Sony WH1000XM4: Not the Best at Anything, Best Overall

One would think that the #1 pick would be #1 in something. But that is not the case with my choice of over ear headphones. First, let's get one small piece of business out of the way. I returned AirPods Max.

Return of the Max

I loved AirPods Max. It hurt to return them. But I couldn't ignore my gut. Or was it my head? I can't tell. But some part of me realized I couldn't justify the price. Most of the price justification is emotional rather than engineering and value. I suspect that is true of almost all headphones that sneak past the $500 mark. In my limited experience, headphones stop being worth it past about $400. I don't mind including the emotional calculous in a luxury purchase. But emotion works both ways. If my emotion makes me feel like the package isn't worth it, that is also valid.

I am not suggesting that everyone should return their AirPods Max, or that no one should own them. They definitely have a place in the market. It is just that this is a market that is hard to justify regardless of the product. There are almost enough features to justify the price, even for me. if AirPods Pro did not exist, I would have kept the Max. I can't ignore the fact that AirPods Pro provide upwards of 90% of what the Max have to offer at more than half the price. The existence of AirPods Max justifies the price of AirPods Pro.

Now, on to the xm4 review:

Design, or lack thereof

Sony has put out one of the ugliest pair of headphones I have ever seen. When it comes to looks, these aren't even second best. They are dead last. Appearance played no part of Sony's development process. These headphones were designed by people who only operate in the PC and Android market. Those consumers have given up on appearance. They are probably suspicious of any product that looks too pleasing.

The colors are boring. The shape is obvious without effort to distinguish it. One can imagine the engineers starting with a generic headphones icon and working from that. There is branding on both sides of the headphones. It looks cheap. Everything about the appearance is atrocious. There are large buttons and holes and creases and... Yuck!

Then, there is the feel. They look cheap right out of the box. That sense of cheapness will be enhance from the moment you touch them. They feel plasticky and flimsy. The padding is very soft, but feels like the garishly fake leather found on discount furniture trying to trick you into thinking it is more than it really is.

When I say it feels like plastic, I don't mean the good kind. I mean the bad kind used by every craptastic product designed for the junk drawer. Were it not for the size, I would say these came out of a Cracker Jack box. The ear cups dance about as you shake the headphones. The adjustable stems holding the ear cups don't stay put.

Speaking of the ear cups, they are not removable. And they feel like they could be easily ripped with no way to repair them. The same is true for the padding on the headband. The material is also quite sweaty. Sony clearly didn't think about that when designing (I use that word loosely) these headphones. They did the least they could do in forming a basic headphone structure. All the work is internal. Industrial design wasn't even an afterthought. Sony should be embarrassed at how far they have fallen. They used to be the kings of design.

Ambience mode

I want to get this out of the way: This is the worst transparency-type mode I have ever encountered. Again, it is not second best. It is so bad that these headphones would be better off without it. Once you have Used Apple's transparency mode, it is hard to go back to this. Even Bose is far superior. Sony didn't even try to do a good job. To say they phoned it in is to give it too much credit. They didn't even try.

The sound in this mode is awful. It sounds like everything is being filtered by layers of foam. They are not using the same quality mics the other companies use to perform this trick. I don't know what the marketing copy says. But the only people who would be impressed with this offering are those who have never heard it from anyone else. I almost returned these headphones on that basis, alone. I still might.

Controls

There are physical and software controls. The physical controls are a mixed bag. Turning the headphones on and off is inconvenient. When you want to listen to something, you don't want to have to go through the process of reaching for a button, pressing and holding it, and waiting for some prompt to tell you it is okay to start using them. It is better not to have a power button than to go through that process. Apple made the right decision about that.

Apple also made the right decision about transparency and ANC. It is controlled by one button. A simple press toggles the modes without any ridiculous audio prompts. I don't like the placement of the buttons alone the rear of the left ear cup. But I wouldn't like the placement anywhere. The fewer buttons, the better.

The right ear cup is dedicated to touch controls. Swipe up and down for volume up and down one level. Swipe and hold for continuous adjustment. This is awkward and slow. The digital crown on AirPods Max is a far superior arrangement. I do like the forward and backward swipe for switching tracks. But I don't like tap to play. It is way too easy to activate it. I also don't like the sound of the tapping in my ear. Again, Apple's arrangement is superior in every way.

The rest of the controls are in a bewildering app you need to download on your iOS device. There is no Mac app. I am not going to bother trying to outline all the features in these headphones. This is the product of PC and Android thinking. There is a bunch of feature bloat that seems like a good idea on paper, but is terrible in practice. The only setting I found useful was the EQ. Everything else I tried ended up being annoying to the point of needing to be disabled.

Some would say that options are good - the more, the merrier. I think Apple would say that if you have so many headphones options that you need an app to use them, you blew it. Apple is right. Sony blew it. But that assessment comes from someone who rejects the PC and Android way of thinking. Your mileage might vary.

Sound quality

Here is where Sony can start making up some lost points. When optimized to within an inch of its life, the sound from these headphones is quite good. However, out of the box, they are not so much. The only way to adjust the sound is to download that awful app. Say no to everything and get to the EQ settings as fast as possible. Next, choose the preset called Vocal. Then, enjoy.

The default setting is offensive. It is all bass and no subtlety. It is a bass hammer that sees all music as a nail. It treats treble and mids like second-class citizens. They are there only insofar as they support the bass. No vocals sound very good in this default configuration. These headphones were intended for people without refined, musical sensibilities. I am thinking about the people who spend a fortune on car stereo equipment that serves the function of booming down the road and exposing the driver of such cars as the antisocial fools they are. Worse yet, they are antisocial fools with no taste or class. These headphones are for them.

If you, however, are looking for a purer sound that respects the entire frequency range, you will need to dig into the settings and adjust the EQ. The good news is that you will not need to do too much adjusting. Just select the Vocal preset and you will be on your way. The other presets are as bad as the first in different ways.

I like the idea of being able to adjust the sound profile of headphones. That said, I like headphones that are tuned in such a way that adjustment is not necessary. Again, Apple got it right. The sound on AirPods Max is right where it should be. I find that a little adjustment to AirPods Pro are called for. The sound on the Sony headphones is too opinionated. And it is the opinion of a tin-eared idiot.

Once you have tuned the sound to something more balanced, you will be pleased with the output. AirPods Max sound is still better in every way. But most people cannot appreciate the differences. The sound quality is befitting of the price. One can argue over whether or not the Bose 700s sound better than the XM4s. I honestly don't care. They both are in the same range of sound. There is no clear winner. It is just a pissing match between two avid fan basses. While AirPods Max sound decidedly better, they do not sound $270 better. That is the difference in price between these two headphones at the moment.

If you don't make EQ adjustments, the bass is the boomy bad bass, not the thumpy good bass. It tends to overwhelm everything else and make the track sound muddy. Even with the simple adjustment I suggested, the bass will still be too heavy for many. I am a bit of a bass head. So I like the warmer, heavier tones. But I am enough of a musician to know that my personal preference does not reflect how music is actually produced.

A good example is "Melancholy Blues" by Queen. The piano is right up front and present. After a few bars, the bass comes stomping in all over it. Freddie Mercury's voice should slice through it all like a hot knife through soft butter. AirPods Max get the mix just right in my opinion. The Pros are a little too thin to support the bass, which in this case, is supposed to boom. The XM4s trade the airiness of the Apple products (including a stereo pair of HomePods) for something much more warm and bass heavy than the song demands. That said, I like the Sony's interpretation of the piece. What you need to know is that it is definitely an opinionated interpretation. I do not believe it is what the producer actually intended.

What you have to do is let go of the notion that there is one, correct interpretation of the sound. There is what the producer intended and what you like to hear. Music is a collaboration between the music maker and the music appreciator. The artist is not the final authority on what the music should be. The one who purchases and listens to the music gets to have the last word on how they enjoy it.

I believe there is enough flexibility in the EQ settings for anyone willing to fiddle with them, to create the sound they like best. Apple invites you to enjoy something closer to a flat (unmodified) sound. Sony provides a sound that will be pleasing to fans of a particular type of genre. If you don't want to spend a little time tuning your headphones, these are not for you. But if you don't mind the extra time and effort it takes to get these just right, you are going to like, perhaps even love the way they sound.

Connectivity

Here is where I have to start subtracting points, again. No company makes products that work as well with Apple products as Apple does. Once you step outside of the Apple ecosystem, you are in for anything from a minor inconvenience to a world of agonizing hurt. Sony did not even try to make these headphones with Apple users in mind. The way they connect is great on paper. It just doesn't work very well in reality. No one gets high marks for this.

In the app, you can set up the XM4s to pair to two devices at a time. That means that if you are listening to music on your laptop, the phone should interrupt the music and ring in the headphones. That seems to work just fine. But if you are just wanting to switch to listening to music or a video on your phone, you have to switch your Mac to a different audio input or else it will not release the headphones to your phone. The same is true if you are going from your phone to a laptop. Once released from one device, the headphones can be used by another. If you are using Apple-made headphones, this process happens automatically.

At times, it doesn't matter how well you follow the device-switching procedures, the headphones are just going to refuse to connect. At that point, you have to just turn them off and back on again. I switch devices all day every day. When I go walk the dog, I sometimes just use my watch to stream podcasts. I don't want to have to use some silly procedure to do it. That said, the Bose QC Buds are much worse at connecting to multiple devices. You need the case. It's a mess. If you don't mind connecting and device-switching like a PC/Android user, be my guest. The Sony's will do. But it will feel like a step backward to Apple users.

Conclusion: Winning the war without ever winning a battle

By now, you might be wondering why I have settled on the Sony XM4s as my headphones of choice. It is as difficult a task as explaining why I didn't keep the superior AirPods Max. Most of the minuses of the XM4s have mitigations that make them less important. To see the value of the XM4s I had to stop looking at the details and start looking at the big picture from a 30,000 ft. view. From there, it makes a little more sense.

Take sound quality as an example. Does it really matter how you get to the sound you want as long as you can get there? Does the setup pain mean you can't enjoy the listening experience thereafter? Are the fiddly controls more than you can get used to? Do the annoying connection issues make the product unusable? The answer is no to all of these questions.

Despite my choosing them, they still look ugly and undesigned. They still feel cheap and a bit fragile. Here's a fun one I didn't mention in the write-up: When you take them off and lay them on a table, they do not always disconnect. You can start playing music and they will still come from the disembodied headphones lying next to you. With AirPods, this never happens. It couldn't happen. When I want something that just works every time, I reach for the AirPods Pro. When I want superior sound that is well-balanced out of the box, it is the Bose. But I can live with the issues of the Sonys for now.

While a bit too hot, they are very comfortable and lightweight. There is not the kind of head-squeezing vice force I get from other over ear headphones. Bose is rather comfortable as well. You can get used to the weight of the AirPods Max. But with the Sonys, there is nothing to get used to. You just put them on and they are fine, hot, but fine.

You have to ask yourself what you want out of a set of headphones. I want a reasonably comfortable pair of headphones that have great sound, good noise cancelation, and long battery life for the amount of money I can easily justify. I don't really care how ugly these headphones are. I don't have to see them when I'm wearing them. No one is going to want to steal them. They don't look very premium. I like the sound of these headphones even if it is not accurate sound. It is inaccurate in a way I appreciate. I am really disappointed in the ambient mode. It has to be the worst in the industry. Most of the features are gimmicks and should be ignored. That said, the battery is good and the price is right. Just on the basis of the sound quality and the noise cancelation, these are worth what you pay for them.

As an Apple guy, I know what I am missing, and can live with it for a while. I have Apple headphones for the Apple magic when absolute sound quality is not the point. AirPods Pro are just fine in most cases for most people. And they are fine for me most of the time when I can stand to have something in my ears. If I want to wear a hat, it has to be ear buds. That is going to be true a lot during the winter season. Between the XM4s and AirPods Pro, I'm covered for a while, at least until the next revision of AirPods Max.

There is a lot I didn't cover. I recommend the following video. I found it very informative and they seem to agree with me overall. Check it out:

David Johnson