Sony WF-1000XM4 true wireless noise-canceling headphones | Crutchfield

Hi, this is Jeff Miller, the headphone writer here at Crutchfield, and I'm here with the Sony

WF-1000XM4 true wireless noise canceling earbuds. These happen to be some of our best-selling true

wireless earbuds, kind of since the day they launched. They are part of Sony's 1000X lineage,

which is a very popular headphone line, and Sony could have made incremental changes just to kind

of have something new to release, but they've gone with a complete redesign from the previous

generation. These headphones are loaded with features, but I think sort of the headline is

that they're very good to excellent at every single thing that they attempt to do.

The most notable improvement is probably the noise cancelling. Sony uses a brand-new processing chip

called the V1. These earbuds cancel noise better than the majority of in-ear headphones out there.

I shouldn't be surprised, you know, Sony's been on the forefront of noise cancelling for a while now,

and like their other popular noise cancelling headphones you can use the Headphones Connect app

to really dial in the amount of noise cancellation, or even hear outside sounds since you're sticking

the the headphones in your ear. It may sound counterintuitive but you actually get

an outside the head sound, it's kind of a Sony trademark to have this really wide soundstage.

When you have the large soundstage it can be at the expense of dynamics and details and that kind

of thing, but these headphones have a very exciting sound. It works well with a lot of different genres.

Really punchy bass, but also there's some good high-end detail and mid-range presence, so vocals

are present in the mix. One thing that helps with sound and noise cancellation is the fit. In-ear

headphones are only as good as their fit, and Sony's included three sizes of foam ear tips. They

are very malleable, and when you get them in your ear they create that noise-isolating seal that's

going to obviously knock out noise for noise cancellation, but also help with bass reinforcement

and position the drivers correctly to your ear so that you hear the sound as intended. They use

Bluetooth 5.2, which is the latest and greatest version of Bluetooth. If you want to step things

up even more it also has LDAC on board so you can stream higher-quality sound with a compatible

phone or a Sony Walkman. And unlike the previous generation, these are ipx4 rated, sweat proof and

water resistant. Thanks to that V1 chip these are also more efficient; they have an 8-hour battery

life with noise cancellation on and 13 hours without it. The charging case banks an additional

16 hours, so you can just snap them into the case and they'll recharge wirelessly as you move along.

Five minutes in the case, you get a quick charge that'll give you 60 minutes of listening.

When the case needs to be recharged, just connect it via USB-C. I mentioned the app earlier, it's a

free download for Apple and Android phones, you can really dial in the noise cancellation and

the awareness mode. You can dial in the sound a bit, too. You can mess with the EQ...not enough bass, too

much bass, you could choose whether to prioritize sound quality or stability, so if you're in an

area where you're competing with a lot of wireless signals you may choose the stability, and then when

you're at home just listening then you can crank up the sound quality. You can also use the app to

reconfigure the touch controls on the earbuds. You can use the touch controls to adjust volume and

even call up the Google Assistant or Alexa if you have that on your phone. Sony also brings

back one of our favorite features, the quick attention feature: you hold the left earbud

and it'll turn off the noise-canceling circuitry and the music and use the internal mics to pick up

external sounds so you can hear when somebody's talking to you. So that's the Sony WF-1000XM4

true wireless noise-canceling earbuds. I've tried a lot of true wireless earbuds, and these are

certainly on one of my favorites. They just do everything right. So if you have any questions

about these or any other true wireless earbuds, just get in touch with us here at Crutchfield.