Sony WH-1000XM4 Wireless Noise Canceling Headphones Review

Welcome back everyone I’m Gourav Singh, today I am going to talk about the Sony WH-1000xm4 Wireless Noise Canceling Headphones Review and while the name didn’t get better the headphones definitely did and that’s the theme for this review.

Things Inside The Case

So let’s go ahead and get our first look we’ll unzip this and we can expect this to look a lot like the XM3 and they do the finish is a little bit more matte and rubbery I like that this is obviously the silver or gray pair I also have a charcoal pair which I’ve been listening to for about five days pull everything out there’s a headphone cable an airline adapter because yep that’s still a thing and then, oh man I was really hoping they would make this longer this is the USB-C charging cable and I just don’t see what this kind of length is useful for I suppose if you have a battery pack that’s cool but you know anytime you’re going to be plugging into a USB charging outlet you want a larger cable and I’m really bummed out about that.

Headphone Look

Then we’ll get to the headphones themselves cradled in the case as one might expect to get everything out of the way here. And all right there’s our NSC to pair there and we know that the right ear cup also is going to have touch controls and swipe controls that haven’t changed taking a look here there’s our USB charging port and then if we flip these guys around uh our headphone jack our power button and let’s see we’ve got a custom button here we’ll talk a little bit more about that as well. And if I unfold these sony’s told me they’ve added like about 25 percent more surface area to go around the ear that’s going to play to the comfort we’ll talk about that a little bit more later. If you can see in there there is a little sensor that is the wear sensor so that’s going to tell that headphones when you’re wearing them and when you aren’t overall a very similar look it looks like the headband radius might be a little bit different let’s get a closer look at that in just a moment as well.

Design

So I pulled out my trusty XM3S because I want to compare some of the physical attributes of the two headphones take a look at some similarities and differences, one similarity for sure is the pairing process you don’t actually have to have the phone tapped to the NFC chip you can just set it near the headphones and it’s going to pick them upturn on the headphones you get a prompt on your android phone go ahead and grant them access and the phones do the rest it’s super fast super simple and I absolutely love it.
Now as for the differences between the two headphones headbands there is a difference but it’s really really tough to see the radius is just slightly altered and that’s supposed to be more comfortable also same with the ear cups here you can see there’s a little bit of a difference but again it’s really more about how it feels so if I take the XM3 and put these on and you know I’ve been wearing these for like two years actually first reviewed these in berlin when EFA was happening not happening this year and uh they’re very familiar to me they feel great always have honestly though the XM do in fact feel better there’s less clamping force there’s less force on the crown more of it is transferred to the ear pads which do go around the ears a little bit better a little bit wider. But in doing so it’s distributing the clamping force out a little bit more so even though it takes some of the weight away from here and puts it here it spreads it out and you get a more comfortable headphone and also I gotta say the passive noise isolation it shouldn’t be better but it is.

Bluetooth

Sony WH-1000XM4 Wireless Noise Canceling Headphones Review

Now I want to talk about some of the technical differences stuff you don’t see but you definitely experience our only real criticism of the XM3 was that they could not pair to more than one device at a time, which thankfully has changed the XM4 will connect to two devices at a time so the use case for that says you’re connected to your laptop and you’re listening to music and then all of a sudden you get a phone call it’s automatically going to switch to the incoming signal for the phone call so that you can take the phone call have that conversation end it and as soon as you end it’s going to resume playing music from your laptop and that extends to all kinds of different devices you could be listening to your tv switch to your phone and then go back to your tv what’s important here is that finally, you can connect to two devices.

Features

One other great improvement is that wear sensor that I mentioned earlier so you’re listening to your music or whatever audio source you’ve got going on when you take the headphones off it’ll pause that audio source and if you don’t put the headphones on within about 15 minutes it’s going to straight turn them off, which is fantastic if however you do go and put them back on it’s going to reinstate that audio source, so that you don’t have to press any buttons it’s just it’s automatic and I love that feature.

Not just because it’s convenient but also because it saves battery life which brings me to something that has not changed and that is battery life, which is exactly the same as the XM3 excellent performance you get about 30 hours of performance with active noise canceling on 38 with active noise canceling off and once they die you’re going to get about five hours of performance with just a 10-minute charge no complaints.

One other improvement I’ve been enjoying very much you might remember with the XM3 if you had ANC on and you wanted to speak to somebody you would hover over the right ear cup with your hand and that would pipe in external noise so that you could hear them and have a conversation. I always felt like that was kind of a dorky thing to do fortunately it’s automated with these headphones now this is something that you turn on in the app but instead of having to hover over either one of the ear cups you just start speaking and it’ll automatically pipe in ambient noise and then once you stop talking ANC returns and quiets everything down.

One final improvement that at least sony feels is a big deal, is the improvement to DSEE it’s now called DSEE Extreme and basically this is upscaling for your audio the idea is if you’re listening to lossy or compressed music DSEE Extreme will use A.I to improve it get rid of some of that sibilance that you get in lossy music it works fairly well but it is by no means a jaw-dropping feature one feature that is stuck around and I’m happy to see this because I enjoy using it is the personal optimization feature so you turn this on and it takes a series of readings inside and outside of the headphones gauging your environment and then optimizing the noise-canceling accordingly it’s very effective, it also sort of balances out the atmospheric pressure so you don’t get that like sucking sound that you do with some other noise-canceling headphones I enjoy that very much 360 reality audio is still here that’s a feature where the app takes a picture of your ears and it adapts the sound to try and create this reality.

360 degree sound field and I got to say it’s kind of fun it’s very EERIE how it can place certain instruments in space almost like a surround sound effect there are a couple of apps that support this Title and Deezer come to mind so definitely check that out if you’re interested.

Noise Canceling

Now let’s talk about the improvements to noise canceling. The good news it is now better but not in the way that you might think so let’s say I’m on a plane and I’m definitely not getting on a plane anytime soon I probably wouldn’t notice a huge difference between the noise canceling effectiveness of the XM3 versus the XM4 where the improvements are lay in the higher frequency suppression so if you’ve got family members talking behind you or cars passing by those annoying beeps on big trucks when they go in reverse or sirens for crying out loud we get a lot of sirens around here, it’s going to more effectively block that kind of sounds so really the takeaway here is that it blocks more of the world out.

Sound Quality

Now let’s talk about sound quality which great news there it hasn’t changed a bit everything that we loved about the XM3 is right here in the XM4 everything that made the XM3 rise to the top of all our best headphones list still there in the XM4 and that means rock-based it doesn’t pound your head very tuned full big open mid-range very revealing sparkly treble that never gets super excessive or harsh. It’s just an extremely well-balanced robust sound that I think everybody loves.

Call Quality

Same news around call quality it’s exactly the same as it was before which is to say that it cancels as much of the noise around you for the person on the other end of your call as it does for you so if I’m outside walking around with buses going by they’re not going to hear the buses any louder than I will and that’s excellent news for business types who not only need great noise-canceling for traveling but use this day-to-day to speak to clients and other people.

Conclusion

So if we’re going to run it down we’ve got a multi-point connection which is probably the biggest improvement here than a slightly more comfortable headphone to wear slightly better noise canceling quality the same great call and sound quality that we had before, which is fantastic lots of bells and whistles and features plus now you can just speak to talk instead of hovering your hand over the ear cup.

Price

$348

Buy Now

Bio
Latest Posts

GSR

My name is Gourav Singh, and some of my favorite hobbies include watching movies and television series, playing sports, and listening to music. For my blog posts, I prefer to write about themes that are lighthearted and fun to read and write about. To keep things light and entertaining, I'll include funny observations on life or a summary of the most recent entertainment news. Check out my blog if you're in the mood for some light entertainment.