The earcups are shallower, so my ears contact the bottom pads and that feels weird. I hope I adjust to this soon.
The noise cancellation is incredible. Audibly superior to Bose. with QC45s, I hear a high-frequency hiss from the air purifier fan. With the XM5s, complete silence. None sound.
The surface finish seems to be designed for people who have no skin oils, because wearing mine for five minutes as a clean boy, they already look hilariously disgusting.
@danderson did you have any issues with the cups sealing? I tried the Sony WH1000XM3 back in 2019 and the noise canceling just didn’t work for me. I assume because the cups couldn’t seal on my smaller head. I returned the first pair because I thought they were defective but had the same issue with the replacement. I haven’t looked at Sony headphones since. I ended up withthe Bose NC 700.
@nnja The XM5s seal against my head fine, arguably better than the QC45s in the area around the rear of the jaw, and around the stems of my glasses. That said, I've not historically had trouble with earcup seals, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask if Sony has fixed this.
I do know that the XM5 cups are shallower than their predecessors (some speculation that it's to improve ANC somehow), and having the top of my ears brush against the fabric at the bottom is quite weird.
Sony has nailed the modest quality of life things. Things I didn't even realize I wanted. Of course I want the headphones to power off by themselves a short time after I take them off. Hold palm up to earcup to temporarily shut off noise cancellation? Yes please.
The app pushes hard for upsell features (want to give us location data for activity tracking? How about setting up 360 Reality Audio (w/ subscription with our partners) ? Hey did you know you can do voice assistant stuff?
However, the app does take no for an answer on the upsells, and so far at least it leaves me alone. The only impact of declining is a couple buttons in settings don't work, and tell you that you have to enable the extra thing if you want it to work. Fair enough.
The app is Fine. I'm not going to use it much aside from configuration and firmware updates, but it's not actively irritatingly janky like Bose's, and so it's successfully cleared the very low bar.
Only app jank so far is that the app tells me a firmware update is available, but I can't find where I go to make it install it. Which, honestly, I can live with.
Oh also, did I mention you don't have to create a fucking account to use headphones? Technically Bose doesn't require an account either, but the app was so much more broken without one that I eventually caved just to be able to use it.
OTOH, Sony: no of course headphones don't need an account, that'd be silly. Want to give us optional telemetry? Here's two clearly labeled buttons, with no dark patterns. Decline? Okay that's cool, we can do that, here's your headphones, enjoy.
Oh, I'm told that shallower earcups is a known thing about the XM5s, so it's not just me. As I get used to it I don't think I mind, but it's definitely weird coming from Bose. I'm also told the older XM4s were better in this regard, albeit less good at noise cancellation (maybe related? Or just better hardware in the XM5, dunno)
@danderson when I needed new headphones I was trying out both the XM4 and XM5 and for me the quality of fit, build, audio, and noise cancellation was somehow way better in the older XM4 than XM5. But that was at least a year ago if not more.
@voided Yeah I hear XM4 vs. XM5 is pretty polarizing. If I had a chance to try out the earcup depth thing, I might have gone for the XM4, although I do see reviews say the XM5s are noticeably better cancellation... But of course it's all subjective tests, not objective, so who knows :) Maybe someday I'll get my hands on some XM4s to compare.
Also this is a very me thing, but I have a piece of cable drag chain on my desk as a fidget toy, and tossing that around with the Bose QC45s occasionally created REALLY loud pops as the noise cancellation freaked out and not only passed through the chain's noise, but heavily amplified it. The Sony XM5s don't do that. Just continuing along the theme of them having the noise cancellation absolutely incredibly well sorted.
@robpike I've used all three, and the differences in ANC are definitely within margins of subjectivity. I would be reasonably happy with the audio performance of all three, although I personally think Sony has the edge right now on the audio front. I'm not yet sure about the rest (physical comfort especially, the shallow earcups are a strange design choice).
@danderson@robpike things get so much better if you tell the headphones to stop doing the text to speech bullshit in the app. Much more like the AirPods UX (status tones) than having a text to speech voice announce everything to you!
@danderson yeeeah that part so ass, I need to find third party earcups, currently if I don't put mine on in some exact particular way my right ear (always the right one) hurts
@Sinjo@occhiolist I only have the one color so I don't know about the others, but the black seems to show fingerprints and finger oils very eagerly, at least so far. I don't care much since WFH and the audio quality completely makes it worth it, but maybe the other colors dirty slower, or don't show as much?
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