Sony WF-1000XM4
A victory on all fronts from Sony’s finest
There’s no doubt that Sony has a strong pedigree when it comes to premium noise-cancelling audio, with both its WF-1000X and WH-1000X product lines dominating their class (true wireless in-ear headphones, and wireless over-ear headphones respectively).
With the WF-1000XM4, Sony has upped the ante once more, introducing an entirely new ANC (Active Noise Cancelling) processing chip, along with a redesigned earbud, and the results are stunning if somewhat pricey.
Design
As Sony has reliably done for past 1000X product launches, the WF-1000XM4 is available either in Black or Platinum Silver – both classy and understated colours with brassy, metallic trim that provides a subtle counterpoint to the matte and uniform tone of the plastic.
This trim is most prominent in the cylindrical microphone housing protruding from each earbud and is seen again on the top of the buds (surrounding yet another microphone slot) and in the small ‘Sony’ branding on their front.
As mentioned, the earbuds themselves have had a considerable overhaul in design. While Sony claims they’re only 10 percent smaller than their predecessors, the impact of the new shape makes them look and feel considerably more compact, lining up with the growing trend for shrinking bud sizes within the market.
This sense of smallness is in large part due to their move from a bulbous, elongated design to something more circular, which shifts the centre of gravity closer to the ear canal, providing many advantages, with an overall flattering appearance chief among them.
Another redesigned aspect of the WF-1000XM4 is its ‘Noise Isolation’ earbud tips, of which three different sizes are included in the box. These tips are similar in effect and style to Comply foam tips, but offer a slightly different surface. We found them incredibly comfortable.
Features
Speaking of the charging case, it now supports Qi wireless charging, compatible with regular charging mats or phones and other devices that have a battery share function.
With ANC enabled, the WF1000XM4 buds last an awesome eight hours on a single charge, and the case holds an extra 16 hours – vey solid for the industry. This total of 24 hours is certainly impressive for such advanced and compact tech, and is largely thanks to optimisations in efficient ANC in the new Integrated Processor V1 (more on this QN1e successor later). Without ANC, this battery life extends to an insane 36 hours total, with 12 in the buds and an extra 24 in the case, and Sony claims that a five-minute quick charge is enough to give you an hour’s playback.
One of the more obvious shortcomings of the M3 was its complete lack of waterproofing, but the M4 features an IPX4 rating. It’s certainly not the most intensive protection you can get, and plenty of the competition features IPX7 or 8, but this officially means that “water splashing against the enclosure from any direction shall have no harmful effect”.
Sony has brought back its ‘Speak to Chat’ feature, first seen with the WH-1000XM4 over-ear headphones, which pauses the music and enables Ambient Sound mode when the buds detect your voice. We found this feature to be a great idea when working as intended (it quickly engages when you want to have a conversation), but would also find it triggering accidentally sometimes as well as in response to laughter or singing along to songs.
Another returning feature from the over-ear counterpart is the proximity sensor, automatically playing and pausing your music when the buds have detected that one of them is in or out of your ear.
ANC
In use, we found that heavy traffic and obnoxiously loud construction sounds were all but made invisible when they were consistent, and even the punctuating and semirandom strikes of a giant concrete breaker would be severely softened (but not negated) with the M4.
Audio
All the praise we’ve given the WF-1000XM4 would be for nought if its primary function was lacking, but thankfully, these buds offer the best audio quality we’ve experienced in a pair of true wireless headphones.
Although powered by rather small 6mm drivers, Sony’s earbuds offer rich and pleasant sound with a slightly warm skew – the bass is forward, but far from overbearing, and the slightly rolled-off upper frequencies do nothing to diminish the sound quality, but save it from any threat of tinny treble. In fact, the default bass response is slightly less pronounced than its predecessor, but we suspect this is to do more with their foam (rather than silicon) eartips.
If this frequency profile isn’t to your liking, Sony’s Headphones app offers a number of preset EQ profiles along with two slots to craft your own customised profile with 5-band adjustment and a
Clear Bass feature. This tweaking works tremendously well, although we found the default profile to be perfectly balanced for almost every situation and stuck to it much of the time.
The clarity, separation and sense of space offered by the WF1000XM4 are worth commending as well – often a sore point with in-ear audio, these buds show no sign of distortion or blending of distinct sounds, even at higher volumes, and each instrument and musical component shines through as intended.
Part of the success of the M4’s audio quality must be attributed to Sony’s clever software tricks, with the brand’s proprietary LDAC codec offering streaming up to 990kbps at 32 bit/96kHz over Bluetooth (three times that of conventional transmission over Bluetooth).
For those listening to streaming services like Spotify, or MP3 files, that deliver compressed audio, Sony’s DSEE Extreme setting upscales this audio to mimic hi-res, uncompressed sound, in a similar way that 4K TVs are able to upscale 1080p content to appear at a higher resolution.
The true wireless format is no longer in its infancy, and the price for a solid pair of earbuds is much lower than it once was, leaving the Sony WF-1000XM4 squarely at the premium end of the category. But in the competition, almost certainly there’s a compromise – whether it be in build quality, battery life, audio performance, noisecancelling, or rugged wearability – but Sony’s latest offering excels across the board.
Harry Domanski