Sony’s best headphones get an upgrade: Sony WH-1000XM6 hands-on

The Verge

After a three year break, Sony is updating its most popular noise-canceling headphones. The WH-1000XM6 headphones come with better sound, better ANC, much needed design improvements and a higher price tag. Starting at $449 the flagship headphones also come with spatial audio upmixing, AI beam-forming for clearer voice calls, more microphones and battery life up to 40h (or 30h with ANC on). Is all that worth the upgrade from the XM5? Chris Welch, in his last video for the Verge, breaks down all the new features to help you decide.

Transcript

00:00All right, it's that time again. Sony has new flagship noise-canceling headphones on the way,

00:08and I'll bet you can even guess what they're called. Yeah, the WH-1000X M6 are here. And so,

00:15at first glance, they're pretty similar to the M5s that came out three long years ago,

00:20and there's no real one big feature that sets these apart from the M5s either. Sure, the noise

00:25cancellation is more powerful, and Sony's put a lot of focus on sound quality this time around,

00:29but ultimately, this is a situation where a lot of small refinements and improvements add up to a

00:34must-have upgrade, for some people anyway. Okay, so there's no better place to start than what

00:40they're designed. And Sony's stuck with the same overall look and feel, but has made some really

00:45smart tweaks along the way. First and foremost, the 1000X M6s can fold down again, praise be,

00:52which means their carrying case is quite a bit smaller and more compact than last time,

00:56and it now uses a magnetic latch closure instead of a zipper. And I honestly love this change. That

01:02magnet won't break after wear and tear like a zipper so often does, and the case does stay tightly

01:07shut no matter where you kind of pull and tug at it. I'm a little worried about how durable the folding

01:11joint on these headphones will be over time, but we'll see. So what else is better? Well, the headband

01:17is thicker and more comfortable, and it's much easier to tell which side of the headphones is the front,

01:22both because of how they're shaped on your head and the fact that there's no seam on the front anymore.

01:26And the power button is round now, which means no more mixing it up with the ANC button.

01:31By the way, Sony, why were those the same shape for so long? Come on.

01:35Oh, and the ear pads are much easier to pull off and replace if need be. You can just yank them off

01:40without needing a special tool, a spudger, or a knife. Putting them back on probably takes practice

01:45and more time than I had, but this is certainly a change for the better. Now, inside these headphones is

01:50Sony's latest processor chip, which is part of why the company claims the 1000X M6s have the best

01:56noise cancellation on the market at their time of release. Bose, they're talking about you.

02:01And there's now a total of 12 microphones versus eight last time, which also helps the headphones

02:06identify and reduce ambient sound around you. And these mics now use AI beamforming to separate your

02:12voice from everything else in the background. Now, I've heard this before. Companies always say their

02:17latest headphones are much better at this kind of thing, but we need more extensive real-world tests

02:22to know just how much clearer these really are. Then we come to audio quality, and Sony says the

02:281000X M6s were tuned by mastering engineers from several of its own music studios. Okay, sure.

02:34I only got to try them briefly, and they sounded like Sony headphones. And that seems to be good enough

02:40for millions of people. You still get LDAC for higher quality Bluetooth streaming, but these are mass-market

02:46noise-canceling headphones. They're not hi-fi cans. They're punchy, and they're fun to listen to.

02:51Sony gives people what they want. Now, I'm less sure that anyone wants the new spatial audio upmixing

02:57feature. These M6s can take stereo audio, be that music or movies, and virtualize it into spatial audio.

03:03You're still starting with the left and right channel, but the headphones upmix that into more

03:08atmospheric surround sound with head tracking. Now, compared to genuine Dolby Atmos music tracks,

03:13Sony is faking it here. Let's be real. And Apple lets you do the same thing with AirPods.

03:18Maybe I'll use this when watching Netflix on a plane for that added immersion, but otherwise,

03:24no thanks. Count me out. Some aspects of the 1000X M6s are unchanged from the M5s. Battery life is the

03:31same 30 hours with ANC on, and 40 hours, supposedly, with it off. But I do think there's one new thing that

03:38many people, myself included, are going to be pretty excited about. You can finally,

03:43finally charge and listen to the 1000X M6s at the same time.

03:50Insert applause here. That said, it's not the way I would have wanted it.

03:55See, Sony still isn't supporting wired USB-C audio. You can listen through the headphone jack and charge

04:01the headphones over USB-C at the same time, but that's two cords. And why, in the year 2025,

04:08can't we just simplify this down to one cable for everything? Apple's doing USB-C audio. Sennheiser's

04:14doing USB-C audio. Bowers and Wilkins? USB-C audio. I just, I don't get it. And now we're going to have

04:21to wait until the 1000X M7s, God knows when, for this to be resolved. This doesn't ruin Sony's new

04:28headphones for me, but it's certainly a bummer. Usually, I would tell you at this point how much

04:33the headphones cost, but at the time of this video, I don't know. Sony didn't share that with us until

04:38later on, and so the M6s cost this much compared to the M5s, which sold for $400 three years ago.

04:46But now there are tariffs and all kinds of uncertainty in the world, so this is how things go. Either way,

04:52there's a lot to like about the M6s. They're comfortable, they sound promising,

04:56the ANC is best in class. If you've got the M5s, there's no reason to rush out and buy these,

05:02but if you have the M4s and something earlier, there are a lot of quality of life improvements

05:06here that add up to a pretty compelling set of headphones, so I'm excited, and hopefully many of

05:11you are as well. Those are just my first impressions of Sony's new 1000X M6 headphones, but for more

05:16headphones and other tech and news, check out theverge.com. And thanks, as always, for watching.

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