[REVIEW] Sony WH 1000 XM3

[Calamity1911]

I want to preface this with the fact that I bought these as seller/manufacturer refurbished. They were $200 instead of retail $350. I will touch on that in the actual review. I also am not an audiophile. The most experience I have is with a few high end headphones my dad has, as well as some mid/low tier earbuds I've bought. I'm basically a slightly above average consumer.

 

I've used these for around a week now, and they are AWESOME. Probably the best sounding headphones I have ever used (previous favorite were some Senheiser HD599's)

 

Comfort: I have worn these basically all day for a couple of days (not in a row) and I have very few complaints. My ears are a little bit big, and they touch the inside of the cups. They don't rub, so I barely notice it unless I actively think about it. Good balance of clamping force to weight on the top of the head. Not too heavy, but there is a noticeable difference when you take them off after having them on for awhile. I'd give it 9/10

 

Noise Cancelling: I honestly don't have a frame of reference, but these work pretty well. I understand how it works, so I know basically no headphone can be perfect. The other night, I was watching some football, and put on the headphones between quarters. I didn't notice when the game came back on because the NC honestly eliminated the sound from the game. And I have a stereo system (quadraphonic, 2L 2R 1SUB, can't do surround in my apartment) When I got my head right next to the speakers, I could only feel the low frequency vibrations and hear a bit seeping through the headphones. I also took them to a noisy cafe, and they definitely cut down the noise, but there still was a little bit of machine and talking noise. I would give them a 9/10 in NC.

 

Sound Quality: I feel like they definitely tweaked the sound a little bit, but I didn't have to apply an EQ to get my music to sound better. I loved the way they sounded out of the box. It also really helps that they have AptX HD and LDAC. What isn't great, though, is they are Bluetooth 4.2 instead of 5. I haven't had problems with connectivity with that being said. I have them set to use LDAC on my LG G7. I did try AptX HD and LDAC separately, and I preferred the sound of LDAC. I can't exactly explain why, but if I had to say something it would be that the sound stage/separation seemed a bit better on LDAC. For the test media, I have FLACs from Arctic Monkey's AM album as well as some other generic MP3s. All of them sounded awesome on these headphones. I also tried them using the included 3.5mm wire and the Quad DAC built into the G7, and they sounded more or less the same. The only differences I could notice were probably because I had a different sound filter selected and I enabled DTS:X 3D (Side to Side) I'd give them a 9.5/10

 

Interface: I. Love. The. Touch. Interface. That was the only reason I picked these over the Bose QC35 II. It has been a little picky, only when I am looking downwards. I might accidentally adjust volume when I mean to skip tracks or vice versa. Play/Pause works brilliantly. I just wish the touch controls worked on both left and right ear cups, as I am left handed. I got used to it pretty quickly, though. They get yet another 9/10. 

 

Extra Features: The other feature I used the most was ambient sound control. When I went out with friends (I told them ahead of time that I would be trying these) I kept ambient noise cranked so I could hear them, and I definitely could hear them. I'm not a huge fan of the "focus on voice" option in the app, though. I wish it would do ambient sound but then boost voices rather than noise cancelling but allowing voices through. Battery also has not died on me. I could do two days with noise cancelling and light to moderate usage. 8/10

 

Other Notes

In terms of buying them as refurbs, I honestly couldn't tell they were used. Besides the fact they weren't in official packaging. They had all of the included accessories (Airplane adapter, 3.5mm aux cable, charging cable, carrying case) but all put into the case and wrapped in heavy duty bubble wrap. They smelled clean and didn't have any noticeable damage to the outside. They even arrived with a 60% charge. 

I also did notice a weird glitch of sorts. I was in a car with my friends and the windows were cracked, with ambient sound all the way up so I could hear them. There were a couple of times when the ambient feature just shut off for no reason, but didn't enable noise cancelling. It's kind of like it powered off and back on, but it never powered off. (Now that I think about it, I probably had adaptive ambient control enabled in the app and it was messing up)

Lastly, I had to go through some troubleshooting to get it to use high quality codecs. It defaulted to AAC with Sony's DSEE HX enabled. Sounded good enough, but I could hear some compression. What I had to do was change an option in the actual bluetooth settings menu to focus on audio quality (not in the app or developer options) then turn bluetooth off and back on. When the headphones reconnected, I got a notification at the bottom of the screen saying they connected using LDAC. Awesome. I also forced AptX HD in developer options to test, too.

 

All that being said, they were worth $200, but maybe not $350 in my opinion.