Sony WH-1000XM5 review: The best over-ears?
A TEST REPORT from Jonas Wilhelm 
on June 21, 2023, 10:00 pm | Write a comment
With the WH-1000XM5, Sony has launched the 5th generation of the popular WH-1000X series. We have tested the new headphones extensively for you over the past 2 months.
In the following you can read how the WH-1000XM5 did in the everyday test and whether the headphones are worth buying.
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tl; dr
All in all, I really liked the Sony WH-1000XM5. They offer pretty much everything you would expect from headphones in this price range. The sound is really at an extremely high level and offers powerful bass. The noise suppression and the transparency mode are also very good. In addition to the very intuitive app control, the headphones can also score points with me because they are extremely comfortable to wear. The battery life is not quite as good as everything else, but it still convinced me. Only the charging time of the WH-1000XM5 bothered me a bit, as it is quite long at 3,5 hours.
For a price of around 350 euros, I can recommend the headphones to anyone who is willing to pay this high price. Here, however, the buyer is also offered a lot for his money. You can buy the WH-1000XM5 at all common electronics stores such as MediaMarkt, Saturn, Amazon or even at Sony itself:
Unboxing & scope of delivery
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- Picture: TechnikNews
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- Picture: TechnikNews
The headphones come in a light gray box made from recycled cardboard. It only contains the very high-quality black case in which the headphones and all accessories are located. In addition to the headphones themselves, a USB-C charging cable and a jack cable and of course the usual paperwork including a quick start guide are included. I would like to say positively that no plastic packaging material was used at all. Overall, the scope of delivery is very manageable. Pretty much everything you need is included. The only thing I missed was an airplane adapter, as this is included with many competitors in this price range.
Design & processing
Picture: TechnikNews
I think the design of the Sony WH-1000XM5 is very nice. They look very modern and simple at the same time, which is why they don't stand out too much. They consist almost entirely of matte black plastic, which not only looks stylish, but is also not as prone to fingerprints. At just 250 grams, the headphones are very light in favor of wearing comfort. The ear cups and the headband are made of a very soft material that not only feels very good, but also looks pretty chic. The mechanism for adjusting the size is stepless and also feels very high quality. The only small ProThe problem with the headphones is that they are not foldable, which means that they take up a fair amount of space in a bag or backpack. However, Sony also supplies a very high-quality fabric cover for transport, which looks really good.
Picture: TechnikNews
There is a golden Sony logo on both ends of the headband, which is not exactly plain in contrast to the rest of the headphones. The USB-C port, which can be used to charge the headphones, as well as a charging status LED can be found on the bottom of the right ear cup. On the left ear cup, next to the jack connection, there is also the power button and a button for controlling the noise reduction modes. Overall, the workmanship is very good, as you would expect from these headphones. The WH-1000XM5 are of course not the headphones with the highest quality materials on the market, but in my opinion they are the ones with the best design.
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Picture: TechnikNews
With Bluetooth 5.2, the WH-1000XM5 does not offer the very latest Bluetooth version, but I did not have a single connection in the entire testprotrouble. In addition to the common SBC and AAC Bluetooth codecs, the headphones also support the HiRes codec LDAC, which, however, is not supported by Apple devices. HiRes audio can also be played back via wired use if the jack connection on the device itself supports it. A prerequisite for the playback of HiRes, however, is music of such high quality. Streaming services such as Apple Music or Tidal offer such high-resolution titles, but Spotify, for example, does not.
Operation & comfort
The headphones are operated via a touch panel on the right earcup and two buttons on the underside of the left earcup. One button serves as a power button, the other is responsible for controlling the sound modes. However, most of it is controlled via the touch field, which recognizes several swipe gestures in addition to normal typing. The user can pause and start playback by double-tapping. By swiping from back to front and vice versa, the user can play the next or last track. If you swipe from bottom to top or from top to bottom, you can control the volume. If the wearer puts his hand completely on the auricle, the headphones switch to transparency mode. This feature is extremely useful in everyday life. Overall I think the controls are very well thought out and intuitive. Of course, the WH-1000XM5 also offer wear detection, which is very fast and accurate. Thanks to the low weight and the very softly padded ear cups, the headphones are extremely comfortable to wear. Even after a 5-hour flight, neither my ears nor my head hurt, which speaks for the good wearing comfort.
Sound Quality & Noise Cancellation
With the WH-1000XM5, Sony relies on a system that consists of two 30 millimeter neodymium drivers that can display frequencies in a frequency range from 4 Hz to 40.000 Hz. However, these values are only achieved with wired use. Frequencies from 20 to 20.000 Hz can be played back via Bluetooth. Sony specifies the impedance of the headphones as 16 ohms when switched off and 48 ohms when switched on. This data reads pretty well on paper, but how does it fare in reality? – Well, I personally really like the sound of the WH-1000XM5. The sound is very clear and still has that certain something. The mids and highs are very well matched and the bass is dominant. Overall, the sound is probably the best in this price range. My similarly expensive JBL Tour One M2 offer a little more bass, but otherwise sound a bit worse.
The ANC and the transparency mode of the headphones are also extremely good. Active noise cancellation reliably filters and attenuates noise of all kinds. Even in very noisy environments, such as on a bus or plane, the wearer only hears a little of the noise of the environment. Wind noise is also surprisingly well filtered. The transparency mode is also very good. You don't feel as if you don't have headphones on, but you can still hear everything that's important around you. It also recognizes when you start talking, walking, or when you're on public transport. Depending on which of these applies, either transparency mode or noise cancellation will be activated in a customized setting. This function is really well thought out and has always worked very reliably. The ANC is the best on the market with the AirPods Max and, in my opinion, is even slightly better in certain situations. Apple is only slightly ahead in the transparency mode.
Charge the battery
Sony specifies the battery life of the WH-1000XM5 as 30 hours with ANC activated and 40 hours with ANC deactivated. These values are average. Once the headphones are empty, they can be recharged in around 3,5 hours via the built-in USB-C port. Sony should definitely work on the charging time of the successor, since some of the competition charges much faster. However, the charging time is also somewhat negligible, since you don't really have to charge the headphones very often.
Sony Headphones app
There are some extremely useful features in the Sony Headphones app that will greatly improve the use of the headphones. These include the equalizer, the 360-degree audio control and the badges that you can earn by completing different tasks. You can use the equalizer to personalize the sound very well and adjust the bass strength precisely. Another feature of the app that is very well implemented is the adaptive noise cancellation control. Overall, the Headphones app convinced me because it scores with many useful functions.
Picture: TechnikNews
Prices & Availability
The recommended retail price for the Sony WH-1000XM5 is high at 419 euros. In the meantime, however, they only cost around 330 euros, which makes them much more attractive. You can buy the headphones at all common electronics stores, such as MediaMarkt, Saturn or Amazon, as well as in the Sony online shop:
