Sony WF-1000XM4 evaluation: One of the best in-ear noise-cancelling headphones you should buy

At a look

Professional’s Ranking

Professionals

• Exceptionally wealthy, mature, and dependable tech
• Finest-in-class noise cancelling and adaptive noise cancelling
• Excellent sound signature
• Stable, safe match
• Lengthy battery life

Cons

• Adaptive sound management will be problematic on cellphone calls
• No assist for aptX codecs

Our Verdict

Sony not solely has a unbelievable set of true wi-fi headphones, the app that accompanies them delivers scads of its personal nice options and advantages.

Value When Reviewed

$279.99

Finest Costs In the present day

$248.00

Free

$248.00

Free

Adorama

Not Obtainable

Free

Sony’s headphones want no introduction. Their over-the-ear headphones rank amongst our favorites, and they’re perennial contenders as our high choose in noise-cancelling headphones.

Translating common headphone success into a real wi-fi earbud isn’t any easy job. But that’s what Sony is attempting to do with its flagship, the $279 WF-1000XM4. Do these true wi-fi headphones dwell as much as Sony’s legacy? You guess. They’re a winner by any measure.

Sony’s WF-1000XM4 are available in your selection of silver or black. My evaluation set got here within the latter. The earbuds and companion charging case have a matte end, which I discovered to be a pleasant change to the slippery, gloss end on so many earbuds. The end on the earbuds and case gave me confidence holding them. These earbuds a re on the big facet and sport an total oval form, however intelligent design makes them appear smaller.

Sony

Underneath the hood, the WF-1000XM4 function a newly designed 6mm dynamic driver. Sony says this new driver delivers a 20-percent improve in magnet quantity for improved low-frequency efficiency. The design additionally improves noise cancellation within the decrease frequencies.

This evaluation is a part of TechHive’s protection of the perfect noise-cancelling headphones, the place you’ll discover evaluations of the competitors’s choices, plus a purchaser’s information to the options it is best to contemplate when searching for any such product.

Unboxing and setup

Sony’s packaging may appear to be pedestrian on the floor. You may have the earbuds, a charging case, three units of ideas, and a USB-C charging cable. Upon nearer inspection, nevertheless, you’ll discover that there are not any silicone ideas included. As a substitute, all the guidelines are reminiscence foam. The reminiscence foam ideas are a key a part of the headphone’s design, as I’ll broaden upon a bit additional on.

To take advantage of your WF-1000XM4 you’ll wish to obtain Sony’s companion Headphones Join app for iOS or Android. Pairing the WF-1000XM4 true wi-fi headphones with the app was a strong, hassle-free course of.

Sony ensures you get the right match

Among the many most vital gadgets in any earbud setup is choosing the proper ear-tip dimension after which getting the appropriate seal in your ear. The 2 aren’t the identical. Sony’s distinctive setup course of ensures you get each for optimum sound and bass by prompting you to run some exams with every earbud. The exams decide when you’ve got the perfect becoming earbud dimension, and so they make sure the earbud has a decent seal. The method provides novice customers perception into how the appropriate seal feels. I discovered the method to be environment friendly and correct.

The top outcome? The WF-1000XM4 are among the many best-fitting true wi-fi earbuds I’ve used.

Theo Nicolakis/Foundry

The reminiscence foam ideas I discussed earlier create a strong, assured seal in your ear and grip higher than their silicone counterparts. Any such tip, nevertheless, tends to use extra stress inside your ears than silicone tops. In my expertise, reminiscence foam ideas put on out extra rapidly silicone ones. I counsel you’ve gotten an additional set readily available, both by means of Sony immediately or through the third-party producer Comply.

The form of the earbuds themselves can also be key to reaching a decent seal. Utilizing the more and more frequent twist-and-lock method, the Sony WF-1000XM4 match me completely—together with within the context of an lively way of life. Whether or not the earbuds will suit your ears as comfortably as they did mine will depend on a number of elements. I’d advise these with smaller ears to pay particular consideration to the dimensions and match. Your expertise could be completely different than mine.

Codec assist

Sony gives good codec assist: SBC, AAC, and LDAC. AAC caters to Apple’s ecosystem and LDAC is Sony’s personal high-res codec. LDAC has a most switch price of 990Kbps for streaming high-res audio. Noticeably absent, nevertheless, is any assist for the competing aptX household of codecs.

You’ll want an LDAC-compatible high-res music participant to make the most of that codec’s benefits. Sony’s high-res music gamers sometimes assist LDAC, as do gamers from manufacturers akin to Astell&Kern and Fiio. Verify you’re participant’s compatibility with LDAC if high-res streaming is vital to you.

The WF-1000XM4 helps Bluetooth 5.2, and as you may count on, their wi-fi vary was robust. I simply acquired 90 ft of robust connectivity in line-of-sight conditions. That distance was much less there have been dense partitions or obstructions between me and the supply. However, I may go up or down a flooring confidently with out lacking a beat with music or calls. The WF-1000XM4 assist multipoint connections, that means you possibly can pair them with two audio sources—a smartphone and a high-res digital audio participant, for example—and change between them without having to undergo the Bluetooth reconnection course of once more.

Theo Nicolakis/Foundry

Cellular app

There isn’t sufficient house to write down about all of the options packed into Sony’s companion Headphones Join cell app. It goes effectively past the essential battery-life standing, activating ANC, or powering down the headphones when there’s no sign. Headphones Join is a central command middle for a wealthy array of options.

The app is without doubt one of the few that gives you detailed statistics about utilization. You may see complete time used and drill down into areas you’ve frequented, and which modes (keep, stroll, run, trip) have been activated probably the most. You may allow/disable this monitoring at any time.

By means of Headphones Join you get fine-tune management automation choices for noise cancellation and transparency. You may set completely different settings for sitting, strolling, operating, and transportation (prepare, automobile, and so forth) with Sony’s adaptive sound management. Moreover, you’ve gotten granular management over how robust you need transparency to be.

And, if you happen to allow location providers, you possibly can even set particular noise-cancelling or transparency settings for geographic areas you frequent. Would you like full noise cancelling engaged whenever you go to your favourite espresso store? You are able to do that. Need transparency engaged whenever you’re house or on the library? You are able to do that, too. The app makes an already robust product smarter. We should always all be reticent about sharing our private information with firms; fortunately, you’ve gotten the choice to allow/disable these location providers at any time.

If you wish to make the most of spatial audio and Sony’s 360 Actuality Audio, the app will aid you get these apps arrange and take a photograph of your ears to additional optimize the expertise. Given all these customization choices, it’s vital that Sony gives the choice to again every thing up, so that you by no means must repeat the method ought to one thing occur to your headphones and it’s essential to exchange them.

I may go on and on. Fingers down, Headphones join is the perfect companion cell app I’ve reviewed so far.

Sony

Broad voice assistant assist

The WF-1000XM4 assist the massive three voice assistants, and I didn’t have a single hiccup utilizing the WF-1000XM4 with Siri on my iPhone 12 Professional.

By means of the Headphones Join app, you specify if you wish to use the voice assistant on the cell machine or power the usage of Google or Alexa. This can be a neat function for individuals who have a desire to at least one ecosystem over the opposite. With Google and Alexa, you’ll acquire hands-free management of options akin to noise cancelling.

I must also word that the Sony The WF-1000XM4 assist Google’s Quick Pair function, which simplifies Bluetooth pairing with Android units with a single faucet. It’s also possible to find the place you left the WF-1000XM4 headphones by ringing them or checking their final identified location in your smartphone. You’ll even obtain a notification when your headphones battery is operating low, so you understand when to cost them.

A serious energy and an inexcusable flaw with cellphone calls

I discovered the WF-1000XM4 to rank with the perfect earbuds I’ve examined with cellphone readability. Sony says the WF-1000XM4 sport a bone-conduction sensor that picks up vibrations out of your voice whereas rejecting ambient sounds, for clearer speech when making calls. Regardless of the tech could also be, all I do know is that it labored very effectively.

Throughout one testing interval, I made a sequence of cellphone calls outside in extraordinarily windy situations. Not as soon as did any of the people on the opposite finish of the decision ask me to repeat myself or point out that they’d hassle listening to me. In truth, at one level I requested if they might hear the wind blowing and so they mentioned no, they didn’t discover.

Nearly as good an expertise as I had with cellphone calls, it wasn’t excellent. There was one maddening exception: You probably have adaptive noise cancelling enabled and the headphones change from transparency to noise cancelling whilst you’re on a cellphone name, you’ll lose a short a part of the dialog because the headphone dings to let you understand that it’s altering modes after which fades the audio out and in throughout that transition. Your greatest guess is to show off Adaptive Sound Management and power the headphones to remain in a single particular mode—lively noise cancelling or transparency mode, for instance.

Sony wants so as to add cellphone calls as an extra choice for its Adaptive Sound Management, so you possibly can set particular settings for cellphone calls. I strongly suggest that Sony subject a firmware replace that modifications the default conduct on the earbuds for cellphone calls.

Battery life and water resistance

The WF-1000XM4 are a street warrior’s greatest good friend, with the earbuds delivering 8 hours from the earbuds and the case offering 16 hours extra. That’s a promised 24 hours of battery life with ANC enabled. The score will increase to 12 hours with noise cancelling turned off, and it drops barely to five.5 hours with steady cellphone use with noise cancelling on. Fast charging ensures {that a} 5-minute cost gives you 60 minutes of use.

I discovered battery life on the Sony WF-1000XM4 to be dependable. In real-world use, I by no means ran right into a state of affairs the place I used to be frightened about operating out of juice. In truth, I took the headphones with me on a cross-country flight and after nearly 6 hours of use with ANC on, the Sony earbuds nonetheless had nearly 30 % of battery life left.

If you happen to plan to make use of the earbuds in lively way of life environments, you’ll be completely satisfied to know that they’re IPX4 rated, which suggests they received’t have an issue with sweat, drizzle, or splashing water.

Theo Nicolakis/Foundry

Tops in noise cancelling

Sony’s onboard noise cancelling expertise is the perfect I’ve skilled in a real wi-fi earbud. It’s very good. In-flight, I discovered that the Sony supplied the perfect noise cancelling among the many 4 manufacturers of headphones I introduced with me. Together with reminiscence foam ear ideas is a key a part of that have, as they block out an excellent quantity of sound by default. However, Sony touts the inclusion of its built-in V1 processor as a key part of the WF-1000XM4’s noise-cancelling efficiency.

As I’ve famous in my prior evaluations of Sony’s over-the-ear ANC headphones, my favourite half is Sony’s adaptive noise cancelling implementation. It’s clever and efficient sufficient to kick from noise cancelling to transparency mode at any time when I began speaking. However right here’s probably the most spectacular factor: Transparency mode kicked in if I’d utter one thing as merely as “aha” or “hmm,” however wouldn’t interact if I cleared my throat or coughed. By means of the companion app, I may fine-tune the sensitivity. I acquired so simply accustomed to the cadence that if I wished to interact transparency to take heed to an exterior announcement, I wanted solely to utter a easy sound and voila! I may accomplish the identical feat by urgent the left earbud, however why raise a finger when you possibly can carry out the identical job with a easy vocal inflection?

Sony’s adaptive noise cancelling isn’t prescient, however the one time I seen an annoying drawback was on a prepare or subway. At occasions, ANC would interact if I tilted or turned my head with out talking. Save that one minor foible, the function is the perfect of any true wi-fi earbud I’ve ever used.

Sony

Listening exams

I carried out my WF-1000XM4 listening exams with my iPhone 12 Professional and a Fiio M9 high-res digital music participant. I used Sony’s LDAC codec with the M9 and AAC with the iPhone. I used the subscription music-streaming providers Apple Music and Tidal, plus Roon (connecting to my Nucleus server).

Sony’s sonic signature is as robust as its prowess in different areas. The WF-1000XM4 will fulfill each audiophiles and informal listeners. They ship a powerful, dimensional soundstage and, if you happen to play immersive audio tracks, you’ll get a minor sensation of some extra dimensionality.

Clear bass is a energy of the WF-1000XM4. Bass traces on Billie Eilish’s “Unhealthy Man,” Think about Dragons’ “Believer” and “Thunder”, Lorde’s “Royals,” and Adele’s “Ship My Love (To Your New Lover)” had been tight and pistonic. Bass traces pulsated with authority and stopped on a dime with no trace of bloat or problem. The Sony WF-1000XM4 rendered bass traces with texture and dimensionality. It didn’t matter the style or music: the Sony earbuds handed no matter check I threw at them.

Midrange copy was equally wonderful, heat and intimate. Female and male vocalists got here by means of clearly with good timbral accuracy. I reveled in all of the songs of my go-to feminine vocalists, together with Adele, Alicia Keys, Holly Cole, Natalie Service provider, Sarah McLachlan, and P!nk, to call only a few.

What about films or streaming reveals? Haven’t any concern, the WF-1000XM4 instructions all of them. If I performed films or streamed different media content material, dialogue was constantly intelligible and clear.

Enable me to pay Sony probably the greatest doable compliments. I used to be reviewing a number of true wi-fi headphones throughout this time, and I’ve much more in my assortment for comparability. I discovered myself constantly gravitating in the direction of the WF-1000XM4 as my go-to for informal, vital, or simply about any listening. Their strong expertise delivered a assured, pleasurable, expertise and their sound was regularly alluring and most popular.

Wrapping up our Sony WF-1000XM4 evaluation

Sony’s WF-1000XM4 are very good in-ear headphones. Their lively and adaptive noise-cancelling expertise leads the class; their onboard tech is effectively thought out, sensible, and unparalleled; their match is safe; battery life is powerful; they sound nice; and they’re stellar at cellphone calls.

If I needed to choose only one pair of true wi-fi earbuds for music, noise cancelling, superior options, and cellphone calls, Sony’s WF-1000XM4 can be it.

These are the perfect total true wi-fi earbuds I’ve ever examined. And whereas the WF-1000XM4 received’t be ideally suited for everybody, they definitely rank among the many most full and mature true wi-fi headphones available on the market right this moment.