Sony WF-1000XM6 vs Bose QC Ultra 2 Earbuds - Don't Choose Wrong!

[00:00] So are the best earbuds from Sony better than the best earbuds from Bose? Of course, I'm talking about the brand new Sony WF-1000X Mark VI earbuds, which were just announced yesterday.

[00:12] I've been using them for about two weeks and really putting them through their paces. Or, of course, the Bose QuietComfort Ultra second-generation earbuds. Definitely a long name, but these came out a couple months ago as a refresh for the original Bose QuietComfort Ultra earbuds.

[00:27] And in this video, I want to talk about the active noise cancellation. We'll do a series of tests to show you which one's actually better, and Sony claims to be the absolute best ANC in the industry right now.

[00:39] I'll also get into a microphone test. We'll talk about the sound quality, the features, the design, the fit, the comfort, and everything else to ultimately figure out which of these deserves a spot in your ears. So I want to start off with probably the most exciting category, the active noise cancellation.

[00:54] But this is not just a linear thing. Like, you actually might be, if you check out different influencers and different people testing, you might see different answers because a lot of people just put it as, like, which one has stronger ANC.

[01:06] But it really depends on a couple factors. So, the first test I like to do is play the sound of a jet, step distance away, I turn up that volume, and Chilice are no longer able to block that out. And I found that on the Bose earbuds, I was blocking up to about 65 decibels, whereas on Sony, it was about 67 decibels.

[01:24] That's the point where the noise was noticeable and louder than taking a deep breath, just kind of for reference there. But what's really interesting is if you turn that volume down a little bit, you go to about 56 decibels, sounds were more reduced by the Bose earbuds.

[01:38] So this is going to be a little bit tricky to really articulate, but the non-detect threshold of sound is actually higher on the Bose, although the reduction of very loud sounds was superior on Sony.

[01:50] So that's something that I thought was really interesting. Oh, and by the way, full disclosure here, this video is not sponsored. No brands have any editorial privileges or influence over this video. Sony sent me the X Mark 6s ahead of launch to test them,

[02:03] but Bose also sent me the QC Buds a little while ago. So none of that influences my opinions, and I'll be covering both pros and cons for both of these. I don't care which one you choose. I just want you to make the right choice for your needs.

[02:15] So moving into test number two, I wanted to test higher frequencies, people talking, and so I played an interview of Taylor Swift. turned the volume up until it was no longer unintelligible, and I can hear what she's saying,

[02:27] and Sony, primarily in my opinion, because they have foam eartips and obviously strong ANC, but the foam eartips make a particularly big difference in higher frequencies. They're blocking up to about 48 decibels, while Bose has a very powerful ANC engine, but doesn't have

[02:43] those foam eartips and was blocking up to 46 decibels. So definitely better with Sony, but not by a massive margin. Keep in mind, though, decibels are not a linear scale. They're a logarithmic scale, so one or two decibels is kind of a big deal. Task number three is a silence test.

[03:00] If you're sitting in a quiet room and no sound is playing, which one is actually going to be quieter? Well, I found that Sony was marginally quieter than Bose because sometimes you have the slightest digital artifact. For me, it's in the left earbud of the Bose buds. Nowhere near as bad

[03:15] as it used to be, but there's a little bit of staticky kind of sound that I think the Bose have that you don't really experience with Sony. Test number four is the wind test, so, you know, standing outside or blowing a fan on your earbuds. They both handle it really well, so I'm not going

[03:30] to give a win to either one of them. They're both pretty impressive. Next up, we have transparency. Sony lets you choose between 20 different ambient sound levels. Bose also lets you choose ambient sound level as well. Sony has a voice pass-through mode, which specifically filters out

[03:44] voices from ambient sounds. I don't use it particularly often. The Bose are a bit louder and more natural in my opinion, which I really do appreciate, so it's almost easier to forget that the Bose buds are in your ears, but the Bose earbuds have significantly more white noise

[03:59] in transparency. The Sony earbuds do have more pressure feel to them, mostly because of the foam ear tips in my opinion, so between the two of these, I'm going to have to probably call it a tie. While Bose, I think, does a better job, the white noise, maybe it's a personal preference, but it

[04:13] bothers me a little bit. All right, so far, Sony's been coming out with some marginal wins. Later on, there's going to be some big wins for Bose and some big wins for Sony. But I want to talk about, of course, the sound quality. You're spending a lot of money on some very premium

[04:26] earbuds. Which one's actually going to sound better? Well, they both have high-resolution codecs. You can check out the links below to see exactly what the codecs are to see if they're compatible with your phone. If you have an iPhone, don't bother checking. It's not going to work with

[04:41] but Android phones you guys have some high-res codecs and Bose also has this kind of calibration thing They've done for a little while where you put them in your ears It plays like this cello sound and calibrates to your ears. I think that's really cool

[04:54] So everybody should have a little bit of a calibration to their own ear geometry Bose is very warm very bassy I would say it lively and high contrast for sure It a U response where it feels immersive and fun and lively but you do lack some details in the mids

[05:13] It can really be eclipsed by the lows and the highs. The sub-bass can be a little bit overbearing if you're sensitive to that. And songs with a lot of compressed high hats or any kind of synth that's in that range of 2,000 to 5,000 Hz,

[05:27] it can feel a little bit too shrill and aggressive, in my opinion. Bose sort of always does this, and I think a lot of people absolutely love it. A lot of consumers just hear bass and treble. They're like Clarity and Bass. They like that a lot.

[05:40] But I find it to be a little bit too much on that spectrum. I think if you're more in the audiophile realm, this is going to be pretty familiar to you, and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Sony does a little bit less of this.

[05:52] They still kind of have a V-shape, but less of a bass boost. and I think it's a little bit closer to a neutral profile. The highs are crisp on Sony, but not quite shrill, I would say,

[06:04] and I think that there's still a lift there, somewhere between like maybe 2 and 6 kHz, you're going to hear that, but decent instrument separation on both of them, I would say a little bit better on Sony, especially because the mids are a little bit more intelligible on here,

[06:18] and I think busy songs, you're going to notice that the most. Bose also has a limited EQ, whereas Sony has not the best EQ, but I think it's a little bit better in the app. Overall, Bose are very capable earbuds.

[06:31] Perhaps not an audiophile's preference, but many listeners might not even be able to tell the difference between these. My personal preference lies with the Sony X Mark VI buds. Next, we have price. This is a brief category, but a massive win for Bose.

[06:45] originally the Bose earbuds were $299 and the Sonys are $329, so a $30 price gap, but at the time of making this video the Bose are already on sale for $249 and that means that you're looking at an $80 price difference considering how close

[06:59] these were so far throughout the video. That is a massive win for Bose, but I will have links to both of these in the description down below. Sometimes there's special sales or exclusive discounts, so once you decide after watching this video

[07:12] please check out those links because honestly price matters a lot if you see one on a bigger sale or the other one on a big sale like that could just mean you know the entire difference right there all right now let's get into a microphone

[07:26] test these are the Sony WF 1000X mark 6 buds I should mention that I think these sound a lot better than the fives the previous generation and that's partially because they have more microphones on them they have a new processor on them

[07:39] and I think very importantly they're relying a lot on bowing conduction to identify what is my voice and what is an outside sound. I'm in the studio right now so this should be pretty easy. They'll go outside in a minute and you'll see how they perform in a louder environment.

[07:53] All right and these are the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Gen 2 earbuds. I have to say while speaking on the phone the transparency does feel very natural on these. I can hear my voice quite well but again in a quiet environment

[08:05] And sometimes I find that earbuds that, I mean, Sony Bose both are known to do this, in my opinion, they focus a little bit too much on the voice, and you end up with this weird compressed sound when it's not really necessary. In a quiet environment, a natural sound would be just fine.

[08:18] So sometimes, like I said, you have very different experiences in loud versus quiet environments, and we're going to compare those right now. All right, so here's an outdoor microphone test with the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Gen 2 earbuds.

[08:30] Obviously, there's a lot of sound behind me. It's not really that much wind. There's a little bit of a breeze, but we'll see how you compare it to this Sony earbud. And now, these are these Sony WF-1000X Mark VI earbuds.

[08:42] By the way, now's probably a good time to mention, I also compared these brand new earbuds to the AirPods Pro 3. If you haven't already seen that video, I'll link it down below. You can also just click on my little account icon there,

[08:55] go to my channel, and you'll see that one. That was really interesting, because the microphones were kind of, like, you'll see, it's a trade-off in that video. So as you compare, let me know. All right, so in the past, I used to tell you guys to comment and let me know which one you think sounded better.

[09:08] You can still do that, but obviously I'm going to share my opinion right here. So indoors, I've done this test a couple times. The Sony earbuds sometimes sound more natural to me, and the Bose ones sound more compressed. But I think in the most recent one, I literally just listened to it off camera,

[09:23] I think the Sony ones are a little bit sibling. Like, it's definitely really trying to focus on my voice, and I don't think that's entirely necessary. whereas Bose also sounds more compressed. That's kind of what they always do. So you can leave a comment,

[09:35] but I think the Sony ones might have sounded a little bit better in that environment. Outdoors, Sony without a doubt sounded a lot better. So indoors, I think it's gonna depend on, you know, every call might be very very close. Bose might be better sometimes, Sony might be better other times,

[09:51] but outside the Bose earbuds had a bit of an echo. While they did block more background noise when I was not talking, my voice sounded less natural and generally just more compressed, like really trying to isolate my voice there. Now as far as the design goes, these both have

[10:06] IPX4 water resistance they both have wireless charging big win because that wasn always the case on the Bose Ultras And they both have USB Type charging as well The Sony case is a bit smaller in pretty much every dimension, particularly this way if you look at the height of it. And so

[10:24] the Bose Buds, they don't stand up. But I think the case design is superior on the Sony earbuds. They both have tap controls, but Bose has an advantage of having swipe controls as well for volume, but Sony has their cool head nod feature. If you're getting a phone call, you can nod your

[10:38] head or shake. You can also talk to your headphones by saying, hey, headphones, and just tell it to turn the volume up or whatever, regardless of what ecosystem you're in and what voice assistant you have on your phone. Sony also lets you tap and hold the left earbud to temporarily turn on

[10:54] transparency, turn your music down, and hear your surroundings, which is great if you need to hear an announcement in an airport and you don't want to always take your earbuds out for that. And Sony also has an additional control of quadruple tapping your earbuds, but Bose has some pretty

[11:08] big advantages when it actually comes to the earbuds themselves. So the ear tips, I'm not going to zoom in too close because, well, okay, I'll clean these, I'll zoom in quite a bit, but they have little filters on the earbud tip to prevent wax buildup in there, and it's a very shallow well,

[11:23] so it makes them quite easy to clean out. Additionally, silicone is far more hygienic, in my opinion, because it is so easy to clean. You can easily just put some rubbing alcohol or even just tissue and just clean it off. Everyone should be doing that pretty regularly, but the

[11:38] Sony earbuds are coming with these foam tips, which I find are not only a lot more difficult to clean and keep hygienic, but they also kind of show wax a little more easily. I promise, I clean these all the time. I have two different pairs. I've been using both of them and switching

[11:52] ear tips, but they still don't look very clean even after just one use of them. Sometimes it's dirt, sometimes whatever it might be, and while they do have a mesh filter inside, mine already broke on, like the little mesh filter broke on one of my earbud tips. Also, the

[12:07] foam ear tips I found broke in the past, and from my understanding, these are the same material as what we saw in the previous generations. After months of use, and I used them pretty heavily, one time I was flying, and I put the earbud in, and the whole earbud tip just

[12:23] like split in half and I couldn't use them on my flight. So that's definitely not ideal. And then my last little complaint here, which I understand, you can easily just buy aftermarket ear tips. And of course, the foam tips are also nice because they do a good job with noise blocking,

[12:37] but they're just also harder to put in your ears. I feel like, especially if it's cold, that you really have to compress them. The foam is pretty dense and then you put them in, they kind of expand a little bit. Silicone ear tips are really just so much easier. Now getting into fit and comfort. Fit is like how well do they stay in your ears.

[12:51] Bose has different wing tip options and different ear tip options, so they should be very secure, and while they seem more secure at first, if you start running or your ears get sweaty, I find that Sony's are definitely more secure than the foam expands and just really locks them in your ears.

[13:07] As far as comfort goes, you have the opposite story where the foam ear tips kind of expand in your ear and they put a little bit of pressure there that over time can give you ear fatigue. It can feel a little bit hotter and a little bit stuffier wearing them,

[13:20] whereas the soft silicone ear tip, especially because you've got the wing tip on there as well, it kind of disperses the pressure on your ears, and it feels a lot lighter, even though these earbuds appear to be larger, on Bose, that is.

[13:33] Oh, and a new test I started including, because you've been commenting and asking for this, is the sleeping test. Which one would I wear if I was going to sleep? I think the Bose earbuds, I would lean towards them because they're very comfortable, but for me personally, because there is kind of a stem that sticks down,

[13:48] they're more likely to get bumped out of my ears, and if I really wanted to wear something all night, Sony, although my ears would definitely get fatigued, I think would be more likely to stay in my ears all night. So personal preference there, I don't really sleep with earbuds, and neither one's going to be great for sleeping on your side,

[14:05] although Bose might be slightly better for sleeping on your side because they're not round, they're more of a flat profile there, and that could be an advantage. Now, before we get into aesthetics, by the way, thanks for hanging out with me and listening

[14:17] to my little rant on these earbuds. I hope you find this video helpful. I spend a lot of time testing earbuds and comparing them and trying to make these videos better, so if you have any comments or requests for future comparisons, leave a comment down

[14:31] below. Maybe subscribe if you want to see some more videos like this, and let me know what your favorite earbuds actually are. Like, I've tested so many, and I have my own opinions, but sometimes they're earbuds that I haven't tested that other people really like.

[14:45] Now, moving on to the aesthetics. I think Bose has a pretty big advantage here in that they have five different colors, and the five colors are actually pretty unique. Some of them are subtle, more skin-toned, kind of, and others are just, like, plumb, kind of wonky colors that are kind of cool.

[14:59] And actually, I like them quite a bit. The Sony earbuds come in two different colors. You've got the black one and you've got kind of silvery white pretty neutral muted tones and although the Bose earbuds do appear a bit larger and Sony a little bit more subtle it going to really be a personal preference of which one you think actually looks better Now we finally get into I would say probably my favorite category being features These Bose have a lot of overlap They both have mono mode You can just use one or the

[15:27] other. They both have, you know, ear detection so they can automatically pause when they take them out of your ears. They also both have multi-point connectivity, but Bose, I think, actually does this a little bit better. So not only do you connect to two devices, and they both do that,

[15:40] But Bose, you can toggle between which devices you're connected to. So if you have, you know, five devices that these have connected to, you just keep tapping through until you get to the device that you want these to be connected to.

[15:53] You can also do this in the app on the Bose app. And I think that's a really big win that I personally enjoy quite a bit. Bose also has, like, some different modes. And honestly, let me just show you the app. So Bose has a relatively simple and minimal app.

[16:05] You see you've got your volume there, your battery levels. and if you go down to modes, you have these different kind of preset modes you could choose that are really just going to have, like, do you have transparency on or off, like what level is it,

[16:17] and basically, do you have spatial audio on. You can add a new one, so if I just click on the plus, we can call this one, like, relax, for example, and like I said, a pretty simple setting right there. You can toggle between these by tapping the left earbud,

[16:30] and you can choose which ones you actually want to toggle between by unstarring them, so I just, I never use immersion, I could turn that off here, And you can always enable them from the app right there. You've got Source, so all the devices you're connected to, you can add new ones pretty easily over there.

[16:45] And otherwise, you can customize the shortcut there for each ear. And, of course, Spotify Tap is common on both of them. And you have an EQ. Like I said, the EQ is very limited here, just a three-band EQ and four presets.

[16:58] I think that's a little surprising considering the price point of these earbuds. But, you know, that's the Bose app. Now, taking a look at the Sony app, there are quite a few things going on. If you just scroll down. You can customize what this looks like by tapping edit on the bottom, but again, you see what codec you're using, the battery levels, and you can see like ANC or whatever.

[17:16] Listening mode is a really cool thing that I haven't seen any earbuds really replicate, but if you are working and you like that coffeehouse feel where the music's not in your ears, some people find it less distracting if it sounds like it's in the room around you.

[17:28] You just tap on background music. I think that's pretty interesting. The equalizer, if I go into that, you can see we can edit that and it's a much more advanced EQ. I think that's a big advantage if you're trying to really tailor the sound and kind of shows where the priorities are in these earbuds.

[17:44] You can connect two devices simultaneously. You're not able to really toggle through them like you could on Bose, so quite a difference there. But if we go to device settings on the bottom, we can control the voice assistant feature like I mentioned before. We also have speak to chat on here, so if I just start talking to somebody, it'll turn my music down.

[18:00] it'll turn on transparency, I can have a conversation, it'll detect when I'm done talking, and then go right back to my ANC and turn my music back up. It's a pretty cool feature that, again, not many other earbuds are able to replicate. Sony also has this feature where,

[18:13] if you enable it, whenever you put the earbuds in, it'll, like, read the time to you and some basic stuff like that. I used to do it, but now it's like, I want to put it in and just listen to my music, so I disabled that. The battery then. This is kind of interesting. You have eight hours

[18:26] on the earbuds in 24 when you include the case for Sony. That's with ANC on. With the Bose earbuds, it's four hours with ANC on and immersion and all that stuff, but you can get up to six and a half

[18:38] hours in the earbuds, depending on how you have those settings, and you can have up to 24 hours when you include the case. So, similar performance with the case, more battery in the earbuds with Sony. So, I guess maybe that would change my sleeping, what I talked about before. If you're

[18:54] sleeping more than like four to six hours, maybe it would be better to sleep with the Sony earbuds just because the battery is more likely to last through the night. Overall, which one is going to be better? Well, I think price really matters a lot here, and given the current sale price,

[19:07] we're looking at $80 less for the Bose earbuds versus the Sonys, I think that the performance difference is not enough to really justify that for a lot of people out there. But if price is no object to you, I think the Sony earbuds feel more modern. It feels like the Bose earbuds are just

[19:24] kind of update on their three-year-old earbuds, the Bose QuietComfort Ultra original earbuds, which were incredible when they came out. And as you can see, the ANC is still able to compete, but it feels like more of a small iterative update, whereas Sony feels like they're really

[19:39] genuinely coming out with new generations every time they launch. And so these feel, although they're more expensive right now, they feel like they are better in many situations. I think that the microphones perform better outside. I think the sound quality is better.

[19:53] I like the features a little bit more, the app is more fleshed out, there's a better EQ, and technically, in my opinion, they did perform better with active noise cancellation. That said, you really can't go wrong with either one of these.

[20:05] Leave a comment below and let me know which one you choose and which earbuds I should compare the Sonys to next. These are brand new, they just came out. There's going to be a lot of comparisons in launching. So, if you enjoyed this video, consider watching my comparison to the AirPods or just my original review of them.

[20:21] Thanks for watching. I'll see you in that video.