WH-1000XM5 Best Active Noise Cancelling Wireless Bluetooth Over Ear Headphones with Mic for Clear Calling,Battery Life 30 Hours -White

These are the best headphones from Sony. Previously I used Sony headphones but they're entry-level headphones. I also used headphones from other brands like Sennheiser, One Audio and JBL but all of them are entry-level headphones. This is the first time I bought high-end headphones and I trust Sony. You can't go wrong with Sony as per my experience. Coming to the headphones, I already knew that these were best. However, I researched thoroughly on YouTube and read many articles for almost 3 months before buying these. I want to get the best value for the price. These headphones are costly and I don't want to go wrong with my purchase decision. Build quality: These are made of high-quality plastic and feel lightweight and comfortable to wear for longer durations. The only thing is, that the headband is thin and hurts a little on my head after wearing it for a few hours. Just move or adjust it a little and I'm good to go for another hour. Sound quality: It's Sony, no need to brag about sound quality. Sony is known for sound clarity. Every small musical instrument is heard in great detail. I can't forget my first experience of listening to music using these headphones. I'm blown away by the details and the clarity of sound. Battery life: It is mentioned 30 hours. Seems to be true. Headphones will easily last up to two days of mixed usage. Noise cancellation (N.C.): These headphones are my first experience with noise cancellation. When NC is turned on, it is silent. Zero noise. But after a few days, I realised that I could still hear voices from other people when they were shouting or talking loudly. It's good not to completely block all sound. Update on N.C.: I want to address one thing people who are saying that NC is not good. I think they feel like that because of the adaptive NC feature in the Sony headphones app. Due to this feature, the level of Noise cancelling is adjusted automatically according to the surroundings. I know it doesn't work 100% accurately every time. It works sort of 70 - 80 % accurately depending on the surroundings. That's why some people complain that NC is not completely silent or perfect. Some are complaining there is no option to disable the adaptive NC feature. It is available in the Sony headphones app after the latest update. We can also manually disable the adaptive NC of headphones using the app. I mentioned these details because some people may not be aware of these features available in the headphones app. Note: When NC is turned on, a sound pressure is created between ears and headphones. So there is a vacuum-like seal between ears and headphones and it blocks external sound. I'm not sure how NC works. This is the first time for me experienced noise cancellation. It was a shock and a surprise feeling when NC was on. My brother got scared due to this effect. I got used to it now. Check the Sony manual regarding the safety of NC. In the Sony Headphones Connect app, there is a safe listening setting. Please follow it and you don't need to worry about your ears getting damaged due to headphones. I have attached screenshots of the same. Please check. Final Verdict: I can say that these headphones are the best consumer headphones. Audiophile headphones are different that's why I mentioned them as the best consumer headphones. Most people who use them will love them.

Hello Fellow buyer's!! Many of you must have ended up being interested in this product after watching many reviews on the YouTube already, afterall below 25-30K isnts a small amount of money for a pair of Headphones right? So I will sum my experience about this pair in three major areas Comfort, ANC and Call quality and Sound quality. 1. Comfort: These are very lightweight, people complain them for feeling cheap and plasticky thats obvious you dont get lightweight with metal constructions, having said that they provide enough coushioning you will ever need for long hours. But since they are not as flexible as their predecessors they have a bigger footpring which isnt very comfortable carrying always. 2. Coming to ANC and Call quality: As many reviewers have already said, its amazing and Mind-blowing you will enjoy the ANC, I use in in Public Transport (Train) and when I have my volume level at 50-60% (recommend not to go beyond that for ear safety) you would barely even hear what the next person sitting to you is speaking unless you pay attention. Call quality is amazing outdoors and indoors it almost matches phone microphone reproduction when indoors but!! They struggle in windy situations so if you on the window seats try avoiding wind for calls. 3. Sound quality: I have been using expensive earphones for quite a long time I have my audiophile 1more quad drivers, Sennheiser HD 202, Sennheiser Momentum wired earbuds, Oppo enco x and x2's so I believe I now have some understanding about how a good pair should sound, having said that The default Audio quality is decent also it varies which device you are connected, I wud suggest that you should use them with LDAC enabled all the time!! Its pretty decent nothing mind-blowing but it can be tweaked for amazing soundgazmic experience using app, u can enjoy A.R. Rehman tracks such as Dil Se and experience a variety of instruments audible suddenly. I woud not compare it with bose, Sennheiser Momentum 4, Airpod max, i believe sound is subjective and everyone has to adjust accordingly and be satisfied with their purchase after they have made an investment and not be disappointed due to subjective opinions other have. Concluding this very long review, these are a value for Money pair of Headphones, I got them at a good discount and hence I went with xm5s rather than xm4s. If you want custom eq screenshot and settings I use for tweaking my Xm5s do let me know in reply section. Happy Buying you have made a good decision 🙂

Been using it for the last two months. Pros: 1. Amazing environment noise cancellation for taking calls from noisy environments, without getting your voice masked. It knows what to cancel out, and what not to. 2. Comfortable to wear for long durations 3. Gets charged in no time, battery lasts for more than a day's usage 4. Pretty good ANC Cons: 1. Sound quality could have been slightly better 2. Sometimes it loses connection with my laptop/ phone if I walk to the other room. Bose QC45 does an amazing job in that respect. 3. Doesn't fold, cumbersome to carry. But that's ok, you can't ask for the moon at this price point.

Please excuse the long review!! This is a review from someone who never used headphones. I assumed that it’s going to be absolutely silent once I put on the headphones with ANC on. It’s not absolutely silent, but it’s a lot better than direct noises from vehicles, horns and general noise outside. When we try to play videos on laptop or mobile speakers, if there is noise from outside, we can’t make out the video sound. That issue is resolved with this. You can always hear the video sounds even with considerable amount of drilling and other noises in the background. I never used headphones before. So I cannot compare them with anything or comment about the weight. However they are comfortable to wear. I never felt the urge to remove them. When I wore them for hours together, after removing them I felt a little tingling and numbness around the area the first day. But it’s probably because I never wore headphones. Then I also noticed that after long hours of wearing, my ears started to hurt on the inside. I decided to limit the usage however comfortable they feel. The first time I had some trouble connecting to laptop and mobile, but we can figure it out. It’s working seamlessly now and I know where and what to click if it doesn’t connect automatically. I didn’t like the ambient sound. It feels strange with that on. I turned it off. Also I deactivated auto motion detection. For someone like me, speak to chat is also not suitable. Sometimes while watching an anime, when you say something out of excitement, it pauses the video. Ha ha… Very well built. These are all personal preferences though. Additional observations: All these below points are without playing in the headphones. You can hear the voices from TV with them. Voices won’t be cancelled out. You can hear the person talking who is next to you. It doesn’t cancel out hand blender noise. You can constantly hear it. It doesn’t cancel the dogs barking from a distance. This is the most irritating thing. It cannot nullify drilling noises completely. It reduces the intensity. The day to day simple noises are almost nullified. This gives better call quality during teams calls. I was told my voice quality improved a lot when I switched from laptop mic to xm5 mic. With the drilling noise in the back, I tried to record my voice in a normal tone. The background noise is almost gone. However my voice itself sounded muffled. It wasn’t clear and a bit difficult to even make out the words. On the other hand, when I recorded it using iPhone, the voice was clear but there was background noise too. Overall the iPhone mic is the best. The audio sounds crystal clear when recorded on iPhone but of course background noise is heard. When you turn on some other audio in headphones, like music at 40% sound, most of the outside is gone including drilling, horns, people talking in proximity. That is wonderful. 😄 I’m saying most because, drilling noise is quiet difficult to nullify. Overall I like them. I’m going to use them a lot but for limited durations at a time. Update after few weeks: Sometimes the connection to laptop is seamless. Sometimes it troubles a lot. Yesterday it never connected at all. I didn’t know what to do. It could be a problem from laptop too. Another things I noticed, when noise cancellation is on, and there is a certain amount of noise around you, it creates a pressure within the earcups. It is very evident if observed without music playing. This pressure is a bit less in ambient mode as this mode doesn’t cancel out everything. I realised that this is the reason why my ears hurt on the inside when I wear these. It could be probably because of the negative noise waves that are generated to cancel out the actual noise. The phenomenon is probably same for all active ANC devices. But xm5s are the first I’m trying. When ANC is off and say the headphones themselves are off and you are wearing them, then there is is continuous sound that is generated like wind howling. So these cannot be used like this. These devices cannot provide the natural peace we get when present in an actual place. I was hoping it’d be possible to some extent. But nope!

This is great, connectivity is superb, paring 2 devices at a time is awesome, charging speed is awsome, noise cancellation is good, overall build quality of product is nice.

I love how premium it looks and feels the first time you touch it. The case is light in weight yet feels protective. I don't really use the cables and I like it how compactly in can fit similar to your glove box in the car. The sound quality is great. I have some issues with connecting to my laptop. it fits so well and looks amazing on your head. I get a lot of compliments for this :) I bagged it in on a great deal. I've been watching this product since launch and I'm happy that I finally got my hands on it. It was a gift for my birthday and I am happy about it. I will recommend this product especially if there is a great deal! after using it for a couple of days. I got to explore the features and the app. I love their safe sound feature. I work where I am constantly in meetings and calls and it's bad for my ears. Safe sound makes me not to feel scared about hearing health. The customization is amazing. You will have to explore and experience.

The product itself is good but looks like Amazon is sending out damaged or used products to customers. Raised a return request and these genius “investigation team members” are saying there is nothing wrong after seeing the same pic I attached here. Order from somewhere else. Think with decreasing market value, Amazon is losing their credibility as well.

Good : Active noise cancellation is fantastic! Fast charging is good, bluetooth connectivity is fine! The call quality is amazing. The app shows the SPL levels and it's effects on hearing which is awesome! Bad : 360Reality Audio is a gimmick, should've had AptX HD, AptX Adoptive along with LDAC because with LDAC you cannot connect two devices at once. The outer plastic cladding near the foam pads push the frames and makes it a bit uncomfortable (those with specs are better off with XM4). Ugly: The sound quality is good when you don't EQ , but if you use their own apps EQ it's good only upto 70% once you increase the volume beyond it starts to distort and once you turn it all the way up the EQ just flatens and sounds like hot garbage. I don't hear beyond 60-70% volume but even if i want the volume to go to max the SPL doesn't go beyond 99db with any codec I've tried LDAC, AAC, SBC with their upscaler DSEE Extreme no change whatsoever. Also the change in volume beyond 70-75% is really not much and infact the headphones only start to distort! And yeah I do know that SPL is in logarithmic scale ! But still this is something that cannot be acceptable at this price point ! Go with it if you want steller noice cancellation and you listen at Max 80% volume.