Sony Reckons It’s Made The Best Noise-Cancelling Earbuds Ever, So We Tried Them On Sydney Trains
How much noise can an earbud cancel?
Sony appears to be marketing its latest set of noise-cancelling, wire-free headphones by appealing to its potential customers’ capacity to feel annoyed.
For one, the company’s latest premium earbud offering is named the WF-1000XM3, not to be confused with the WH-1000XM3, which is an entirely different product. Advertisements for the WF-1000XM3 also feature a neat montage of annoying office sounds, which these small earbuds promise to block out entirely. And if that weren’t enough, Sony has kindly put together a report informing us that 80 percent of Australians encounter unwanted noise in the workplace, mostly from their colleagues (I’m writing this from an open plan office, so believe me, I know).
Leading by annoying your customers is a pretty bold marketing strategy, and after all of that you’d hope that the headphones in question live up to their promise. And if we’re talking about purely about sound, they definitely do.
The audio quality of the WF-1000XM3 is out of this world. They’re certainly the best-sounding earbuds I’ve ever tried — you’d hope so, given that they retail for a cool $399.95. That price gets you two Bluetooth earbuds, a chunky but beautifully designed charging case (about twice as wide as an AirPods case), and, in theory, freedom from all auditory annoyance. Naturally, I tested them out in the most annoying environment I could think of, and I’m pleased to announce that yes, these headphones pass the Sydney Trains test.
Here’s what your hard-earned money gets you. Teacup not included.
If you don’t live in Sydney, all you need to know is that Sydney’s trains are notoriously shit: upon boarding, you must be prepared for a 15-minute trip to take anywhere between 20 and 50 minutes. The possibility of your entire train being asked to evacuate and cram onto another already-full train looms constantly.
Under these trying conditions, the Sony WF-1000XM3 headphones thrive. In noise cancelling mode, they manage to drown out the rattling and clanking of Sydney train carriages entirely, though they are regrettably not quite powerful enough to silence that one guy who believes it is his god-given right to make loud phone calls on a peak hour train. You know the one.
The WF-1000XM3 also have easy multi-touch buttons to pause music or noise cancelling (helpful when you need to listen to announcements about train delays), excellent battery life (6 hours with noise cancelling on, aka approximately the length of time it took me to reach work via public transport one day last week), and of course, no wires or cords to get stuck on fellow passengers when you’re all crammed in like sardines.
What’s that? Trains are delayed indefinitely due to an easily foreseeable mechanical fault at Town Hall? What are the chances?
Okay, The Sony WF-1000XM3 Are Great On Sydney Trains. What About The Rest Of The World Though?
So, where do these headphones fall down? Anywhere that they’re subject to a little jostling or movement, it seems — these headphones quite frequently fall down and out of my ears at inopportune times, such as when I’m walking off a train and into a crowded station.
Part of this problem is no doubt due to my small ears, which have foiled my quest to find a good set of wireless earbuds in past (the Sony WF-1000XM3 come with several different sizes of ear-tip, but even the smallest don’t quite fit right into my ear canal to provide a snug seal). In good news for fellow small-eared folks, a friendly Sony representative gave me a very useful tip — tugging down on the bottom of your earlobe as you twist each earbud into place can help you get a snug fit.
The result is very comfortable (much more so than the Powerbeats Pro), but not particularly secure. It’s also decidedly unglamorous, and about as graceful as the name WF-1000XM3: I don’t slip on these headphones with ease so much as look like an idiot pulling my ears in all kinds of directions for a good five minutes until both earbuds are more or less in place.
And once the earbuds are in, the combined threats of gravity and the fact that these headphones cost $400 have me constantly touching my ears to check that the earbuds aren’t about to fall out. Constantly touching my ears means accidentally touching the multi-touch buttons on both sides, which in turn means constantly pausing and playing my music while accidentally toggling between ambient sound and noise-cancelling modes. It’s not a particularly stress-free way to walk around, and I definitely wouldn’t recommend taking these headphones on a run.
Even if you’re blessed with adequately-sized ears, it seems likely that you’ll run into at least a few of these issues due to the design of the multi-touch buttons, which are totally smooth and triggered by an extremely light touch. It’s very easy to brush them unintentionally when you’re simply trying to grab the headphones, and there’s nothing tactile to help you locate them quickly when you really need them.
Simply press this button to stop ignoring the women in your life.
Most frustratingly, these earbuds have no external volume controls, forcing you to use your phone. This renders the multi-touch button’s powers a little redundant — I’m not going to fumble around to pause my music by poking myself in the ear if my phone is already in hand.
The lack of external volume controls also contributes to an interesting bug I discovered while trying to pair the headphones with devices other than my phone. When I experimented with pairing the WF-1000XM3 with my laptop (a 2017 MacBook Air), I discovered that the earbuds’ maximum volume appeared to be limited to whatever volume I had my phone set on immediately before switching devices. In other words, the only way to actually hear sounds at a reasonable volume was to set my phone to 100 percent volume before disconnecting the WF-1000XM3 and pairing with my laptop. Needless to say, this is fucking annoying. Not to mention literally deafening if you, like me, forget to reduce your phone’s volume before re-pairing with your phone.
The Sony Headphones app users are encouraged to install for use with the WF-1000XM3 is also a little buggy — pretty frequently, it refused to acknowledge that my headphones were actually connected to my iPhone. When it’s working, the app provides you with an equaliser, the battery status of your earbuds, and the ability to change what each multi-touch button does, along with a bunch of frankly useless information like the name of the song you’re currently playing.
At the end of the day, then, the WF-1000XM3 are a fantastic set of earbuds for a very specific time and place. Namely, they’re great for riding Sydney trains. Almost anywhere else, the cracks start to show — walking around outside proves that the ambient noise mode really cannot handle wind (a strong breeze sounds like a gale), while the noise-cancelling mode is perhaps too good, drowning out the sounds of nearby traffic so well that it makes me feel quite unsafe. With the falling-out-of-ears problem and the fact that these have no IPX water resistance rating, they’re probably not ideal for the gym. And as for blocking out office noise, I’m always going to lean towards a pair of comfortable over-ear headphones that connect to my laptop and also visually signal to my colleagues that no, I don’t want to talk right now.
The question, then, is whether you want to shell out $399.95 for a pair of headphones you’ll be constantly swapping out for other sets. If you spend a lot of time on public transport and really value your audio quality, the answer may be yes. Personally, I’ll probably be sticking to a crappy pair of wired earbuds for my train journeys. For less than a hundred bucks, they at least deliver volume controls.
You can check out the Sony WF-1000XM3 for yourself here. Images courtesy of Sony.