Introduction
SoSony’s WH-1000XMseries is generally their Flagship lineup of active noise cancellation headphones and this one is theSony WH-1000XM5the latest in their land and Flagship active noise cancellation headphones are second only to truly wireless earbuds in terms of popularity these things do sell out really fast.
So last year when Sony introduced theWH-000XM4that was a very minimal upgrade over the preceding WS thousand XM3 the naming scheme is really terrible so I’m going to be calling itXM4andXM3.TheXM5itself is kind of a substantial upgrade over the XM4 and let’s talk about that in this review.
Design
The first immediate change that you will notice is of course the design of these headphones the aesthetic is far more minimal and modern looking in nature and looks better than the precedingWH-1000XM4.
However there are some functionalities you’d lose out as a result of the new design so firstly it only folds flat so it cannot fold up entirely like you could on the witch thousand XM4 which means that the case now is much much bigger as well it’s a nice case no doubt but it doesn’t fit in my slim backpack that easily.
There’s another fundamental problem of the design and it is when you’re not listening to music and you wear your headphones around your neck they don’t close up entirely like they don’t swivel completely flat, which means that if you want them sitting flat around your neck you will have to change the orientation and that’s kind of odd because when you’re going to listen to music again you’ll have to do this so it’s not very intuitive in nature also.
Accessories
One more thing I noticed is that the accessories that are bundled with these include that type A to type C adapter for charging of course and the 3.5 mm extension cable for when you want to listen in wired mode.
But there is no airplane adapter with these headphones which is something that is very essential for any noise cancellation headphones.
Fit
Now talking about the comfort of these headphones now I am somebody who has a big head, most headphones generally clamp around really tightly around my head but that’s not the case with the Sony WH-1000XM5.
The clamping force is not too tight and apart from that the cushioning on the ear pads and the headband itself is extremely soft.
What that meant for me is that I could listen to music for three hours at a stretch probably even extend it to 4 hours and it didn’t cost me any fatigue at all.
In comparison something like the AirPods max weighs down on your head and this one is much lighter and so it’s Bose’s headphone as well. By the way the headband extension that you have doesn’t have like a step counter of sort to give you sort of like a ridged mechanism it’s like a smooth sort of extension which works really well I have no complaints about it.
Controls
The controls on the Sony WH-1000XM5 are both physical and swipe gestures in nature, so you do get two physical buttons one for the power on a function which also doubles up as your Bluetooth pairing mode and apart from that you also get another button for noise cancellation or switching on to the Ambient sound mode.
As for the gestures they’re all placed on the right ear cup you can swipe up and down for increasing or decreasing the volume or you can swipe forward or backward for changing the tracks.
At the latency tuning for this is done really well it works exceptionally well every single time so much so that I think that every single headphone if they’re tuned this way should come with gesture control.
Headphones Connect App Features
Now as you can see out here you have the headphones Connect app it is available on both Android and iOS through which you can change a lot of settings and features on the Sony WH-1000XM5.
The problem with this app is that if you’re somebody who cares about security and privacy then this app asks a lot of data and information from you.
Anyway the first thing you see when you open the app is the Adaptive sound control and this is a feature that works intelligently to figure it out if you’re sitting if you’re standing and then accordingly tune the active noise cancellation for that particular situation.
Now I was on a flight and it hadn’t started moving yet so it had recognized that I was sitting or staying and once it started moving immediately it switched on to the moving mode, which means that the active noise cancellation, the level of active noise cancellation had increased.
You can tell because the music pauses for a second but I think it’s a really cool feature to have because you don’t have to change it manually.
Sony WH-1000XM5 Features
Now with the Sony WH-1000XM5 you also get multi-point connectivity you can connect two devices to the Sony WH-1000XM5 at one time.
Now I did connect my MacBook Air and of course a pixel 7 Pro at the same time but one thing you need to notice is that if you are playing music on one device and if you start playing music on the other device it doesn’t automatically switch to the other device you have to pause the music on the first device for it to sort of play on the other device.
Also if you want to have dual connections active at the same time you will have to sacrifice the LDAC codec capability of these headphones.
Now I’ll talk more about the LDAC codec when I talk about the sound signature. Also these headphones areSpotify Tap Certifiedwhich means that if you double click the ANC button it will immediately start playing music from Spotify where you left off.
Now you can see there is an active headphones and it also has a safe listening option and it has this gamification feature which makes it fun to use the headphones themselves because it gives you Badges.
Sound Signature
So now let’s talk about the sound signature, I really want to talk about it because by default it’s not that great I’ll use it with the LDAC codec on the pixel 7 Pro you do not get LDAC codec support on the iPhone and it defaults to AAC.
LDAC is this high resolution codec which will work well with lossless music and will give you better Fidelity as well, so if you’re using Apple music it’ll give you great quality Sound.
By default the problem with the tuning is that it’s dark it’s kind of wailed and it is very very boomy, the sub bass Rumble is way too much.
Now if you’re planning on buying the Sony WH-1000XM5 just do this one thing download theWavelet Appon your Android phone and switch to this EQ which pulls down a lot of the sub bass and the mid bass as well and increases the treble too.
In fact I feel that they are better than the custom EQ that you can do within the headphones app itself, but if you do custom EQing on the headphones app it will retain the EQ and it will work across devices so it will work even with an iOS device.
Now once I EQ them they opened up and sounded so much better the sound staging the Imaging, all was really really good something that you’ve come to expect from a great pair of Bluetooth active noise cancellation headphones.
If you listen to Sober by tool the Sony WH-1000XM5 does a fantastic job of placing all the instruments in the mix especially the guitars, the percussions and even the vocals in the right position for you to have that musical sort of Engagement with the sound itself.
Now if you want more bass you can switch to the default tuning, but trust me use this tuning you will like it way way better and your listening experience will also be far improved.
Having said that even with this EQ limitation of these headphones is the treble response the treble doesn’t have the kind of Shimmer and quality that I come to expect from a pair of 30,000 rupees headphones.
The problem is the sparkle in the treble is missing, so when the symbol hits happen in a Sober by Tool they don’t feel as good as they should and this is where fired headphones in this price category will of course perform way better and that’s to be understood.
For example, you have the awesome HiFi man Sundara which is an open back headphone and apart from that you have the Sennheiser HD 660s as well and you have the Audio-Technica ATH-R70x as well. For Bluetooth headphones these sound pretty good no doubt at all in fact I think that they do sound better than the 1000XM4 as well.
It’s a very warm pleasant kind of sound signature which is good for long listening sessions on a flight but if you want the kind of musical bite and enjoyment that you want from a pair of headphones that I think is kind of missing on the Sony WH-1000XM5, but while the sound is good enough these headphones excel at active noise cancellation.
In fact they’re the best out there I have heard the AirPods max extensively on many flights but the Sony WH-1000XM5 does noise cancellation much better and cuts out the higher frequencies much better which is more difficult to do.
The ambient mode on these headphones have definitely been improved they don’t sound as robotic anymore but when it comes to transparency mode Apple still does it way way better.
Having said that I do like the fact that you can just cup one of the ear cups and it’ll immediately go into Ambient sound mode and you can hear your environment better.
As for the audio latency when you’re playing videos or playing games it’s not too bad by default and there’s no special game mode for it to become better than anything. Now remember this if you want lower latency performance then you will have to switch off LDAC.
Battery
Now the battery life on Sony WH-1000XM5 is fantastic, they are rated for 30 hours I actually got more than 30 hours with ANC on and if you switch off ANC you can go up to 50 hours as well so that’s really really good.
Apart from that they’ve got fast charging as well 3 minutes of charge apparently gives you 3 hours of listening time I noticed that my GaN charger by 65 watt GaN charger could actually charge these at about 10 watts and 15 watts when the battery was as low as about 20%-30%. But when the battery is about 80%-90% the charging speed goes down which is fine.
Mic
Another thing that’s fantastic on the Sony WH-1000XM5 is the mic. The my quality has improved so much on these it’s really surprising how good it is.
I was using them constantly for video calls and for regular calls as well it was that good in fact. Why don’t you guys do a thing take a listen to the sound quality in comparison to something like the Oppo Encore X2 and you will get to know what I’m talking about.
Conclusion
These headphones are priced around rupees 30,000 and sometimes they go for lower than 30,000 during the discount season as well but I think they’re completely worth it because of the kind of features and the quality of features that Sony packs in.
If you want better audio Fidelity you have to pick a pair of wired headphones like the Meze 99 Classics or the HiFiman Sundara both of which are available for under Rs. 30,000.
But then you won’t get wireless connectivity, you won’t get active noise cancellation, you won’t get the kind of mic quality that you get with it you won’t get transparency mode, mean you lose out a lot of features so if you can compromise a little bit on the sound.
I think a lot of people will actually end up picking these instead of a wired pair of headphones if they had to pick only one.
But if you’re someone like me who doesn’t care too much about active noise cancellation and cares a lot about the sound quality itself, then IEMs would probably make more sense if you don’t want a pair of headphones.
For example something like the Moondrop Blessings 2 which has far better detailed retrieval capabilities compared to the Sony WH-1000XM5 and they sound far better too but you get passive noise isolation with it when you put them in your ears.
What for me the comfort factor alone of these headphones is a big selling point, a huge selling point because yeah I mean on long flights the convenience is unparalleled.
So do you like these headphones let me know in the comment section below if you’ve purchased one of these do let us know in the comment section below, if your experience has been similar and it will help somebody else out who’s trying to figure out if they should buy these or not.