SonyWF-1000XM5 Wireless Noise Cancelling Earbuds, Bluetooth, In-ear Headphones, Mic, Up to 24 Hours Battery Life, Quick Charge, IPX4, iOS & Android Compatible - Black

I bought this as a replacement for the WF-1000XM4 which destroyed themselves due to a well know bad firmware update. I also purchased the latest flagship models from bose, sennheiser and jabra too, of all of those great earbuds I reached for the sony WF-1000XM5 more often than any other, the reasons, battery life is good enough, sound quality is probably about as good as bluetooth earbuds get, noise cancelling and passthrough both work well enough, they are small in the ears and pocket and I find the foam tips really comfortable and secure. The jabra and bose got returned quite quickly, the former had an unpleasantly hissy sound signature and the bose connection to android devices/app was unreliable.I do have a dirty little secret though, I also kept the sennheiser momentum true wireless 4, I couldn't resist, they also sound great, have good battery, good noise cancelling, very secure in the ears, but I find them slighly more uncomfortable than the sony, but I do like the slightly different sound signature, its not better than the sony its just tonally slightly different. On multiple android devices the sony and sennheiser apps work well. The sony is slightly more reliable than sennheiser on the terribly unreliable bluetooth of a macbook pro. The only critism I have of this sony unit is that its pretty hard to put the buds in the ears or adjust the fit without activating the touch sensors, they are slippery to hold too having a glossy finish.

I've tried for months for find a decent set of premium wireless earbuds that don't have issues or significant downsides... The Sony MX5s are the winners!Take them out of the case and they connect to your device straight away. Multipoint worries perfectly, both devices connect and switch without issues every time.Sound QUALITY is great, the EQ is helpful. The bass is pronounced and clear without drowning out the mids or highs. The vocals are clear and the treble is crisp. Volume is great, I have my phone set to 50% in most scenarios with ANC on and that's more than enough.The ANC is brilliant. Wore these on a few flights and you can't hear the engine noise, passengers or babies. You will hear that an announcement is happening, but you'll need to use the transparency mode to actually hear/understand it. Noise in cafes and airports is barely noticeable with ANC on.Removing a bud promptly pauses music and jumps to transparent mode in the other one. Putting it back in starts again and turns ANC back on. Works every time.App is easy to use after you work out where everything is. It connects every time, but if you are using multipoint only 1 device can connect at a time in my experience. Not really a problem.I've got android devices so use LDAC codec. Works great, no disconnecting in normal use cases (phone in pocket while walking around). Battery life using LDAC is about 6hrs (maybe a bit more) per bud, then a couple of charges from the case.Ear tips are ok, but a bit firm/uncomfortable for me. They do the ANC. I bought a set of comply tips from Amazon (£12, various sizes) and the comfort is so much better and ANC is better to. Had to tweak the EQ slightly but no degradation is sound or volume.Tap controls work great. However I would of liked more customisation. I regularly just use one ear buds and the most annoying thing is Sony has "sets" of controls that you can assign to the buds. One "set" is playing controls (play/paused skip forward/back), the other is feature controls (toggle ANC mode, start Spotify/Amazon music/ press and hold for temporary transparency/pause). It annoys me that I can't have play controls and a toggle for ANC/transparency on one bud. The volume controls are done with 4 taps on either bud to tun up/down, it's awkward so I just use the device. Not the end of the world, see what I've had on other buds to understand why...So, what did I try before these and why did I return them?1. Bang & Olufsen Beoplay EX - great sound quality, fit and controls, non-existant ANC but worst of all constant disconnects from any device I tried (like once a minute). Returned.2. Bose Quiet Comfort Ultra - great controls, great ANC (5% better than Sony's at most though), ok fit but comply tips would have been better. mediocre sound but they had terrible issues with going out of sync with each other and one or the other losing connection. Had to resync with the case every 30mins or so. Case is huge, no wireless charging and felt like it was going to break. Returned.3. Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 - good sound, great controls, great integration with android, great connectivity. Mediocre ANC, but had 2 pairs both with ANC weakness in one ear (ear seal ok, it's a sw problem). Fighting for a return with Google.Sonya are by far the best experience I've had. Worth the extra and if you can find a deal, go for it.

I bought these after my Jabra Elite 75ts went missing. I'd had my Jabras for four years and they were my first pair of expensive buds. Hence I've mentioned them a lot in this review as I only really have them for comparison.Sound quality - for starters, the sound quality is fantastic. I don't know the specifics of music but the instruments in each track are clear and crisp and I feel I can hear every cymbal clash, bass line and sound effect in the production. Like most people who first get top quality headphones, I am rediscovering things in my favourite songs I'd never noticed before. Sound quality was my primary reason for buying these so I am very happy with them. You do need to fiddle around with the equaliser options in the app to get the sound that works for you. There are several pre-made settings to cycle through, with strange names such as 'bright', 'excited' and 'relaxed'. Some of the options are best for audiobooks ('speech') or acoustic music ('vocals') which is handy. The app will ask you a few questions to determine your preferences, but I didn't find this very helpful. Thankfully, there are sliders that allow you to choose your own settings. Bass isn't amazing, and the settings to change it don't seem to do much.Fit - A nice, snug fit. The buds some with four pairs of foam tips with varying sizes, so should fit most people. I have no problems wearing these when going to the gym or running and never feel that they will come loose. They're also water resistant which was a big pull factor for me in getting them. My only complaint is that they stick out quite noticeably from my ears but think most buds do the the same. I heard these are smaller than previous versions so can't imagine what the others might have looked like on me!Controls - The earbuds are touch rather than button controlled. This sounds like a great idea until you try to turn the volume up or down, which requires you to keep tapping the right or left ear bud repeatedly. Not only is this slow and inconvenient (especially on runs!), I often don't do it quick enough so it thinks I'm tapping twice to skip the track. And when I tap twice to skip the track, well, it sometimes doesn't register the first tap so it pauses it instead. Also, I know it sounds stupid but it's hard to locate the right part of the earbud to tap on the first go. So my clumsy fingers end up tapping the side of my ear instead. Much better to have a button to locate! Worst is when you go to readjust your buds and it thinks you're tapping. Absolute nightmare. Maybe something I'll get used to in time and it's not affecting my experience too badly so far.Noise cancelling - er, nope. I've put this low down on the list because it's not something I would ever specifically buy these headphones for. My four year old Jabras had much, much better noise cancelling so I don't know how Sony can say theirs is the best! There's very little difference between noise cancelling and normal modes, although it's marginally better. I couldn't believe how much traffic noise I could hear with ANC turned on compared to what I was used to with the old buds. Luckily, noise cancelling is not very important to me and I use the ambient sound feature (which is great) much more.The app - is good, but nothing to write home about. It's not very user-friendly and you have to dig to find the right options. Compared to the Jabra Elite 75ts (which came out 5 years ago now), I was disappointed with the lack of personalisation. For example, it doesn't allow you to adapt the tones and frequencies to your own hearing in each ear. There's also no way of changing what a double or triple tap does, although you can swap the playback control and ambient sound function from left to right bud and vice versa.Other features - you can switch easily on the buds from ANC to ambient sound (or transparency mode) and helpfully, each mode has a specific tone to notify you which one you have selected. I was disappointed there wasn't an 'off' mode at first but I found this option buried in the app. I really like the adaptive sound control, which automatically selects a mode based on your activity, learning from your behaviour in these situations. So if you tend to use noise cancelling when you're on public transport, or ambient sound when you're walking, it will do the same next time. Pretty useful. If you don't trust the AI (and who does in this day and age?), you can instead pre-select the mode it will switch to when you're walking, running, sitting or in a vehicle. What's really useful is you can adjust the amount of ambient sound being let in for each of these options. There's a 'speak to chat' function which automatically stops the music when you start talking to someone. Thankfully, you can adjust the sensitivity settings for this, otherwise it will stop when you cough, which is very annoying. You also have to say more than 'hello' and actually start speaking for a few seconds before it stops. The headphones connect to Amazon, Spotify and other services. Double-tapping one of the buds plays a new recommended song on Spotify, which is a great feature.Connectivity - have experienced no drop outs so far with my Samsung Galaxy A55 phone. I do miss my old ear buds saying 'connected' and 'disconnected' - the Sonys use a tone instead, and this is easily missed. The other day they disconnected without me realising (I had paused the music to watch a video), and sound came from the phone instead.The case - It's a nice, slim case and it's a bonus that the phones and case come in different colours rather than standard black. Just can't get over the fact that the case snaps shut like a kinder egg instead of soft close (like my beloved Jabras!). Sounds so cheap and nasty, and although obviously no big deal, it isn't something I expected from such expensive buds. Like others have said, it takes a while getting used to getting them out of the case, but easy when you remember how.I chose these buds for their sound quality rather than any other feature, and so far, I'm not disappointed. I give them 4 stars as the other features aren't too great. I was considering the Sennheiser Momentum 4s, but chose the Sony's for their slim case and better reviews. These buds were also What Hi-Fi?'s 2024 winner which really swayed the decision for me. They know something about headphones, right?