Customer Ratings & Reviews

great! truly noise-cancelling, and the sounds come through really nicely. my one grievance is that they don't fold up so i have to use the case to transport them, and also the side-touch features are not easily learnable. battery life is great, lasts me a few days at a time and i use headphones pretty frequently

Waste of money sound quality is decent build feels cheap

Didnt pair very well. Airpods max are eay better for me.

The XM5 headphones have become my daily drivers. I am someone who loves to listen to music almost all of the time. These headphones are comfortable for long use, even with glasses. They do get hot after a while but otherwise very comfortable. The sound is also fantastic and it includes a versatile equalizer. They include a feature called multipoint connection which switches the headphones between two connected devices. This has become useful for when i am in between work and my phone. The noise cancelling is superb as well, making the world nearly silent. These headphones are definitely worth the price point.

This headphone set's price was outrageously high (more than $400.00), yet there was not much improvement over my $20 set! It was still hard to make out the lyrics in songs and even podcasts. Also, the noise cancellation was not good at all. Any ambient noise would bleed right through, and since the audio quality already was not very good, it made the experience even worse. Please do better, Sony! If you are going to charge $400.00, please make it work next time! Thanks.

Ok i used alot of headphones so i know what ixfinity am saying:pros:nice looking headphone, light weight, package is good , sound is good but not wow and not worth 400........cons: ear pads makes you sweat on ear after while. Noise is good but not the best( when u go to study at normal coffeeshop you will still hear people nice and clear yes not loud as without but i used better anc headphone befoe.

They work and sound great. They are light weight. I recommend you download the app to get the best features from the equalizers. The battery life is really good and the active noise canceling is top-notch.

I was really iffy because of the price, but I’m so happy I got them. The color is stunning (I got the blue), lighter than anything else I tried on my head, battery lasts forever, and quality is just great. Worth every penny!

These are amazing headphones. The sound is great. The noise cancellation works perfect and they are very comfortable and not that bulky neither.

I have been using these for about an hour, and so far, the sound is... Alright. It feels like one side is quieter than the other at times, but they sound fine. I have a pair of XM4s I will compare them to later. The upgrades aren't worth it if you already own the XM4s. The sound quality can be debated, but the noise canceling definitely feels better; there is NO pressure on your ear, unlike the previous generation. The comfort has been excellent so far and has not made me sweat. To be fair, it isn't summer anymore, so it is difficult to gauge that.

It gives very great balanced sound with the bass and acoustic. It is packed with features when you install the headphones Sony app so you’d be able to take control over your sound needs. Box comes with an Aux cable, a short usb-c charger, and they are well put together in a nice hard shell case for easy carry. Cannot beat the quality and I love this over the Bose headphones. Especially the battery when it lasts over 8 hours when I used them for the PS5.

Keep disconnecting from my phone and functions are not compatible with phone

These are easily the best ANC headphones on the market I have tried everything from Bose to the AirPods max and these are the lightest and the most comfortable by far. The sound has also improved a ton over the last gen with the new carbon fiber drivers and the app is incredible and offers great features and customization.

Comfortably constructed. Light weight. Plush soft cushions for an air tight fit.

great sound quality, really good noise canceling, with only minimum leakage in really loud environments (on a plane). comfortable to wear for long periods of time, but I get a little sweaty on the padding if I wear them without a break.

The headphones are outstanding in every way. They have superb sound, are easy to use, and are very comfortable.

Ok.Yes, they are expensive but you do not buy them every day. They are exellent in any point...how they look, confort, and ofcourse,more important sound. The best in the class for me. I bought for my daugther,and now we have a little war time to time.

The Sony XM5 is a fantastic over the ear music experience. The packaging is a little bulky, but once you get inside you realize they made the box to overprotect the contents. The carry case is just the right size to protect, but not take up a ton of space. The headphones come with usb-c power connectors (thank you!), a 3.5mm audio cable, and a tiny packet of gov't docs and an offer for a trial of a 360 app. Side note: That 360 audio is pretty amazing, but I don't want to be forced to pay for yet another audio streaming service. So no thanks. Let's just integrate this functionality into services that people actually use. (YouTube Music, Spotify, iTunes) The headphones are nice and light, very comfortable to wear for a long period of time. They lack a lot of oversized plastic that tends to make other headphones heavier. The padding is just right to maintain comfort but not be too hot to wear. The ear cups fit really well, and adjusting the size is really quite easy compared to some other headphones I've used before. They claim they will operate for 30 hours on a charge. I've been using them for 3 hours and sitting at 94% left. Considering that level of charge capacity, they don't feel at all heavy from bulky batteries. They're using some really good quality batteries in these cans. The app is crazy how many features are packed into it. It's a technophiles dream as there are all sorts of geeky features like taking pictures of your ears for adjustments. Or recognizing when you're walking vs sitting or driving and adjusting the sound based on situations. I've been playing with all the features in the app, and to be honest I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of what it can do. But to be real....you're probably not going to use most of that stuff. But it's there if you feel the need. The audio quality is really good, if not great! I feel like the highs and mids are pretty close to perfect. The lows....mmmmm....they're close but not perfect yet. It's really strange, and I think it has to do a lot with the source. For instance, listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers: sound great! Listening to Slightly Stoopid: sounds muddy Listening to Dre: sounds good, but you can hear just that bit of cloudy lows in between the beats. Compared to any other set of headphones though...They're really fantastic for a wireless pair of headphones. I feel the need to wire them direct to a CD player just to see what they really can do compared to this wireless compressed audio. Side note: I might be tempted to start using these on my gaming PC. The sounds is great and the noise-canceling would be sweet. The noise-canceling: Well that's just fantastic! I've got an older pair of Bose Quiet Comforts that I used on airplanes, and the noise-canceling on these just slays those. When you put these cans on the basic insulation of the cups is enough to really dampen everything as if you stepped into a sound room. But then you turn them on and everything goes perfectly dead silent. Nice job Sony! Not sure what else to say. They sound great, they feel comfortable, and they silence the noise. I would totally recommend these to friends.

I love these, they’re extremely sound proof and tune everything out around you even when there’s no music playing. Battery lasts a long time as well, and I’ve been using them pretty much all day long for the past month and a half.

Pros: -Rich in features -Can charge the battery from 0% to 100% in less than an hour with a 45W PD charger. -Excellent transparency mode -Lightweight -Touch panel is more responsive -Long 30 hour battery life with noise cancelling and high resolution audio (LDAC) on. -Settings save on the headphones including EQ Cons: -No longer collapses to smaller size -No wind reduction ambient mode -plastic construction still prone to creaking The XM5s are an addition to Sony’s 1000X line of headphones with 2 undeniable improvements over its previous generations and those are its microphones and its battery charging capabilities. The rest are pretty subjective when compared to its previous iteration, the WH-1000XM4, which is a good thing that Sony is still keeping this model in the market. CONSTRUCTION/DESIGN: It’s still made of the plastic similar, if not the same, as the XM4. Unfortunately, I’ve found this material to be prone to creaking ever since the XM3. After 5 days of wear my once silent XM5 began creaking whenever I move around while wearing them. It did go away 2 days later, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it returned. The black version of the XM5 is prone to showing fingerprint stains a lot more easily than previous versions. The cushioning is made of a different material from previous generations that feels more comfortable on the skin; smoother, less abrasive. The size of the cushion is less thick than the XM4 but I didn’t find it less comfortable. They still sweat up the ears on a warm day or after extended continuous use. The headphones’ length adjustment is via stepless plastic rods so you’ll no longer hear clicks when adjusting them. Unfortunately, the ear cups no longer collapse to a smaller size for portability. They’ll still swivel, but when rested around your neck, the ear cups will swivel facing up. The proximity sensor is no longer visible but it’s still there in the left ear cup. The XM5s do not have any water or sweat resistance, and the included written materials advise users not to work out with them. SOUND: The XM5’s sound is easily the most balanced since the XM2 going away from the bass-heavy and generally muddy sounds of the XM4 and especially the XM3, without losing much of the punchiness. It’s a cleaner-sounding bass. The default sound is Sony’s typical warm sound but thanks to the customizable and responsive EQ using Sony’s Headphones app, you can change this to get a more neutral sound. The EQ settings save directly on the headphones themselves so the sound will stay that way no matter what device you connect to, until the next time you change the EQ settings from the app. I always struggle to describe sound quality because I’m not an audio expert, but music of all genres sound great to me on the XM5. Supported codecs are SBC, AAC, and LDAC. Like with the XM4, AptX is not supported. This may not be a huge deal if you’re using the headphones on Apple, PC, or newer Android devices as they’ll support the theoretically best option for those. While I didn’t experience any latency issues with videos except one time with YouTube (turning headphones off and on again fixed issue), I did for gaming. NOISE CANCELLING: The XM5 still lives up to being one of the best in the market for active noise cancelling headphones in its price range. When compared to some of its competitors using their demo display at my local store, it’s embarrassing to hear how much better the XM5 was. At the same time, it claims to have the best noise cancelling yet with the help of 2 processors. I still own the XM4 and to my ears, the XM4 still does a better job and cancelling noise than the XM5. However, when record the sound inside the earcups with noise cancelling on using a tiny microphone for both the XM4 and XM5, to my surprise, the XM5’s do produce lower decibels of sound than the XM4. I’m no expert at this, but if I had to come up with some sort of explanation I think it may be because the XM4 produces a more apparent white noise sound that’s mostly absent on the XM5. While this white noise helps mask outside noise better for my ears, it still does attribute to noise volume. The noise cancelling on the XM5 produces a much cleaner sound with less cabin pressure. The XM5 also has an active optimizer that uses the mics to assess your surroundings and change the noise cancelling characteristics accordingly. My issue with it though is it doesn’t work the way you want it to sometimes. I can tell it’s working when I hear the sudden changes with no music playing. The easiest way I can get it to noticeably work is by turning the air conditioner on. As I move closer to it, I can hear the noise cancelling change like a flick of the switch. I also feel a change in air pressure with my ears. One way of resetting this is by going into transparency mode. But there are times when the noise cancelling changes to make it sound worse and allows the noises that I consider more annoying, to be more easily heard. I liken the auto optimizer as an audio version of a camera’s auto focus. Sometimes it focuses to a noise cancelling profile I wasn’t aiming for. You have no control over the auto optimizer, not even from the app. What shines is the ambient mode, which is customizable to 20 levels with 20 allowing the mode outside sound. It almost sounds like you’re not wearing any headphones at all, or perhaps more accurately, wearing open back headphones. I feel comfortable enough to wear them while watching TV and talking to people. The bad? Wind Noise Reduction is now missing from the Ambient mode settings. And no, the XM5’s noise cancelling isn’t effective enough to eliminate wind noise. FEATURES: *Speak-to-chat allows you to enter ambience mode with the “Focus on voice” option on automatically whenever you speak. While it’s supposed to make you hear voices better, “Focus on voice” option does so at the expense of making the environment sound less natural and your own voice sound muffled. Unfortunately, with Speak-to-chat there is no way to enter ambience mode without the “Focus on voice” option. This mode also isn’t great to have on if you’re the type of person that likes to sing along to the music while listening to it as that would activate Speak-to-chat. *Covering the right ear cup with your palm enters Ambient mode in its max 20 setting, as long as it stays covered. It returns back to the mode you were previously in once you uncover the right ear cup. This is convenient for times when you want to be alert of your surroundings for a brief or sudden moment. *Multipoint allows the headphones to connect to 2 different devices at the same time. Unfortunately, this still won’t work with the LDAC codec. *Automatic Power Off allows the headphones to automatically turn off after a certain period of time when you aren’t wearing your headphones. *”Pauses when headphones are taken off” allows you to do just that. While they are taken off, the touch panel is disabled as well so it prevents accidental inputs. Wearing the headphones again will unpause. This is all provided that the app that’s playing supports pausing. For example, it won’t work with watching live channels on the ESPN app. *Quick Access is the replacement of the Custom button function of the older gens. Double-pressing or triple-pressing the NC/AMB button allows you to assign a Service function to it. Unfortunately, it’s essentially a beta with these headphones since the only service that works for it is Spotify. You can’t even assign a voice assistant to this button anymore. The voice assistant is accessed by press-holding the right ear cup. *Voice assistant: When set to Google Assistant and Alexa you will still need to be connected to a device with these apps as they cannot be used with the headphones alone. The XM5 just natively supports them to allow faster responses and the ability to read your notifications out to you. You can also use it for any other voice assistant, but it is basically just a Bluetooth audio extension of your phone and slower. CONNECTIONS: *Bluetooth 5.2 *3.5mm audio: works without battery use but without noise cancelling/transparency, and works with battery to use powered functions like noise cancelling/transparency. Bluetooth functions do NOT work while wired, so you cannot use microphone. Inline wired microphones will NOT work because jack doesn’t support input. *USB-C for charging only; does NOT support USB audio. CHARGING: I used a Samsung 45W Fast Wall Charger and to my surprise I got way better than advertised results! 3 minutes of charging gave me 3 hours and 50 minutes of LDAC playtime with noise cancelling. Charging from 0% to 100% took only 52 minutes. I dramatic improvement from the XM4 which took 2 hours and 50 minutes using the same charger. Battery Life: I got 30 hours of battery life with noise cancelling using LDAC while playing a 24-bit FLAC album on a loop. So their battery claims are accurate; not an oversell or undersell. I'll miss the portability of the XM4 but the incredible charging time of the XM5 and the amazing transparency mode is what seals the deal for me. Ambient mode has NEVER sounded this good and natural on a Sony noise cancelling headphone, and very close to a leading competitor known for having this quality. Highly recommended if you don't mind that it can't fold anymore. My biggest concern is its durability over time.