Listening to music is fun, and it sounds best when it’s played on a good pair of headphones. Sony is one of the most prominent audio brands. The WH-1000XM3 are one of Sony’s most popular headphones, that promise to offer supreme noise cancellation along with excellent audio quality. These headphones have been selling in markets for a while now, and they have received a solid positive response from audiophiles. We thoroughly tested the Sony WH-1000XM3 for days, and here is what we feel about them.
Design and build
The WH-1000XM3 are Sony’s premium headphones and you’ll instantly notice that when you hold them. These headphones are made of plastic, and the build quality feels top notch. All the parts such as the headband, earcups and even the buttons are constructed neatly with no loose ends. The headphones look clean all the time, with its matte finish design. It might attract some fingerprints if you have sweaty hands, but you can easily clean them with a dry cloth. The device is available in two colours. Our review unit was a Black variant with copper-highlighted Sony logo. The device is also available in a cleaner and brighter silver colour.
The Sony WH-1000XM3 weighs close to 254 grams, making them one of the lightest noise-cancelling headphones. The power and noise cancellation buttons are placed on the left earcup. There is also an auxiliary input, for wired listening. The right earcup has a clean design, and it comes with inbuilt touch controls. It also houses a USB Type-C charging port along with a small charging LED indicator.
The headband and the earpads are made of a pressure-relieving foamed urethane material. The material feels super soft and even after wearing them for hours, we barely felt any discomfort. Sony has ensured, this material doesn’t develop cracks like previous generations of the XM headphones. The headphones swivel inwards, and they easily fit into the bundled hard carry case. The case also houses a three-foot auxiliary cable, a small USB-C cable along with a gold-plated stereo mini plug.
Features
The WH-1000XM3 headphones use Sony’s QN1, HD noise-cancelling processor. Sony claims, this chip is four times more powerful than its predecessor. The headphones come with a built-in amplifier that analyses the signal-to-noise ratio for exceptional sound quality and noise cancellation. These headphones also feature an Atmospheric Pressure Optimiser feature, designed for frequent flyers. It tweaks the frequency and microphone response of the headphones for improved noise-cancelling performance at high altitudes.
The noise cancellation feature is incomplete without Sony’s Headphone app. The app’s Analyse ear shape feature detects ear shape to deliver a personalised noise-cancelling experience. It also has an Ambient Sound Control feature, that automatically enable or disables the noise cancellation, depending on your location. The app also has an inbuilt equaliser that lets you tune the audio to your liking. You can also further personalise your music experience using the Virtualization feature, that lets you manually select the spatial positioning of audio.
The inbuilt touch control makes controlling music a lot easier. You can swipe up and down for volume, forward and back for track change, and double-tap the middle to pause, play, or pick up a call on your connected phone. You can also tap and hold the centre for 3 seconds to activate Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant. Covering the right earcup with your hands turns the volume down and it disables the noise cancellation, allowing you to talk with people around you, without removing the headphones.
The Sony WH1000XM3 uses Bluetooth 4.1, and it supports LDAC that transmits approximately three times more data than conventional Bluetooth. The device also features DSEE HX (Digital Sound Enhancement Engine) that upscales compressed digital music files, bringing them closer to the quality of High-Resolution Audio. We tried this feature while streaming tracks from Apple Music, and we felt the differences were minimal. The headphone also features NFC, so you can pair them with NFC enabled devices just by a tap.
Performance
The WH1000XM3 are Sony’s premium headphones, and they surely live up to the expectations. The headphones use 40mm drivers to deliver extremely natural audio quality. We listened to different genres of music for hours, and we can undoubtedly say, these headphones are impressive. The lows, the mids and the highs sounded crisp and clear. We were also able to notice minute details in tracks, which were barely hearable on other headphones or earphones. We also watch lots of movies and felt the balanced sound and the good amount of bass helps to deliver a cinematic experience.
The Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) on the Sony WH-1000XM3 works as great as advertised. Turning it on without music results in near silence. We were barely able to hear ceiling fan’s noise, rainfall outside the window and even the keyboard keys while writing this article. The headphones shine at blocking noise from cars or airplanes that have constant, even frequencies. The headphones do let some human sounds pass, but once you play music or movies, it completely blocks the sound of the outside world.
We also tried the Ambient Sound Control feature, but we felt it to be very sensitive. It disables noise cancellation even with the slightest of the moments, and it can be annoying at times. Sony’s Headphone app doesn’t have the option to tune down the sensitivity, so we preferred to turn the feature off. Sony claims, the WH-1000XM3 supports multi-device pairing, which means you can have your iPhone, iPad and even MacBook connected at once. However, during out tests, we were unable to use this feature. We visited Sony’s online forum and found they are soon going to address this issue in the upcoming software update.
Sony WH-1000XM3 promises delivers up to 30 hours of battery life, and during our tests, we found these numbers to be pretty accurate. We watched three 2.5 hours movies, played PUBG: Mobile for an hour and the headphones were still left with 60 per cent of the battery. The headphones take about 3 hours to fully charge and Sony also claims, 10 minutes of charge can deliver up to 5 hours of battery life. There is also feature an auto power-off feature, that automatically turns the headphones off when they are not in use.
Conclusion
The Sony WH-1000XM3 are some of the most comfortable headphones. These headphones have the perfect synergy between noise cancellation and audio tuning, that results in realistic and detailed audio quality. Sony’s Headphone app also allows you to tune music to your liking and have a personalised music experience. The battery life is also one of the best, which means you can use these headphones without charging for days. Sony recently launched the WH-1000XM4 that will be replacing the WH-1000M3. This might make the XM3 the second-best noise cancellation headphones, but they remain a great choice considering they are now available at discounted prices.
