The company continues to further improve its excellent headphones.

With its 1000X line of devices, Sony continuously stood out from the competition when it came to headphones and earphones. Just when it seems that others are gaining ground, the company adds new features or improves audio quality to maintain the first place on many rankings. Today, Sony unveils its recent flagship product of True Wireless headphones: the WF-1000xm5 (300).

While some of the company’s features are returning, these headphones have been completely redesigned, from the general appearance to the drivers and the chips that support a large part of the features. Sony always manages to integrate more tools than anyone else while significantly improving the sound quality. But all the progress comes at a price: these are the most expensive Sony wireless headphones in the 1000X range to date.

Design

For the WF-1000xm4, Sony has made big changes to the design of its flagship headphones. Despite all the great things offered by the WF-1000xm3, these headphones were great and looked more like Bluetooth headsets. The model had a different shape and was smaller, but they were still quite big and their weight on the outside of their ear could lead to an uncomfortable fit. Fortunately, the company has simplified things even more with the WF-1000xm5, reducing the previous model by an additional 25% in terms of overall size and losing 20% of the weight. For this reason, the new model fits my ears the best of all the previous 1000X headphones and you never get the feeling that they might fall off.

Sony has also slightly updated the ear tips of the M5. Once again, as with the previous model, the company opted for sponge foam. This switch on the WF-1000xm4 would not offer the best fit for me. However, the company claims that the earplugs are more flexible this time and include an extra-small size to fit more ear shapes. The combination of the smaller headphones and the revised ear tips gives the WF-1000xm5 a much more comfortable and secure fit than the M4.

Smaller headphones also mean a smaller powering matter, but not radically. The WF-1000xm4 was already compact, but Sony stripped down the new version and gave it a more rounded shape. The LED status and pairing indicator of the previous model was a thin strip on the front. This was replaced by a single point and the company added a pairing catch next to the USB-C port. On the M4, you had to insert the bourgeois in both ears, then hold your fingers on the tactics counterpart controls for 5 seconds to put them in pairing mode.

Software and features

Like most Sony headphones, the company’s Headphones Connect application allows you to customize and activate features or enter the sound profiler. Once inside, the tools range from the basics – things like managing Bluetooth multipoint connections, multimedia playback and modifying on-board controls -to more complex elements like adaptive tone control.

This is the feature that Sony has been offering for some time and that automatically changes your noise control settings depending on your activity or location. The latter, as always, requires you to give the application access to your location data so that it knows when you are at home and when you arrive at the office. The adaptive tone control is very convenient, even if you only use the activity side of the function. You can configure it to activate ambient noise (transparency mode) when you start a race. With adaptive tone control enabled, you don’t have to reach for your phone or press the WF-1000xm5 every time to access your favorite settings when you switch from sitting to walking or vice versa.

Under the sound tab, the application at the very top gives you access to noise control (noise cancellation, ambient noise or disabled). And with the ambient noise, you can adjust the Level (1-20) and filter the voices through a special relay setting while suppressing other sounds. Speak-to-Chat is also there, Sony’s handy tool that stops the sound when it detects your voice. It’s a nice feature, but she’s still as prone to coughing as ever.

In the sound tab you will also find the equalizer with the manual settings and the available presets. Sony has also added a Find Your equalizer sound test, and the challenge powered feature allows you to choose the sampling settings that sound best before creating your ideal mode. Finally, in this section you will find 360 Reality Audio Setup/Ear analysis, Bluetooth connect Priority and DSEE Extreme Upscaling (on/off).