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Headphones · Sony WH-1000XM

Sony WH-1000XM5

11owners with an opinion
36%of verdicts positive
4/7positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for sound and software; criticized for reliability and noise.

What owners wrote

Doesn’t like itOwned 1 year
XM5, it does not have a physical dedicated on/off button it has a multipurpose where function is determined by how long you hold down the button. It’s not optimal design for me. I am sure a number of brands have moved towards this. Second the sensor on the XM5 is known to be flaky. These are about a year old and already acting up. It’s just a poorly built and poorly designed headset for me. I cannot even count the number of times I don’t notice they are on until the next day and they are dead.
Doesn’t like it
I never really understood how people can wear headphones all day. I have the XM5 headphones, and after a couple of hours, it starts hurting my head. What am I doing wrong? I also have the earbuds of the same generation, and they're much more comfortable, but the noise cancelling is less consistent.
Likes it
Sony WH1000XM5 headphones are my daily driver, mainly Zoom calls and music. I'm generally pretty happy with them, but one big gripe I have is when I'm on a call and briefly take off my headphones to e.g. chat with someone in the room, there is like a 90% chance they stop working and I have to reconnect them. It happens so often I even wrote a script to switch to the MacBook internal speakers then back to the headphones. I've used wired headphones before (and the Sony even has a wired option), but I didn't like how the cord was constantly getting the the way of my arms. edit: Another big gripe is with the Bluetooth codec itself, and how the quality changes depending on if the mic is active.
Doesn’t like it
This right here, especially for gaming. When I use my Sony XM5 Bluetooth headphones, the latency is noticeable. Watching videos, the lips don't match the audio. Playing games, I see things before I hear them. It's probably in the ~150-200 ms range for latency. While gaming, I use a different set of wireless headphones that use a proprietary dongle. If they have any latency at all, I don't notice it.
Doesn’t like it
And everyone got mad at OpenBSD for refusing to develop bluetooth. It’s a messy standard and we shouldn’t be surprised that the race to the bottom has left some major gaps.. though Sony WH1000’s are premium tier hardware and they have no real excuses.. I always wondered how people could justify the growth of the bluetooth headphone market in such a way.. Everyone seems to use bluetooth headphones exclusively (in Sweden at least), I’m guilty of buying into it too (I own both Airpods Pro’s and the affected Sony WH1000-XM5) but part of me has always known that bluetooth is just hacks on hacks… I allowed myself to be persuaded due to popularity. Scary. I was also trying to debug bluetooth “glitching audio” issues and tried to figure out signal strength as the first troubleshooting step: I discovered that people don’t even expose signal strength anymore… the introspection into what’s happening extends literally nowhere, including not showing signal strength … truly, the whole thing is cursed and I’m shocked it works for the masses the way it does.. can you imagine not displaying wifi signal strength?
Doesn’t like it
I'll happily pay the premium for "it just works", especially device switching iPhone to iPad to MacBook to Apple TV, it works first time, every time. I have a pair of Sony XM5s, and even at that price point, pairing and device switching can be a crapshoot some of the time. Bluetooth honestly feels like a non-deterministic stack sometimes, it even took Apple 4 years to support it on the iPhone, how they have the AirPods working is close to magic.