Bose qc 35 vs Sony wh-1000xm3

BANNES · December 1, 2019

So im looking at these black friday sales and now im trying to choose between the sonys which are 260$ or the bose (keep in mind, these are series 1) which are 200$. Give me your opinions on which i should buy.

rice guru · December 1, 2019

comfort: bose

sound: sony hands down sounds better to my ears.

ANC: sony but both are great hard to really tell which one is better.

Build: sony It just looks better but like in terms of how solid it is bassically about the same. the bose are a bit lighter and cheaper feeling

User experience: I prefer sony's touch capabilities but if you like buttons the bose.

honestly hard to go wrong both are good ANC wise. neither offends me in any way.

Spuriae · December 2, 2019

I used both for about three months each.

Comfort: Bose by far stock, but Sony gets pretty close if you bend the top of the headband outward to reduce the clamping force. I get a fairly strong cabin effect sensation from ANC headphones. Bose is consistently good for me, while Sony is variable; two of the most painful and two of the most comfortable (pressure-wise) ANC headphones I've used have been 1000XM3's: two terrible store demos, one incredible store demo, and my personal pair feels pretty good overall, just a bit better than the average QC35.

Sound: Both have pretty significant flaws. Both have reasonable tunings but perform poorly in the treble: Bose has grainy peakiness that sounds like there's a balloon somewhere between you and the source of the sound, while Sony has some extreme treble roll-off (most noticeable as dull-sounding percussion) with a bit of sparkle to help mask it. Both do bass well, but Bose's sounded cleaner to my ears. Small preference for Sony's midrange. Neither does soundstage very well, but the QC35 makes a reasonable attempt while the XM3 sounds solidly inside-the-head. All that said, I don't dislike either of them. They're both fun to listen to, the XM3 slightly moreso. The QC35 is technically more accurate, but I don't know how much of a plus that it for most people.

ANC: Sony is slightly better overall, most noticeable at mid frequencies, especially voice. This in turn also means that their feedforward bandwidth is higher, which means that there are a couple of high frequencies that are ever so slightly louder with ANC on than off. They're still very attenuated; it's just a little detail that can be annoying at times when the noise source is just right. Bose also blocks out wind noise better.

Build: Having taken apart both, preference for the durability of the Bose, but overall preference for the design of the XM3. The ability to flip the cups to rest pad-down on the shoulders makes a huge difference; I had to put the QC35 away anytime I wasn't wearing it, but can comfortably keep the XM3 around my neck for hours. The hinge problem from the 1000X and XM2 is supposedly fixed now, but I'm still wary of Sony durability-wise; not too much seems to have changed, and their response to consumers last time there was a build quality issue was disgraceful.

Interface: Strong preference for Bose. Turning on the Bose was a simple switch flick. Turning on the XM3 requires holding down a button with no immediate feedback and waiting for it to say it's on – in practice not terribly convenient, especially when turning them on in the hands. The XM3 takes much longer to turn on, a couple of seconds to Bose's instant toggle. Turning off the Bose was a simple switch flick. With the Sony, gottta hold that button down again – especially when in a rush, it's incredibly inconvenient. I often end up turning off Bluetooth on my phone and waiting for the Sony to auto time-out because at least that only requires a single button press.

Changing the volume on the Bose was a simple button press; press repeatedly to move multiple steps. Doing it on the XM3 is painful: it takes many, many swipes to make significant volume changes, many of which don't register. It takes a long time to adjust the headset volume. In either case, I usually ended up using my phone for volume changes, but at least the QC35's controls were serviceable when I couldn't. The "cup for ambient" gesture on the Sony would be useful if it didn't have such a long latency; in practice if you wait for it to kick in you'll miss whatever you were listening for. Much more practical to just take off the headphones and put them back on (which thankfully isn't too bad since the Sony is more comfortable around the neck). Then there's the fact that the XM3's touch controls often don't work in cold weather (and "cold" in this case can be as high as ~50F/10C): sometimes they'll just be unresponsive, sometimes they'll start registering phantom gestures.

~

Overall I ended up keeping the XM3 because I have other headphones to listen to for good sound, and live somewhere with nice weather year-round (wind and cold are rarely issues). I essentially only use the XM3 on the go (where being able to lay the cups flat when not listening is important) and in noisy environments (where absolute noise cancelling is more important than most other things). If this weren't the case, I'd probably rather own the QC35. I feel that both have their own tradeoffs; both are fine, but I'm not completely happy with either. Even on the go, I sometimes find myself using my KSC75 instead of either ANC headphone purely for the better sound.