Sony WH-1000XM6 Wireless Noise-Canceling Headphones

Very happy with my purchase. I don't usually buy myself nice things because I'm too frugal but this has got to be one of the nicest things I've ever bought myself. I have been procrastinating buying headphones that are best at noise cancelling, have a deep bass offering, with crisp music sound, & are slick in design. My WH-1000XM6 Wireless headphones gave me all that in one. The touch interface is a pleasant experience too. I fly a lot over long distances across countries & this will definitely make my flying experience a lot better now, better than the previous multiple headphones I've head.

Sound quality and bass is good and call quality is good however the noise cancelling is not. With music on around 60-75% volume i can still hear mumbles of normal sound level conversation and a crying baby on the opposite side of the bus with ANC on. Even when turning music on to the loudest possible i can still hear everything around me. When i press the noise cancelling button to turn it off there is no difference to what i can hear. So essentially with ANC on or off there is no difference to the noise i can hear around me. Ambient sound however is effective. The headphones itself are mostly comfortable and the colours are nice. However they are massive and bulky on my head and quite honestly look ridiculous. I bought these headphones for the ANC as it is so called the best noise cancelling headphones on the market right now but the best it can do is drown out some conversation. It would be worth getting smaller and nicer looking sony headphones if the noise cancelling on the xm6’s are this disappointing especially for the price. I thought my headphones were faulty at first and they might be after looking at reviews on social media, that’s how bad the noise cancelling is on these.

Bought today. Quality is unreal. Comfy aswel. Will test at gym tomorrow

Off button does not work. Tried turning them off with the off button. The manual says to press and hold for 2 seconds. This doesn’t work. Set them up to turn off when the headset is removed and this doesn’t work either. I have to turn them off with the app. Sony have made it extremely difficult to talk to support and their bot has no options to help me, so hear me now: stay away. This is an expensive headset that doesn’t work on a fundamental level.

After a lot of research I opted for Sony 1000XM6 and after a week using the headset I’m mighty impressed. The sound quality is fabulous and the accompanying APP gives excellent control and functionality

Incredible noise reduction and high quality audio and build

Brilliant feels of high quality product would recommend to anyone

Everything is good about a product 5 stars. What I can point is when you sweating you leaving, a lots of marks on your device and I Sound Connect is very average app to use other than that all great

I bought them after reading about them in What HI FI magazine and I am a member of Which Magazine. I had the WH-1000XM4

Left ear speaker digs into your ear causing discomfort

These headphones could easily be a 5/5 star product if you are reviewing based on sound quality however the build quality nearly makes them impossible to recommend, I originally bought the silver version and after wearing them once in an air conditioned room skin oils already started to stain the ear pads for the product. I ended up returning them and getting hte black version and while it is less noticeable on the black model its still happening. I.do not use these headphones for working out just for commuting and office work so sound quality is more important but its still frustrating given the price that this problem is happening.

Basically perfection there is no way there are better headphones than this. The only real complaint is the clamping that you initially get but it’s natural and goes away within a week. Everything else about the XM6 is worth the price and even beyond.

Sony released an update several months ago that broke the ability to use these headphones in meetings. Any other audio that plays stops any audio/mic usage in a zoom/teams/whatsapp meeting until you reconnect them. It's been months with only no-info HR style responses. Several months without fixing a critical bug, wouldn't buy from Sony again, unfortunately they bricked my headset with this update after my return window.

I'm including a pic so you can see how I fixed the comfort issues I was having because of the spring-loaded hinges on the ear cups. I'm really disappointed that Sony decided to reinvent instead of keep free-floating hinges on the ear cups like every other headphone out there in existence!! Other than that glaring mishap these are the best sounding headphones out there for music... which makes it truly a shame.... hopefully with the XM7 they can return to free floating hinges and give us just a little more room to breathe in the earcups, perhaps take a lesson from Bose or Bowers bc they do it very very well.

The noise canceling on these are amazing. I didn’t believe people at first when they said it was that good and now, I’m a believer

These are the most highly rated wireless ANC headphones currently available. They live up to the hype. Light weight, comfortable, outstanding sound quality.

I bought this a few days a go and let me tell you haven’t seen a heard a better head phone in my 24 years of life it’s so crazy how good it sounds amazing product good job Sony

Really good headphones. I’m upgrading from Beats Studio 3. I can definitely really tell the difference. I’m just a normal guy, not really into tech only here and there (to give you perspective), but the quality uff incredibly. The EQ is really good too. Listening on “hard” mode feels like if you’re in a car with subwoofers. I love it.

I think these are overpriced... I can still hear everything even with the noise cancelling on, it just sounds a little muffled, but I can have conversations with people without a problem. I can even still hear people outside my home while wearing them. And yes, the ANC is on 100%. My earplugs work better for noise reduction.

[This review was collected as part of a promotion.] I need to reference the predecessor, the WH-1000XM5. I was not a fan. I could never get them to fit properly, so they never sounded good (for my ears). So I was left without noise cancelling headphones. I was keen for the WH-1000XM6 to work for me. The WH-1000XM6 headband (I think the earphone cups also) are different. Now the WH-1000XM6 is comfortable to wear for long periods. They are a good fit. This is important as a poor fit means noise cancelling doesn’t work so well, plus the overall sound quality (especially bass) is compromised. I’ll return to the bass. The WH-1000XM6 has a lot of buttons and gestures. As they are still new to me, I relied fully on Sony’s Sound Connect app. I’ll say now, I nearly sent these back due to 2 problems. I use an Android phone and though the app setting was enabled for LDAC and sound quality, this clearly wasn’t the case when listening. I could hear compressed, low quality audio. It turns out that I had to go into my phones system settings and manually enable the LDAC codec there. I don’t know if this is Sony or Android at fault, but once I’d enabled LDAC in the phone, the sound was hugely improved. The other issue was the Automatic Power Off feature. This reliably powered down the headphones if sat still or laid down after a couple of minutes. This drove me mad until I discovered that setting and disabled it. Once able to listen to the WH-1000XM6’s properly and it’s mostly good. I found the vocals sound natural. Very convincing. The soundstage is a little forward, rather than the middle of my head, and instruments sound natural and placement is also accurate. If I didn’t know better, I would claim they had to be wired headphones, fed by a very high quality source. I’ll say it, they are the best sounding Bluetooth devices I’ve listened to. Returning however to the bottom of the frequency range, and the WH-1000XM6 sometimes has too much bass. Billie Eilish tracks in particular the bass can overwhelm her soft, breathy vocals. The Amazons, 21st Century is a great album, loud and bassy. The bass kicks uncomfortably hard. Turn them up beyond quarter volume, and it’s as though the bass volume stays put, and the treble and midrange catches up. The problem is, that’s too loud for me and surely for noise cancelling headphones, the volume shouldn’t need to be so high? This is where the Sound Connect app is needed again. The EQ can be customised to change the headphone’s standard sound and turn down that bass. For noise cancelling, the WH-1000XM6 are exactly what I’m used to with Sony. It just works and works very well. It’s always uncanny, stopping music, then powering off the headphones and suddenly hearing all the ambient noise that had been blocked.