Sony WH-1000XM6 Review: Back on the Throne!

(relaxed music)

- 'Kay, so Sony is back

with their new flagship wireless noise-canceling headphones

with the super easy to remember name.

You know the ones.

These are the Sony WH-1000XM6s.

Easier way to think of it,

most people just call these the XM6 or the Mark 6s,

which is exciting

because the Mark 5s from last year

actually left some room for improvement.

They improved some things,

but they also made some things worse,

which was weird because the Sony noise-canceling headphones

were pretty much king of the hill for so long,

they didn't have a ton of reason to change a whole lot.

Thankfully though, the newest generation

updates a lot of the stuff

that the Mark 5s fell short on,

so that's really good to see.

It's exciting that there is a new design,

new sound, a new case,

but also a new price.

We'll get there.

So, straight from the top,

I still love this super clean, simple design.

They kept what was good about the Mark 5s.

They are very, very lightweight.

The vegan leather earpads are super soft.

The headband is incredibly flexible.

These are just some of the most comfortable headphones

to wear for a long period of time,

which is what you want from these.

If you wear them for a long time for traveling

or for a commute or something like that,

they are still awesome.

But if you remember the last generation,

maybe you're a subscriber

and you've watched all these videos,

wink, wink,

then you remember that they made this huge downgrade

to travel specifically

because they didn't fold at all, ever,

so they had this huge case

that was more annoying to travel with.

So, first thing I was happy to see is the Mark 6s are back

to being able to fold up again,

so they have a new,

significantly smaller case designed around them

that fits some cables as well,

and bonus, the case doesn't zipper anymore.

It just closes with magnets at this buckle on the side

and it is way faster to open and close

than everyone else's zipper cases.

I'm actually not sure how we haven't seen this more often

because this case is pretty much perfect.

I have a feeling it's about to be copied a whole lot

in a whole bunch of places,

'cause wouldn't change a thing.

Also, another thing that Mark 5s weirdly didn't do

was when you're wearing 'em around your neck

was just to be able to rotate them flat like this.

For some reason, they took that away in the Mark 5s,

and now they're back.

Simple thing, but thank you.

So, overall design-wise, I feel like these are back

to being up near the top

of the best travel-ready noise canceling headphones.

It also comes with a four-foot right-angle headphone cable,

and one of those tiny USB-C to USB-A cables for charging

and they just fit in this little pocket over here

in the corner of the case like this.

It's great. Feels durable. No notes.

And then they changed the buttons and microphones

around the outside of the headphones just slightly,

so the right side is still just the USB Type-C port,

and then on the left next to the audio jack,

they've made the power button much bigger,

which doesn't seem like much of a big deal,

but that now lets you distinguish better

between the power button

and the noise cancellation button

while you're not able to see them.

Now, speaking of noise cancellation,

they made a bunch of behind-the-scenes changes

to these headphones

that sound like they could make a big improvement.

So, there are 12 microphones on these

instead of eight from the last generation,

there's also a significantly more powerful

Sony QN3 chip inside

that should be able to do much more processing,

and they also said that they've trained these headphones

on 500 million voice samples using AI

to be able to better distinguish human voices

from environmental noise.

So, this is the last generation of headphones

and how the built in microphone sounds

to someone I'm on a call with.

Eight microphones.

You know, some noise from air conditioners

and general room tones, but nothing too crazy.

And so now here is the Mark 6.

So, they added two more beamforming microphones to the front

for hearing my voice better,

but what I really think

most of these microphones are better for

is noise cancellation and transparency.

So, how do they sound?

Well, I've been listening to these headphones

for the past two weeks or so.

I've taken a few flights,

I've worn 'em around the studio, at home,

all kinds of different environments,

and they sound better.

These are actually all-new drivers versus the last gen,

so there's a lot going on here,

but to be specific, they are excellent quality sound

with great range.

Punchy lows and a lot of bass

and then a lot of detail and clarity

all the way through the mids and the highs

and they are still really, really insanely good

at canceling out white noise.

Now, if we wanna get even more granular,

I did a bunch of back-to-back listening

with these Mark 6s and the last generation,

and there are certain tracks

where you really feel the difference a lot.

Basically, the Mark 6s have a much stronger low end,

especially in the sub-bass and lowest bass,

and the Mark 5s started to feel

a little spiky in the midrange where the vocals are

and were a little bit weaker in the low end,

so in the tracks

that have a really important bass or sub-bass,

pop, electro, hip hop, stuff like that,

that's when in these, they're really appreciated.

And then the Mark 6 also has

even stronger noise cancellation

than the already GOATed Mark 5s,

but the real highlight for me

is actually the transparency mode,

which feels way more natural and clear sounding.

So, if you're wearing these headphones

and do want voices to come through

or just wanna hear your environment more

for whatever reason,

people might talk to you through these headphones,

the transparency mode,

or what Sony calls ambient sound mode,

went from feeling a little muddy and unclear

to literally up there with AirPods Max levels

of crystal clear and natural, which is awesome.

Now, not only are these headphones new,

but Sony's also refreshed their app.

The Sony Headphones Connect app

is now just called Sound Connect,

but it still does most of the same stuff.

There's still literally 20 different levels

of ambient sound.

There's still custom EQs that you can easily flip between,

and this is also where you can turn on or off

any of the other convenience features.

Now, this one new one that I found interesting

is listening mode.

So, you can listen to your audio like normal

in standard mode,

or you can flip it to background music mode,

which does an incredibly good job

of making it sound like the music

is coming from a small set of tinny speakers,

like, 20 feet away,

like, as if you're in a cafe somewhere,

which, you know, you might be into that.

There's even actually three modes.

So, cafe, living room, or my room,

each of which just shrinks the size

of the virtual room a bit,

and then there's also cinema mode,

which does this upmixing from stereo

to a 360-degree immersive sound mix

of whatever you're listening to,

kinda like a movie theater.

It's also a very dramatic V-shaped sound too.

I could picture someone maybe in their home office

or a cubicle or something like that

listening to these all day

and wanting to feel like it's a less fatiguing,

further away sound,

and then you'd put cafe mode on and it works.

It's surprising how well it works.

And maybe then you flip to cinema mode

for watching certain YouTube videos or something like that.

There's also still the EQ stuff.

The point is you can make these headphones sound

exactly the way you want them to.

The sound is really strong.

The noise cancellation is excellent.

They're extremely comfortable to wear