Sony today is launching its latest pair of flagship true wireless earbuds. In a naming scheme that few will be surprised by, the new WF-1000XM5 arrive with some notable improvements over their predecessor and are now available for $300. I’ve been daily driving them over the past week and am excited to talk about just how well-rounded of an experience the new Sony XM5 offer.
Hands-on with the new Sony XM5 earbuds
Sony last released a pair of flagship earbuds back in 2020 with the debut of its XM4. In the past three years, the market for true wireless buds has only gotten more competitive, with just about every audio brand throwing its hat into the ring with new offerings. So what has the company been cooking up all of these years? Sony today is out with the new WF-1000XM5 earbuds, but we’ll just be referring to them as the XM5s.
The new earbuds arrive with all of the bells and whistles you’d expect from a modern day pair of earbuds – especially anything that carries the same flagship status as the new Sony XM5. There are a lot of smaller upgrades over the previous-generation pair, all of which stack up to deliver one of the best listening experiences on the market. But all of that does come at a higher MSRP than before.
Everything for the new pair of earbuds comes centered around a two processor design. There’s now the second-generation Integrated Processor V2 that offers some improvements on the chip we’ve seen included in previous releases, but also an entirely new HD Noise Cancelling Processor deemed the QN2e. Both of those pair with a higher quality onboard DAC to give every element of the listening experience some love.
Those three upgrades also pair quite nicely with the redesigned Dynamic Drive X. Each of the buds now rocks an 8.4mm driver that are noticeably larger than the XM4’s 6mm counterparts. Active noise cancellation is getting some love, too, with a pair of new feedback microphones that now help monitor lower sound frequencies to block out the drum of airplane engines, loud AC units, and even wind with a some new tech to help cut back on weather getting in the way of your listening. ANC is the biggest improvement that Sony is betting on this time around, and the spoiler is that the company really delivers.
Sony really does want to make sure that these new XM5 earbuds can compete with the likes of AirPods Pro 2 and all of the other flagship listening experiences out there. To that end, you’ll also find Hi-Res Audio 360 Reality Audio that is backed by head tracking and tons of personalization options to fine tune the experience. Throw in multipoint Bluetooth, low latency connectivity for gaming, and onboard sensors to ensure music pauses when you take the earbuds out to round out the package.
Sony isn’t safe from escaping the hold that AI has on the tech sector right now, and is also baking some of that artificial intelligence into its new XM5 earbuds. The new AI Noise Reduction is said to leverage 500 million voice samples in order to help ensure block out audio from the microphones and only record your voice. A new bone conduction sensor helps with that, too.
All of those improvements also happen to come in a redesigned form-factor. Sony isn’t just making the new earbuds better than its past releases, but also more compact. The buds themselves are now 25% smaller than the XM4 that preceded today’s debut, while also weighing in at 20% lighter. That very same downsizing also carries over to the case, which is getting much of the same love and a form-factor shift to a more natural profile that’s 15% smaller than before.
IPX4 water resistance is still making the cut, as well as all-new memory foam ear tips that come in more sizes than we’ve typically seen offered. There are now some extra small tips in the box to join the rest of the lineup, all of which sport a refreshed and more flexible design. One of my favorite parts is that Sony is also adopting a more environmentally-friendly design that leverages some recycled materials for its charging case. The end result is soft touch yet textured finish that feels very good in hand.
Despite clocking in at a smaller footprint than before, the new Sony XM5 earbuds actually still manage to arrive with the same battery life as last time around. The buds themselves pack 8 hours of listening, while the charging case will bring that up to 24 hours of playback in total – though one improvement does have three minutes of charging giving you 60 minutes of listening if you’re in a pinch. That same metric used to be five minutes, so we’re getting a slight improvement. And lastly, there’s also wireless charging to complement the onboard USB-C port.
Now available for purchase
All said and done, the new Sony XM5 earbuds are now available for purchase direct from the company’s own online storefront as well as over at Amazon. Pricing is set at $299.99, which position these new releases as some of the more premium releases on the market for a consumer pair of buds. There are two colors available at launch, too, with silver and black styles matching Sony’s other audio releases.
Electronicsforward’ Take
I’ve been using the new Sony XM5 earbuds for the past week and really have to give credit where credit is due. I’ve used plenty of new buds throughout 2023 and have to say that Sony has caught my attention in a way that other releases just haven’t been able to. The features check off all of the boxes on paper to let these truly compete with the likes of AirPods Pro 2 and both offerings from Google and Samsung. But what I really want to highlight is how good these sound.
The new Sony XM5 are easily some of the most well balanced earbuds I’ve used in quite sometime, which means all of the hardware improvements really do shine out of the box. These deliver some of the most clear vocals I’ve heard from the true wireless form-factor, which means that acoustic performances sound great and podcasts even better. But even when you throw in heavy guitar colors, drum and bass beats, and other melodies, that distinction doesn’t go away. The sound profile is just so crisp that I’ve found myself going out of my way to listen to music that accentuates the high notes just to soak it all in.
But these are also great for all kinds of other tunes, too. Bass on the other hand is also distinct enough to ensure that house music sounds just as booming as it should, all while not overpowering the rest of the notes. I love how wide the soundstage is, but also how well Sony has adopted the 360-degree audio playback to really feel like the music is orbiting you. Volume notably doesn’t distort at higher levels, but I haven’t found that I even need to go higher than around 70% of the max volume – even on the subway.
I just reviewed the new Soundcore buds from Anker and walked away impressed by how well rounded the feature set was for the price. But using these has me loving just how good the audio quality is specifically. The XM5 truly are on a whole other level for the price point. I’d honestly go as far to say that they give the Bowers & Wilkins Pi7 S2 a run for their money. These are easily some of the best earbuds on the market right now for sound quality, and Sony is managing to offer a very comparable experience for $100 less. Plus you get all of the modern comforts that the Pi7 S2 ignore.
When I first got to use the new Sony XM5 earbuds well before I started writing this review, the company had invited me out of my corner of Brooklyn and into Manhattan to try out the new releases in person. The demo started off by walking me into a room that had speakers blasting ambient airplane engine white noise that quickly faded away when I was handed the earbuds to try on; from the second I learned about the XM5s, the company has been flexing the active noise cancellation capacities.
Now that I have gotten my hands on the new earbuds, I really have to say that it wasn’t just a single chance encounter – Sony has cracked the code on ANC in a way that I have really only ever heard from Apple. Keyboard clicks fade out of existence, subway chatter is reduced to all but moving mouths, and the usual ritual of greeting my partner when she comes home from work has been disturbed by me not hearing the door open, let alone that she’s calling my name. The world around me might as well not exist when I put the XM5 on, which is something I can only say for a handful of other earbuds out there.
As much as I just gushed about the new earbuds, I do still think that $300 is going to be a hard sell for a lot of people. Other flagship releases from the likes of Apple, Google, and Samsung offer very similar experiences for far less, and the better sound quality isn’t something that just everyone will to believe justifies the price hike. But the new Sony XM5 really do arrive as a cut above the rest – it just depends on whether spending a little extra cash is going to be worth the value.
Though the one thing that Sony does have going for it is that platform-agnostic earbuds have only become more popular as of late. So Sony’s release today arrives at the perfect time for the company to return to the throne and reclaim its rightful seat as some of the best earbuds on the market with its new XM5s.
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