[00:01] brand-new flagship pair of headphones from Sony, and these may have just become my new favorite headphones. Sony just one-upped their flagship XM6 headphones with an even more premium pair. The design is more luxurious with
[00:13] smooth metal headband sliders, a pleather cushion, and deeper ear cups comfortable than the XM6 headphones. The driver's been improved, and Sony even added some new exclusive features to these. I mean, look at these. The design
[00:26] is just the best I've ever seen from Sony, and these are called Sony 1000X collection cuz, you know, branding. But, these are actually a very limited production, at least at first, and it's meant to celebrate 10 years of the
[00:40] WH-1000X series. Now, these aren't just a special have a lot in common, yes, but there's some pretty fundamental differences to the headphones, and the case, and the sound quality. So, I want to make a full
[00:54] video here. We'll test the ANC, the microphones, the sound quality, and everything else. Plus, I'll show you what's better, and interestingly, what's actually worse about these than the XM6s. And, of course, full disclosure,
[01:06] this video is not sponsored. No brands have any input on this video. Sony let to launch so I could test them and make this video in time for launch, but it said, we have pros and plenty of cons to talk about in this video. So, let's
[01:21] colorways. There's a black one as you can see here, and also a white colorway. going to try to buy the white colorway once it comes out. It just the the like the stainless steel and the white leather just look good together, but
[01:35] as well. The design overall, I'm really happy with the way it looks. You can see you pull it out, you have kind of a little gap there. It just looks really you have this kind of pleather all the way around. It looks like real leather,
[01:50] feels similar to real leather. It's technically not real leather, though. Uh, but I think nonetheless, which I don't really mind, you get a really nice thick cushion all the way across the top and around the ear cups. Overall, this
[02:02] is a slimmer design than the XM6s, though, by about 5 mm, even though it larger. I think that's mostly because of where they put the metal band on here and how the accents really look. On both ear cups, again, that leather aesthetic
[02:16] controls, which I think is gives it a nice feel when you're using it, but also them. And then the case, I think this is kind of a mixed bag here. On one hand, the other hand, I actually really like this case a lot. So, what I like about
[02:30] it, let's talk about that first. First, this does still have that magnetic clasp that we saw on the XM6 headphones, where you can close it and open it with one hand. Super convenient, I love that it's there. It doesn't close quite as well as
[02:44] the XM6 headphones, because sometimes, if you don't compress the headphones all way down, it gets a little bit hung up, so you just want to make sure you do closes and opens super easily. Definitely the best closing mechanism of
[02:58] opinion. And it's also a hard shell case. Uh it matches the headphones. When you open it up, you don't have to do this little headphones gymnastics of, in? You just close them and put them in. And I actually really like that. I know
[03:12] first, so you have a smaller footprint, but I don't really mind that. And the want to be walking around carrying this like a purse, it kind of is nice to have clip it onto a backpack, for example. And uh overall, I think the case did a
[03:27] really good job. The only thing I'm not a huge fan of is when you open it up, in this little pouch, and the pouch is deep enough, but they don't really comes with one cable in the box, and uh I feel like having This could be slightly
[03:40] looking at the headphones themselves, the controls are very similar to the 1000XM6s. We've got the voice controls, where you just say, "Hey headphones, uh it'll do it has like 20 or something
[03:54] use to manage your audio and your your ANC levels and things like that. We also have tap controls, so on that ear cup, you can tap, single tap, double tap, triple tap. We have swipe controls, which again, some of the best in the
[04:07] industry, swiping up and down for volume, forward and back for playback controls, and you can also cup the right ear to essentially duck your audio, so transparency, you hear your surroundings. This is a feature that I'm
[04:20] surprised no other headphones have copied. Sony's been doing it on the 1000X series for a pretty long time. I use it all the time if I'm on a flight something, you don't want to just take your headphones off, you just do that.
[04:33] things. We also have buttons on the left side, so instead of two buttons as we you have one for power and for Bluetooth, you have one to toggle between ANC and transparency modes, and the other one is really interesting. It
[04:47] that I'll show you later on in the video. As far as fit and comfort go, these are way, way, way better than the 1000XM6 headphones for one main reason.
[04:59] deeper ear cups. If you look at the ear cups here, you can see it's deeper in the back and shallower in the front, so they're kind of an angle on the inside, and I find that putting them on, my ear never touches the inside there. It's
[05:12] incredibly comfortable. Um these are definitely heavier, so as far as the all the headphones go on the market, I would say these are significantly better than the XM6s, but still not quite as good as the Bose Quiet Comfort headphones in
[05:24] are going to be a little bit heavier, and my ears do still get a little bit several hours before it becomes a problem. And even though these are much heavier than the XM6s, you would hardly know it when you're wearing them. Mainly
[05:38] because it has a gentler clamp and and the foam and the leather kind of push way around. It also has sort of like a an exoskeleton on the top where the band is on the outside so you have as much cushion as possible on the headband to
[05:52] think they did a really good job of that. These are 17% wider or 17% thicker of a headband compared to the XM6s. So, comfort, absolutely two thumbs up. Fit, do they stay in your ears? If you're going to work out with these, which I
[06:07] buying them to work out. These do fall that weight if you're doing something like push-ups. As soon as you look down, of fall forward on my head. Everyone's head's different. If you have a larger
[06:21] head and like the clamping force might be a little stronger for you, then maybe buying these for working out. As far as the sound quality goes, we have a couple upgrades here. We have a new V3 integrated processor that allows DSEE
[06:34] Ultimate and three modes of spatial upmixing. So, remember that extra button I mentioned? That is going to be toggling between your spatial upmixing off or you could do like the cafe. I don't know if you guys remember that.
[06:47] music and it sounds like it's in the room with you or in a cafe. It makes the It's a really interesting feature that some people like if you're trying to focus on working and you want to feel like you're in a coffee shop. You don't
[07:01] it's too distracting then. It's a cool way of doing things. But now we have three new modes that are more of a 360 upmixing. So, one is called cinema, watching movies with these. Another one's called music and the third one is
[07:14] called game mode. And you can toggle between these with that physical button. good. It's really interesting the way it's really done. And it does it feels more than just spatial audio. It doesn't just make it
[07:27] sound like your audio is 360. It kind of EQ's it a little bit in a way. And sound quality to really understand what's happening there. So, back to the that are supposed to also improve it. The PCBs have thicker copper foil
[07:41] thicker compared to the XM6s. That is meant to reduce signal to noise ratio. They also have a new unidirectional carbon driver on here, but what is it have good clarity, but honestly, I'm not the biggest fan of the default tuning of
[07:56] these. It's definitely dark and overly warm in my opinion, but once you EQ them good. I really love what these are able to do. I just wish Sony gave us more of a neutral EQ out of the box. So, let me explain what I heard initially. The lows
[08:10] sound genuinely pretty good. Warm, full, accurate basslines. So, bass is definitely very capable. The struggle with these was between 500 and 5,000 hertz. Somewhere in that region, you get vocals sound a little bit thin and they
[08:22] lose to the basslines. Instruments like snare and banjo kind of are missing highs sound a little bit detached because of that that mid scoop that I was talking about. The The tuning here, like I said, overall is dark and
[08:35] definitely U-shaped with a recession in the mids, but they do still have more detail and sound cleaner at the same time. So, these are definitely very capable headphones and once you equalize them, they sound pretty good. And so, EQ
[08:47] And I don't want to be too critical. once you equalize them, but considering the price on these, I think it's important to just point out everything that maybe I'm not a biggest fan of. So,
[08:59] and see how these sound. These are the microphones on these headphones. These I'm just going to call them the collection headphones. Um like I said, I how these microphones perform. From my testing earlier indoors, they did a
[09:15] pretty decent job. You really just want to focus on the S sounds, like S. sometimes that's something that gets a little bit compressed and is missing on a lot of headphones. These do that slightly, but overall, I thought it was
[09:28] indoors. And now, let's go outside to a louder environment, see how they're able to handle those kind of sounds. All right, this is the busy road test. There's some traffic behind me. There's some guy mowing his lawn over there.
[09:41] It's obviously windy out here as you can see by my hair. So, let me know how these microphones perform. Okay, so now the noise cancellation. These have the XM6s, but because we have different geometry here and different materials,
[09:55] they're slightly less strong in ANC compared to the XM6s. From my testing, it's generally the same for most frequencies, but for the really low frequencies, perhaps 1 dB less less capable. So, the loudest sounds at a low
[10:09] blocking on the XM6s compared to these. Not a huge difference, they still block a lot of sounds, but just not quite as much as the XM6s. Again, mostly because transparency goes, decent just like the XM6s. I think it's just fine. As far as
[10:24] same ones from the XM6s, but we also have some new ones. So, speak to chat, wear the headphones and just start talking and it'll do the same thing it turning the music down and turning on
[10:37] transparency. We have DSEE Ultimate as I mentioned before, spatial upmixing modes, and I believe there should be a Spotify shortcut button, but it's not fact, let me just show you the app. Okay, so looking at the app, we have a
[10:49] previous generation. Listening mode like I mentioned before, you can toggle between like music, cinema, game mode, background music. You can choose the the distance setting, so your living room or whatever. I usually just leave it on
[11:02] sounds, you know, with the full experience there. device settings. And by the way, you can customize what the first page looks can customize your ambient sound control, so your noise cancellation,
[11:15] speak to chat, sound quality and volume. You can switch between DSEE Ultimate on or auto or sorry, off or auto. So, it's going to kind of up essentially upscale your audio. You also have the ability to toggle between like
[11:28] can choose if you want multi-point connectivity, connecting to two devices simultaneously. You have controls down here. So, as I mentioned before, we've got head gestures for, you know, answering or rejecting phone calls, kind
[11:41] of a nice extra control there. We also have the ability to customize the touch sensor, and of course, we do have uh the audio or the voice access down here. that's going to be those voice commands as I mentioned. We've got, I don't know,
[11:55] could say, "Ambient sound mode on." and stuff like that. Now, the app does look service information failed." That's because this is still like in beta. These headphones haven't launched yet. So, when you get the headphones, they
[12:08] let's talk about the pros and the cons of these headphones. Overall, pros, far superior comfort, much, much better design, and also maintaining pretty much everything we really liked about the XM6s. The sound quality, I think, is
[12:23] more capable than the XM6s, and overall, just a huge step up. But, not everything are some downsides. One is that I totally understand these are like a premium, kind of collectible style pair of headphones. They're more expensive.
[12:36] They're $649. I'll have a link down below. If you guys want to support the It costs you nothing extra, and you're able to buy directly from Sony. Type-C playback. They're heavier. They're 320 g versus 253 g. Honestly, I
[12:51] I know that's entirely because of the new geometry and the stainless steel. downside at all. It doesn't feel like that when you're wearing them. But, one slightly weaker. You're looking at 24 hours versus 30 hours. But, overall,
[13:06] these headphones. So, I really need to review these in two ways. First, as a Sony super fan, should you buy it? Yeah, absolutely. These are instantly like premium. They genuinely fixed one of my biggest complaints about the XM6s, being
[13:20] that perspective. These are awesome headphones. For anyone else, should you buy these? Well, if you like the design, if you like the XM5s but hate the comfort issues, and if money's no object, then yeah, absolutely buy these.
[13:34] These are really incredible headphones. But, if you're simply in the market for the best Bluetooth headphones, consider watching my comparison video. These They would slip up a bit with slightly weaker ANC, a higher price tag, and a
[13:47] less secure fit, but like I said, they would gain favor for better design and that video, I'll link that right here. You can click and watch that one next. Full comparison between some of the best headphones on the market. Thanks for
[14:00] watching, guys, and I'll see you over there.