Sony WF-1000XM4 Industry Leading Noise Canceling Truly Wireless Earbud Headphones with Alexa Built-in, Black

These were expensive but when it comes to sound quality and noise cancelling, I don’t want to cheap out and these didn’t disappoint (I think I bought these at full price too at something like 300$). The noise cancelling honestly feels like magic when I turn it on. It still gives me goosebumps. I've used these earbuds nearly every day for like the last year and a half and have had zero regrets in buying them.Pros: Fantastic sound quality, comfortable fit (I've forgotten I was wearing them on occasion), magic noise cancelling, long battery life, durable earbuds, easy touch controls, outside noise isn't blocked at all when ANC is off so others are still easily heard and understood, sound profiles with the app are pretty easy to play around with and offer some good customization.Cons: Foam ear-tips can get really nasty if used at the gym or for extended periods without taking the time to clean them thoroughly, charging case build quality isn't great (creeky plastic and has some give where others are much more solid feeling), possible bluetooth interference from time to time, simultaneous dual device connection isn't really a thing despite the marketing, no tracking method on the case is a bit of a bummer for earbuds this expensive.I’ll jump into the aspects I disliked since they’re easier to write about.I’d tried beats before these and while I also liked those (and at their price points, they are quite competitive) I found these to have superior noise cancelling and were a bit more comfortable to wear for extended periods.I don’t think they’re the most comfortable earbuds I’ve ever used and frankly, if they were any less comfortable I would have returned them and repurchased the beat fit pro’s I’d originally bought and saved a hundred dollars. I did find the Sony pair to be the more comfortable of the two hence why I stuck with them. I think the issue I have with them is that they’re just a bit large and it can be difficult to feel exactly how they’re supposed to sit in your ear. The way you see them pictured isn’t very comfortable for me so I don’t feel like I’m necessarily wearing them “correctly” but they don’t fall out during my gym time and they don’t look like I’m wearing them the wrong way so it’s really just a nitpick. They don’t sit as flush with my ear as I’d have liked. They look fine though in the mirror. I don’t feel self conscious while wearing them in public which I’d worried about when seeing how large they were.*That could make the difference for you if you like to wear earbuds to get some peace and quiet and get a nap in since they’ll be pushing against your pillow and that’ll get uncomfortable very quickly.The ear tip pieces are not the typical silicon material you find on nearly every other set of earbuds, they’re like a type of memory foam. I assume they chose this material to help with the noise cancellation and I’m sure it does provide a better seal between your ear and the outside world but in I’m opinion, silicon would have been better. Reason being that they’re very difficult to clean off the earwax inevitably gets on them. I clean my ears often and you’d think I never did if you caught a glimpse of my earbuds. For whatever reason, the wax really sticks to the foam and it’s difficult to remove. I damaged one of the tips trying to clean it, they aren’t the most durable things.I ended up removing the silicon ear tips from an older pair of earbuds and using them to replace the memory foam tips. I found them to be more comfortable to wear, easier to get a good fit in the ear, and faaaar easier to clean. The degradation of the noise cancellation wasn’t *that* significant. I did flip between the two types of tips a few times to see the difference and it wasn’t much. It’s a personal preference really, I don’t think the tiny loss in noise cancellation outweighs the easier cleaning. **Edit from future me* Good god, please use silicon ear tips. I made the mistake of squeezing a foam ear tip and I discovered that they act just like little sponges where they absorb all the sweat and ear wax that gets near enough. Wiping them down isn't good enough with foam tips.. you have to literally wring them out and wow was that disgusting. That's with *any* foam ear tips though, not specific to these earbuds.I haven’t really messed around with the equalizer settings all that much. I found a suggested setting on YouTube and tried it out and have since increased the bass some but have left the other settings as they were. It’s pretty easy to change them if you’re into that.Battery life seems great. They haven’t died on me yet and I’ve used them for several hours in a session before when I’d listen to podcasts or use them at home to game with.My advice, try the beats pro fit before jumping up to these. Those had great sound quality and noise cancellation but the little silicon but that holds it in your ear became really uncomfortable for me after half an hour or so. If that doesn’t bother you, then you can probably save yourself the hundred dollars and get those instead. I don’t think the improvements in sound quality and noise suppression on the Sony’s is worth another hundred dollars.But again, these are great earbuds and if you’re willing to spend the money, you’ll get fantastic sound, noise cancellation, and a tolerably comfortable fit. Whether or not that’s worth 50% more for over the competition that has almost the same sound quality is up to you.***Update*** 1 year and some months laterI still recommend these headphones. A year on and they're still fanastic for me but there are a few small issues that have cropped up that I'm not sure existed earlier on in my use with them. The most annoying of which is that I will periodically just lose the sound while gaming for a period of 10 seconds or so. It sounds a bit like that trope where someone's pretending they're going through a tunnel and losing the signal so I wonder if I'm getting some kind of bluetooth interference from another piece of tech in my apartment building. It's not an issue that ruins the product or anything but on occasion I have gotten frustrated with it enough that I took them out and used my wired headset for the remainder of my game session.I think another thing to note with these earbuds is that they're easy to drop and the way they fit into the case often means you'll have to pick them back up because you tried to put them in the wrong side. I'm a cluts so naturally have dropped them dozens of times and on hard surfaces but despite that they still work (nearly) flawlessly.The other issue I have with them is that they're marketed as being capable of being connected to two devices simultaneously when in reality, they're really not. You have to jump through too many hoops for this feature to actually work like it's advertised to. It's not a deal breaker but it does mean that if you use them with multiple devices you'll have an extra step to go through to connect them since they'll often end up paired with the wrong one. Disappointing and inconvenient but again, not a deal breaker. They're still great earbuds.

I abosultely love my WF XM4. I can't believe how good they sound with such small speakers and the bass is good enough without being overpowering.The battery life is really good. That being said I did buy mine not too long after they came out. Sony had some that had bad early batches and mine ran into the battery drain issue. The right earbud would end up draining faaar faster than the left. But Sony took care of me even though I was passed the 1 year warranty and sent me out new ones. I didn't have to pay for shipping to send them in either. Sony sent a QR code that pays for shipping when you show it to a FedEx location. It was about a 2 week turn around to get me the new ones. So while that was a bit of a hassle, the issue has been taken care of in later production runs.The noise canceling is amazing. It's better than thick ear plugs. That being said it's not perfect. ANC work best with repetitive noises. Like when I'm mowing the lawn and listening to music I can't even tell that the lawnmower is running except by the vibrations in my hand. But when it comes to noises that changes pitch often like voices, it's not going to do as good of a job. It'll mute them good enough but not silence them like repetitive sounds like fans, motors, etc.The adaptive sound control works good enough. I suppose it's like how a weak set of hearing aids work. You'll be able to tell you have them on but you'll still hear almost as good as if you aren't wearing them.They can handle sweat from things like being outside in the sun working but I don't know if I'd want to take them to the gym.The fit of them is only so so. You really have to have the right size eartips. One of them has fallen out once when I was using some aftermarket memory foam tips. I would have preferred if they had an arm that came down like Apple's do. This is not to say they don't stay in well, just not as well as I'd prefer.Speaking of the tips that's really my only complaint with these. The stock so called memory foam tips are a really hard variety of memory foam, if that's even what they actually are. I could only wear the stock tips for around an hour before they became way too uncomfortable. I don't know what Sony was thinking in pairing those tips with such nice earbuds but there you have it. So you'll more than likely want to look into some aftermarket tips. I prefer aftermarket memory foam but those are so fragile especially when it comes time to clean them. (lol Maybe that was Sony's reasoning with their hard ones?) I've gone though almost half a dozen different foam tips and decided to just go with some silicon instead. The silicon makes the ANC take a small hit. I mean that's just the nature of the beast of much thicker foam compared to thinner silicon but it's not that big of a hit. I still can't hear the lawnmower with silicon. You really just notice the hit when you first change them out and are able to compare them back to back.Sony's app these are paired with is really easy to use and with a recent update you can now pair these buds to two different sources at once.All in all I'm really happy I bought these.