Customer Ratings & Reviews

Cheap sound is garbage better off with apple headphones don’t get me started on how hard it is to connect to your phone so many applications

Good quality but cheaply built. The plastic is really light

Called geek squad with simple question resulting in so much frustration that cancelled my service with best buy. Said goodbye to 3k warranty attached to it for tv and this due to their phone and delivery service both being vacant from a people freindly standpoint. Horrible people.

Been looking for new wireless headsets after my current one had an earpad rip, but the replacements for it were expensive and out of stock for 2 months, and reviews on the replacement were very low. So instead of waiting for something that may or may not fix my current, I just went with a new brand. The Sony WH-1000XM5 packaging does not look like much - it looks like what you would get standing in line at a Ross or TJ Max just randomly priced in the aisle. However, the insides are a different story. The earpads are large enough to fit over your ears (and I have relatively large ears) and turning it on immediately made my Windows 11 PC immediately asked me if I wanted to connect to it, which I accepted and I was able to make and receive Teams calls immediately on it. There is a Sony Headphones Connect app that allows you to connect to both the headsets itself, while still being connected to a 2nd device (which is not on by default). Connecting to the app also allows you to play with the settings; the most important is the adaptive settings and ambiance / noise cancelling. The headset themselves has multiple microphones to determine the surrounding noise. It can tell if you're standing still/laying down, if you're out casually walking, if you're out running, or if you're on a bus/train. That sounds crazy right? Crazy amazing! It's been warm the last few weeks so I have 2 things that are constantly on and make noise - my fan and my air purifier. They're subtle sounds that you get used to pretty quickly, but sounds. Turning on the noise cancelling (in either transport or staying mode) and the fan and purifier are no longer heard! This is both good and bad, the bad part is if I take a call while the fan is on and aimed at me, the mic is picking up the wind and even though I can't hear it, it affects my voice when speaking - this is not the fault of the headsets though - this is a normal thing to occur when having a fan pointed to your mic! I just have to be aware to shift the fan so I don't sound odd during my calls. Another option for walking/running allows for the ambient sounds, to make sure you can hear people/cars, which is important to make sure you hear someone is trying to talk to you, because sometimes on public transit you will accidentally insult and enrage people who think you're ignoring them. Those people are called crazy. Another feature that is off by default - "Speak-to-Chat" - which means if you do have noise cancelling on and someone is talking to you, instead of manually turning off noise cancelling, if you just start talking it detects your voice and turns off noise cancelling so you can hear the other person speaking. That is both impressive and annoying that it needs to be done - because in my view, if you seem me wearing headsets, that means I don't want to talk to you! Leave me alone! However, people are generally rude and do not care about you and will bother you. Since this is off by default, another way to quickly and temporarily turn off noise cancelling is by simply placing your entire hand over the right speaker, and you'll hear the ambient noise as long as you have it cupped. This is also useful when you think you hear something very lightly, cupping the right side you can hear all noise. More useful features: Whatever you're listing to (be it AppleTV4k, music on iPhone/iPad, or music on PC) taking the headphones off your head is an immediate pause! Putting the headsets back on, instant play. Again, that sounds neat and silly, but being that I am constantly having to pause my music to talk to someone bothering me, the simple act of moving it off my head down to my neck stops my place in the song/podcast without having pull out phone or pause on watch. And yet another feature - the headsets are touch sensitive! Want to quickly pause without taking off the headset? Double tap quickly for a pause/play. Want to raise or lower volume? Swipe up or down! You can also program the left side button to create actions in app, but I'm not going to play with that just yet, everything works well currently. Finally, there is a 360 Reality Audio surround sound app that I haven't gotten into as it seems to enable full immersive audio, which sounds great (and there is a sample to try it), but then you would need audio sources that support it, and I haven't investigated that part enough as it's an extra step to look into for 360 sources. Pros: Excellent sound quality when using Noise Cancellation Speak To Chat quickly turns off noise cancellation to carry out a conversation. Touch sensitive controls Quick pause/play by lifting headsets off ears Able to listen to music on one device, and then be able to take a call on another by being connected to 2 devices at the same time Cons: A little pricey Touch sensitive can accidentally be set off while laying down and just adjusting your handsto your head! As you can see, not much on cons side!

Returned for a pair of audio Technica m50xbt2.I didn't like that these headphones are a pair of princess headphones they come with a pamphlet telling you no sweat,or small or big shocks so this means no running in them.The sound is muffled compared to the audio Technica and the price is $200 price difference.

On my second one and still have connection and touch panel issues. Would not recommend. Randomly disconnecting. Touch panel goes crazy out of nowhere

These sound horrible out the box and i am very disappointed. When i turn them all the way up is when the bass sounds awful the highs and mids sound ok… its the drums and the bass… i picked up my pre ordered pair and exchanged them because i thought i just got a faulty pair and im having the same exact issue

Disclaimer: I am a member of Best Buy’s Technical Insider Network, TIN for short. Reviewers in this invitation-only program are provided products for the purpose of writing honest, unbiased reviews. Initial impressions: I currently have a pair of the Sony WH-1000XM2’s from several years ago. They are very comfortable headphones with good musicality and very good noise canceling. The WH-1000XM5’s carry on this tradition in a new package with upgraded features. The noise canceling is still top tier. Musicality is still very good. And four of the eight external mics do a fantastic job of delivering crystal clear voice when speaking on the phone, working in MS Teams, or when playing video games. The touch controls from past XM series headphones are still present here. I do miss the lady telling me when I have turned a feature on or off. I hope Sony adds her voice back full-time for all features because the audio queues that replace her are too abstract for my taste. As good and as robust as the WH-1000XM5 are there are some quirkiness. I'll highlight what I experienced throughout this review. Let’s get to it! Setup: The very first thing I did after unboxing was to use the 2-inch USB cable to fully charge the WH-1000XM5. The cable has a USB type-C connector the goes into the left ear cup and a USB type-A connector to plug into a wall adapter or other power source. Charging to 100% took about an hour or so. Sony says that you can get up to 3 hours of usage from a quick charge but only if use a USB-PD compatible AC adapter. This adapter does not ship with the WH-1000XM5. There are two buttons on the left ear cup. Power/Bluetooth sync and NC/AMB (Adaptive Noise Canceling and Ambient Sound). The NC/AMB button can be configured for up to two quick actions with certain compatible music applications. This is configurable in the Sony Headphones app. Syncing to a new device is super simple. Turn off the headset, press and hold the power button until you hear the sync sound, and then check your device for WH-1000XM5. Swapping between my devices was super easy once the sync relationship was established. With the headphones turn on go into the Bluetooth devices screen on your device and chose to connect. I had zero issues bouncing between my Windows 11 laptop and my iPhone. The WH-1000XM5 also gave me the ability to connect to two devices simultaneously. With this feature I can actively listen to music on my laptop and then automagically switch over to answer a phone call. It’s a neat feature. But there is a catch. Any LDAC support devices will be automagically downgraded to Bluetooth transmission quality. For me, I also lost the ability to connect to the Sony Headphones app. I am hoping that the latter is a bug that Sony will soon fix. For this reason, I chose to turn this feature off. And there is even a downside to this decision. There are no on-the-fly adjustments to the WH-1000XM5 when connected to any device not running the app. I instantly loose connection with my Windows 11 laptop when I chose to connect from the app. The right ear cup is a touch sensitive surface that allows you to change volume, pause, resume, answer and end calls, instantly go into Ambient Noise Mode, and enable/disable Voice to Chat. There may be other features but, due to another bug in the app, I can only open the WH-1000XM5 tutorial and user’s guide once. It was like, this message will self-destruct in 30 seconds. Sound quality First, music is fantastic and exactly what I have come to expect from the WH-1000XM headphones line. I loved using my WH-1000XM2s and feel the same way about the XM5s. Music is about the same with the Active Noise Canceling (ANC) on or off. The difference is the amount of environmental noise that invades my listening experience. The highest sound quality I can expect is from Sony’s LDAC codec and accompanying LDAC enabled devices. Unfortunately, neither Windows or Apple support LDAC without additional hardware or software. My testing was limited to Bluetooth and with the included three-way headphone cable. The music sounded better wired. But that is because I can drive higher quality audio through the wired connection than I can over Bluetooth. It was a good experience regardless of how I connected the WH-1000XM5’s to my source material. ANC ANC is excellent with the WH-1000XM5. The WH-1000XM2’s were fantastic for flights or to silence noisy office spaces. The WH-1000XM5s are much more robust than the WH-1000XM2s. To start, you will need to get intimately familiar with the Sony Headphones app and the features that control Noise Canceling and Ambient Noise. By default, ANC is turned on 100% and Ambient Noise is set to 100% sensitivity. I can sit all day next to my air purifier blowing at medium speeds with just a slight trace of fan noise in the ear cup. You can explicitly set the amount of environmental sound into the earcup via use of the Headphones app. This is done with a sliding scale from zero noise to all noise. There is also a check box to instruct the headphones to focus mostly on voice and block out the environment. Sony also integrates ANC and ambient noise capabilities into location services and activities. The flexibility here is robust. The quirk here is that the flexibility means that you must use the WH-1000XM5 with a device that is also running the Headphones app. Otherwise, the WH-1000XM5 has no idea where you are, what you are doing, and if you require ambient sound or full ANC. The good news is that you can still set the WH-1000XM5 to full ANC and quickly switch to full Ambient just by pressing your palm against the right ear cup. Ambient Sound: Sony rocks the ambient sound. The WH-1000XM5 ambient sound is much more natural than my older WH-1000XM2. This is mostly because the WH-1000XM5 has better sound processing and a total of eight mics on each ear cup. The older model only had two mics. There are still some sounds that are a bit exaggerated or sound processed. Scratching my neck or the sound of a popping limb after sitting for a long time is definitely amplified. But fans, cars, birds, general environmental noise is natural if not a little amplified in volume. The intensity of the ambient noise can be adjusted in the headphones app. The adjustment is hiding behind Adaptive Sound Control on the home page instead of being available on the Sound page as one would expect. Voice: Phone calls are crystal clear both receiving and transmitting. No one knew that I was speaking through a headset without a mic. And no one asked me if they were on speaker phone. The sound quality also carried over to my Windows 10 work computer. I spent a day using the WH-1000XM5 in place of my work headset. I typically use a headset which has an external mic that rests in front of my mouth. Sending and receiving audio through MS Teams was on par or better than my dedicated headset. In my experience, headphone mics tend to have a speakerphone sound to them. Not these. I do work from home so the noise level tends to be rather low. I did spend a night playing video games using the WH-1000XM5 as a Bluetooth headset. It did a fantastic job of filtering out my gaming laptops leaf blower cooling fans. The sound and voice transmission quality was also excellent. I did not test these in a noisy office environment. But, my wife does run the TV all day in the adjoining room to my office. The ANC did a great job for what its worth. Speak to Chat: Be careful with this feature. It works awesome. Speaking causes the music to pause and the ambient sound to turn on. 15 seconds of silence and the WH-1000XM5 return to their pre-speaking configuration. You can also set the silence wait time to 5 seconds or 20. But, if you speak to yourself, mutter, sing along with your music, swear under your breath, or yell at the cat to stop scratching the couch then you will want to turn this feature off. It will activate every single time and drive you nuts. I had to turn it off. One last word about speech. The WH-1000XM5 will work with a digital assistant. Just set it up in the Sony Headphones app. Final Thoughts: The WH-1000XM5 continues Sony’s tradition of offering the most robust experience in the industry. The headphones are rock solid. ANC, Ambient Noise processing, and Adaptive noise processing are the best I have experienced. Sony’s Headphones app, though a bit quirky at times, is still the most robust and well executed of any headphone or earbud app I have owned over the last five years. Most manufacturers offer an app because it is expected. Sony ownership in this space really gives them the ability to supercharge their products with features and flexibility not available anywhere else. If you are looking for a solid wireless headphone with tons of flexibility, quality musicality, clear voice, and solid build quality then the WH-1000XM5 should be at the top of your list.

Broke after 3 weeks, they will not charge. Was not given a refund and told there was nothing best buy could do about it... now i have no headphones for work and $370 down the drain

Received different model. Not what I was expecting from best buy.

The mic wouldn’t work as well as I thought it would. I would answer phone calls and I guess is not as compatible as I thought with iPhone

Didn’t last a year. Do not buy these headphones!!!

Firstly, the design of the WH1000XM5 is sleek and sophisticated. The headphones are lightweight and feature a minimalist aesthetic that is both stylish and functional. The comfort level is exceptional, with plush ear cushions and a padded headband that allows for hours of listening without any discomfort. Whether you're working from home, traveling, or just enjoying your favorite tunes, these headphones are comfortable to wear for extended periods.

noise cancelling is almost not working. i have many headsets this is the heaviest the least comfortable and the weakest noise canceling. and its the most expensive.

The noise cancellation feature will not function as stated in the literature!

Big disappointment with the XM-5’s was expecting a big improvement from XM-4’s because of design but way bulkier and heavy. I wasn’t able to feel the XM4’s on my head and these things are heavier and tighter. Will be exchange for XM-4’s.

For the price these headphones are they stink. They are not even loud. Returned then after two days.

After less than a year of use, it seems to have stopped charging, hopefully we can find a solution.

They are terrible and will not stay connected to PC. Do not buy them.

No longer functions just 2 weeks after return period has ended.