Sony WH-1000XM5 wireless noise-canceling headphones | Crutchfield

Hi, I'm Jeff Miller, the headphone writer here at Crutchfield, and I'm here with the Sony WH-1000XM5

wireless noise-canceling headphones. These are the latest in Sony's

super popular line of XM headphones. You know, one of our best-selling

models of all time. This is the latest and greatest version, and Sony's gone with a complete redesign

of the look and they've also packed in a ton of new features under the hood as well.

So part of the redesign is how they fit and how they feel. The headband is obviously rounder, got

more padding on the underside of it, and the ear pads themselves are roomier and softer, so they're

more malleable. They have a plush feel. So this time around, Sony has two of their state-of-the-art

processing chips under the hood. They have the QN1 processor and the V1, which work in concert,

constantly reading the room and scanning for external sounds and then adjusting the noise

cancelling on the fly. The headphones themselves are always reading, they have all these sensors

inside, they know when whether you're walking, they know whether you're moving your head, all types

of sensors to kind of know what activity you're doing. Can read your surroundings and then adjust

that noise cancellation on the fly, and you know we're talking different degrees of great. These

are leading the conversation about, you know, what are the best noise-canceling headphones out there.

Another redesign in this headphone is the drivers themselves. They are now 30-millimeter drivers that

have a carbon-fiber composite dome, meaning it's a it's a very light, rigid material that can move

quickly and give you more detail with your music. Sony headphones in general are known for their

wide sound stage and really good imaging, and that's kind of exactly what you get here. You know,

you listen to jazz music, that sort of thing, you're going to hear sounds coming from

different directions, you're going to have a good sense of space, a good sense of place and where

they're coming from. Sound out of the box has an emphasis on the bass and the highs, although

it's not nearly as bass-heavy as the previous generation 'XM4. It's a little bit more of a refined

sound and more well-balanced. However, you know it does have that that nudge in the in the low region,

made vocals sit a little bit further back in the mix, which I know some people

like that kind of relaxed sound. I tend to prefer more vocal presence, so I bumped up the

mid-range in the Sony My Connect app and was able to get a a nice, well-balanced sound with

some of that vocal clarity. The app allows you to further adjust the noise cancelling and ambient

awareness mode, so that you can kind of go in there and manually choose how much noise you let in and

out of the headphones, but you can you can change the touch controls there in the app, and

it's just a lot of different things you can do with that app once you download it. So on the

left earcup you have your power on, your Bluetooth connection and your noise-canceling/ambient button.

On the right earcup you get touch controls, so that's where you can swipe up and down

or left and right and control music, calls, and volume. You know, everybody's favorite feature from

the previous generation XM headphones is back. The "talk through" feature where you can just place your

right hand over the ear cup and it'll turn off the noise cancellation circuitry, and also

your music will go down a level. The built-in mics will pick up the external sounds so you can

quickly jump into a conversation, or hear the in-flight instructions. When you remove your hand

you go back to listening to your music. Further down on the earcup there's a few connections,

USB-C for recharging the headphones, and if you need to listen wired you can use the included 3.5mm

mini plug cable. You shouldn't have to listen wired too often; these headphones have pretty

strong battery life. You get up to 30 hours of listening with noise cancellation and 40 hours

without it, and if you forget to recharge them up, just a quick charge of three minutes will give

you three hours of listening. The Bluetooth range was incredible. First headphones I've been able

to just put my phone down and walk all the way around the house without any dropouts at all. So

a lot to like here with the headphones. These are the top-of-the-line, you know, that upper echelon

noise-canceling headphones that you can get. There's some areas where they

really improved over the XM4s, I enjoy the noise cancellation, like the out-of-the-box sound better,

and the build quality feels really nice and really lightweight. One thing I noticed right

out of the box is that they don't fold up, which is a little trickier with travel but they do come

with a form-fitting case that still fit pretty neatly in the bag. And when I actually did compare

them to the case of the XM4s, it wasn't that much larger than the XM4 case. So Sony's done it once

again, another phenomenal set of noise-canceling headphones. If you have questions about these

or any other headphones here at Crutchfield, please contact us, and thank you for watching.