a bit too thorough as if they are paid advertisements that only echo online reviews by compensated individuals.The absence of any quick start guide was frustrating since I didn't have great cell coverage at the time I unboxed the headphones. I didn't know about the controls on the side and the app does not offer any guide either. I am still left in a maze to navigate their website in and out of hyperlinks to figure out which button or surface space does what.For an extremely high price these headphones are less about quality sound and more about noise canceling. If you like great audio, these aren't the headphones for you as they muffle and distort the sound. In general, noise canceling does that so that isn't a complete surprise.An ... MoreI found the reviews to be a bit too thorough as if they are paid advertisements that only echo online reviews by compensated individuals.The absence of any quick start guide was frustrating since I didn't have great cell coverage at the time I unboxed the headphones. I didn't know about the controls on the side and the app does not offer any guide either. I am still left in a maze to navigate their website in and out of hyperlinks to figure out which button or surface space does what.For an extremely high price these headphones are less about quality sound and more about noise canceling. If you like great audio, these aren't the headphones for you as they muffle and distort the sound. In general, noise canceling does that so that isn't a complete surprise.An astonishing and ridiculous issue I have with these headphones is that you CANNOT USE THEM WHILE THEY CHARGE?! In this era of device demand, this is a shockingly ignorant choice on the part of Sony. I get it, they might think since wireless earbuds can't be used while charging then who needs to listen to their headphones while they charge? Or perhaps they prioritized a fast charge over listening. The problem with that comes when you quick charge devices over and over again for short periods of time ruining the battery performance. Sony is practically begging you to do that by discouraging you from being able to listen to them at the same time as fully charging them.Overall I appreciate being able to drown out a good amount of background noise but I am left questioning if that's really worth the $400 price tag.If you are looking for noise canceling, pick a pair of great sounding earbuds and skip the actual noise canceling feature, just purchase some flight line ear protection headphones for a much better comfort and outside noise control. You'll save yourself hundreds while having a much lighter pair of headphones that doesn't overheat your ears.Another disappointment of mine was the erroneous idea that connecting to two devices at the same time would mean I could actually listen to two inputs at the same time. Perhaps Bluetooth isn't there yet through no fault of Sony, but I also felt the advertising was misleading on this particular feature and the answer was buried in Bluetooth spec and tech sites and not disclosed on the Sony site.I like that my phone can interrupt my business meeting playing from my computer but I dislike that I cannot listen to ambient sound on Pandora while participating in a business meeting at the same time.Since the audio can't be independently adjusted in noise volume by your individually connected device, you are left with a ring tone set to the same volume as your YouTube video or conversely the YouTube video resumes as loudly as the call and that is mildly annoying.

I bought this 3 months ago, excited to upgrade from my previous Sony headphones. The design has definitely improved, and it feels sturdy despite the slimmer build. It folds flat, nice and compact in the equally sturdy case. There's USB-C support for charging, and it doesn't take too long to charge either -- but that's where the positives end.I'm a longtime fan of Sony headphones, but this pair is definitely my worst. Here's why:- The noise cancelling is really, really bad. I was patient and waited for Sony firmware updates, and while Sony did tweak some of the settings, none of the updates since June have done the headphones any good in terms of noise cancelling *quality*. Sure, the headphones can now automatically change noise cancelling intensity based on ... MoreI bought this 3 months ago, excited to upgrade from my previous Sony headphones. The design has definitely improved, and it feels sturdy despite the slimmer build. It folds flat, nice and compact in the equally sturdy case. There's USB-C support for charging, and it doesn't take too long to charge either -- but that's where the positives end.I'm a longtime fan of Sony headphones, but this pair is definitely my worst. Here's why:- The noise cancelling is really, really bad. I was patient and waited for Sony firmware updates, and while Sony did tweak some of the settings, none of the updates since June have done the headphones any good in terms of noise cancelling *quality*. Sure, the headphones can now automatically change noise cancelling intensity based on location and movement, but the changes are now so jarring and inconsistent, thus making the updates feel more like a massive downgrade. Here's a daily scenario: you walk to your bus stop, the headphones then switch to a different noise cancelling setting because it remembers that your local bus stop is a saved location (and if you haven't saved it, you'll receive an annoying amount of notifications for any of your regular locations, including any bus stops you're regularly at as part of your commute); you get on the bus, and the headphones change to a different noise cancelling intensity...but at every stop, your headphones think that you got off, so the automatic motion detection switches to "walking mode"...imagine this on a 10-stop bus commute, and the number of times your headphones switch from commuting-walking-commuting-walking-commuting... Then imagine the occasional stop because of traffic lights, the occasional roadwork, traffic... For some reason these headphones seem to think that "commuting" means "non-stop fast travel from start to end". Having to constantly tweak the settings on my commutes when I just want to relax and enjoy music or podcast or even just silence is definitely not a good start to the day.- These headphones will occasionally turn off for no reason. Sometimes they restart, sometimes they just turn off without restarting, adding to the endless list of disruptions that you can expect to experience while using these headphones.- It's great that you can easily control volume and playback by swiping on your earcups...so long as you don't rely on the option to connect two devices at a time -- a great feature, but one that often disables (for some odd reason) the ability to use gestures to control playback and volume. You'll never know when this happens, but I can assure you of this -- it *will* happen.- There's the option to use "Spotify Tap", with two open slots, both for the same feature (which is very odd): you can just switch from one Spotify playlist to another Spotify playlist...which one are you switching to? No idea, it just switches it to a random playlist...and I have no idea why this was added as a "feature".- Although Google Assistant is still advertised as a great feature for this pair...it's actually not available. Google have revoked this feature, and it's not even a new announcement, but for some reason Sony still advertises this as a selling point.- No worries if you still want to use a voice assistant function -- there's Alexa...which works...so long as you keep the app open...but if you have the app open on your phone, you may as well just use your phone while you're at it -- which leads me nicely to my final point:These headphones were not meant for you to listen to music or whatever form of entertainment you want to enjoy. These headphones were meant for you to use -- use the app to correct the frequent mistakes, constantly swipe across the earcups and press the buttons to fix the errors, regularly open the Sony app to tweak the settings of your noise cancellation, and hope that you won't have someone around you nudging you about how bad the sound is leaking from your headphones while the volume isn't even at 50%. These headphones are a huge step back for Sony -- sure, they packed a lot of innovation and great tech in it, but with the constant tinkering I've had to resort to these past few months, these headphones feel more like a really expensive gadget to with, and less like a pair of headphones.

These were my first pair of wireless over ear headphones, and as such don't have much to compare them to, but I'm very happy with the xm5s. They have excellent clarity and the battery life is impressive.These are definitely marketed towards those who will use the many smart features built into them. My favourite is the ability to pair to two devices at once, so that for example the music from the phone can cut off when you have a call come through on the laptop. It's not possible to change the relative volumes on each device, so the music will drown out any notification sounds for example, but it's a cool feature. I've been told I can be heard fine through calls, though having the seal around the ears makes speaking while wearing them feel a bit weird.The ... MoreThese were my first pair of wireless over ear headphones, and as such don't have much to compare them to, but I'm very happy with the xm5s. They have excellent clarity and the battery life is impressive.These are definitely marketed towards those who will use the many smart features built into them. My favourite is the ability to pair to two devices at once, so that for example the music from the phone can cut off when you have a call come through on the laptop. It's not possible to change the relative volumes on each device, so the music will drown out any notification sounds for example, but it's a cool feature. I've been told I can be heard fine through calls, though having the seal around the ears makes speaking while wearing them feel a bit weird.The gesture based controls on the right cup take some getting used to but are ultimately quite good, being able to put your hand over the cup to drop the volume and activate ambient sound for example. It would be helpful to be able to manually map the settings for the different gestures but that's a minor comment.There's tonnes of features on the app (which works alright), that I've not fully explored such as having the noise cancelling kick in when leaving the house, and being able to keep noise out apart from specifically voices, which works surprisingly well. The speak-to-pause feature works well in theory but not so much for someone who likes to talk to the cat/shout at the computer/sing along.The noise cancelling and ambient sound are both top notch, with the ambient being very good at ignoring wind noise for example.The headphones work fine without using the smart features, but if you'd prefer your headphones to not give the option to turn geolocation on for example, these might not be the best for you.Also as a side note, they're perfectly comfortable when put on the right way, there's even a guide in the box showing to put them on fully extended, then reduce the size til they're barely touching the top of the head. Also since both cups articulate there's a bit of a knack to putting them on straight.