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

I have had these for several months. Firstly, I also own Sony WH-1000XM5 over-the-ear headphones and I can make an honest comparison based on the use of these in-ear speakers. The package comes with a type of foam tip in three different sizes. They are easy to fit and size. You have to download Sony’s “Sound Connect” app to get the best out of these devices. I can quite easily wear them for hours at a time as they are comfortable to wear. Providing you have the right ear tip fitted they take a bit of headshaking before they come out. I found the Base reasonable, but the Treble feels a bit patchy, however, your ability to adjust the sound settings in the equaliser setting means you can get some true depth in a tiny package. The noise cancellation whilst not as good as the WH-1000XM5 over-the-ear headphones, works well enough providing there’s not too much noise surrounding you, but it is far superior to Apple Airpod Pro. You can easily lose yourself in whatever you’re listening to if you’re sitting outside a coffee shop on a normal street. I have found the battery doesn’t last as long as the battery in my Apple AirPod Pro. With the battery lasting around about 4 1/2 hours of continuous play. The charging case that it comes with will deliver just under three recharges before you have to recharge the case itself. The case only takes 40 to 50 minutes to fully charge. I’ve given a straight choice between these and my AirPods, I’m more than happy to dump the Apple product. The richness and depth of sound that. These earphones dilemma are only busted by the much more expensive ones. WH-1000XM5. The ability to make and receive a phone call using these ear buds is surprisingly good, but nowhere near as good as Air Pod Pro. The person on the other side can hear you talk in quite noisey locations. I highly recommend these, particularly if you can get them under £250.

These are excellent earbuds for me. The sound quality is very nice. I have used the app to finetune the sound, and it has beautiful highs and satisfying bass at the same time. The noise cancelling is OK as well. It does not eliminate outside noise completely (eg treadmill). I did not expect them to. It works against the noise enough such that the music is enjoyable, and the noise is not distracting. Stays in during workout (eg running, rowing). The touch controls (instead of physical buttons) occasionally pick up accidental touch, which is a minor nuisance. I use it on the setting that favours sound quality, yielding less stable connection, disallowing multi point connect. Sometimes when in a busy area (eg Liverpool Street Station) there is interference which disturbs the listening experience. This only happens infrequently, when there are a lot of people around, but has not happened on a plane. It does not bother me, as I know I set it up this way. I don't know how the more fault tolerant setting (with lower sound quality) behaves. I can only compare them to the Jabra Elite 7 Pro, which I had previously, and I think the Sony WF-1000XM5 is a lot better than that.

I bought these only a few days ago so this is by way of an initial review. Good points. Getting initial set up done was really easy. Sound is much better than the xm3 I had previously. Wind noise is noticeably reduced. I can hear more of the sound as it was originally recorded. Battery life seems good but I have yet to achieve 8 hours from the buds, 3 hours depletes the battery by 50%. The case is now really small. With the correct ear tips they feel way more secure than the x3 even when shaking my head or running. Sony offer alternative ear tips by post, these are the silicone type originally supplied with the xm3. They can make the buds fit better but at the cost of a poorer anc result. Not worth it in my opinion. Buy some proprietary memory foam ones if the sony dont fit. The "find my device" is really good should one bud fall out and get lost (the reason for my purchase). I found the ear tip checking app very handy but not very reliable as it could report a good fit on the first test and then a bad fit on a subsequent one without moving the buds! I like the wireless charging as this protects the C port. Bad points. No voice advice on Bluetooth connection (just a tone), really frustrated with that. Bit fiddly to get a good fit but once achieved they really block external sound, almost as good as the over ear type (which I also have). The mk6 type are way better. The 'set your equaliser' doesn't seem to do much (but that may just be my problem) The tap to increase volume often results in activating Google or alexa, as does inserting the Right hand bud. Update. As per the above, in use the volume increase 'taps' often result in 'pause' or 'skip to end' very frustrating. Also i find that to talk to anyone i have to cancel anc and also stop playback, this could be much better by implementing the same 'hand over ear' as the over ear cans. I also bought an additional case as the battery box seems quite vulnerable. The standard Ambient sound setting is way too low, to hear speech I need to set the pass through at 20. The voice chat feature is annoying as many sounds (like whistling with the tune breaks into the sound. This also seems slow to react). I turned this off asap. Could do with being more waterproof. Overall IMHO they are better than the Bose with good audio and none of the pops and clicks reported on the QC Ultra.

I was so disappointed with the Sony WF-1000XM5 headphones. I own a pair of Sony WF-C700N headphones. I had been saving up for ages to get an upgrade, the C700N noise-cancelling is great, but I had heard that it isn't even in the same league as the 1000XM5. I was a little apprehensive about all of the reports that the noise-cancelling is non-existent on these headphones, but had also read that perhaps people who had this issue may have purchased from a third-party seller and may have ended up with fake headphones, so I made sure to purchase directly from Amazon. The headphones I received had zero noise-cancelling capabilities. I updated the software, I followed all of the troubleshooting recommendations, I made sure that on the app it was showing as ANC on. I even tried the option of using the Ambient mode but turning it right down to 1. Whatever I tried, these headphones genuinely don't make any difference to the sound whether the noise-cancelling is 'turned on' or not. When I turn on the noise-cancelling on my C700N's it is an instantly noticeable difference, I can barely hear the outside world. The one trouble with the C700N's is that I can hear more voices and background music (for example if I am sitting in a cafe) than I would like, so my logic was, if the 1000XM5's are in a different league for noise-cancelling, then they should perform noticeably better, but they don't actually seem to have working noise-cancellation, so are no use when that is the specific reason for purchasing them. The audio is as good as with any other Sony headphones I've had, including the C700N's, the fit and feel of wearing them was also fine, I liked the packaging and ease of connecting and setting up the headphones and they do look and feel premium, but I can't speak to things like battery life or testing connectivity for an extended period of time. I really wanted to like these, but had to return them. I would have tried a replacement pair, but I don't want them to be the same and end up having to return another pair because it turns out it isn't a fault, but actually how the headphones perform, so I just returned them. It has shaken my trust in buying any other expensive headphones, like the Bose, in case they are all the same and not really any better than the C700N's which I know work great. If I bought them in a shop I probably would have tried another pair to see if I was just unlucky, but not from an online shop like Amazon.

Purchased these to replace a set of Jabra 75t that were slowly dying. Audio quality from these earbuds is brilliant, and surpasses the Jabra by a long way. Comfy to wear for long periods of time thanks to memory foam like inserts (even for those with cavernous earholes). I sit on conference calls all day and they arw comfortable throughout the day. Battery life is reasonable; I can manage a full day of meetings and some music off a charge. Tend to charge every 2 days based on constant usage through the day. Wireless charging for the case is a great touch and makes it super simple. Where these fall down is noise cancelling - I think they're very poor when compared to my old Jabra 75t and 65t earbuds. I notice hardly any difference when noise cancelling is active. The fit does prevent a lot of noise intrusion, but noise cancellation doesn't add much. Expected a lot more for the price. The mic is also pretty useless - it let's far too much background noise into a call, even just a small amount of office background noise. I use a dedicated boom mic so not too much of an issue, but they are useless when out and about. Expensive, good sounding headphones they are. Have since purchased the WH-1000XM4 and use these when in the office - yes, these are overear headphones but far superior in every way: sound, noise cancelling, calls, comfort.

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 decided to take a punt on a pair of the WF-1000XM5s after over a year of use with my fantastic WH-1000XM5 over ear headphones (you've got to love Sony's naming convention...). Whilst I love my comfy, lightweight noise cancellers, I wear in-ear headphones far more often, like when I'm out and about, and have all of the mainstream pairs going - Apple's AirPods Pro 2 and 3, Samsung's Galaxy Buds 3 Pro and Google's Pixel Buds Pro 2. All of these have their own pros and cons though, and I hoped - from experience of the WH-XM5 that Sony's true wireless buds would bring stellar sound quality and ample ANC, even if their build, battery and bang for buck wasn't quite as strong as its competetors. But after just 24 hours with the WF-1000XM5s, I had pretty much given up... First impressions count for a lot, and while the fancy UI dance that AirPods or Galaxy Buds give you is an entirely unnecessary piece of theatre in the process of connecting buds to phone, I never considered the pairing process to be an area that headphones could perform badly in, until now. On taking the WF-XM5s out of the case, I didn't get any prompts with Android fast pair or a regular Bluetooth scan. No problem, I'll just hit the pairing button on the case... Except after 5 minutes of no results, I restored to reading the manual to check I was doing things right, only to have the process of pressing the case's pair button for 5 seconds confirmed - but no dice. So, it was back into the case with the buds, and thankfully after an hour on the charger, they miraculously popped up on about the 30th try. Great. Or at least, that's what I thought until I had to put the WF-XM5s into my ears. I've glossed over the build quality of the case because I was taught that if I didn't have anything good to say, I shouldn't say anything at all. The best comparison I can make to the plastic material and texture of the case is paper mache. Now I know that sounds spitefully rude about the Sony's, but honestly, the rough, hollow-feeling, brittle shell of the case can only really come close to paper mache - or perhaps a recycled paper cup. Sony clearly doubled down on this material choice with the ear tips for the headphones themselves, too. On first insertion into my ears, I wondered if I'd missed an outer protective cover or something, because the sensation of something between recycled paper and cork being pressed into my ears was surely a mistake. But, upon retreating to the cute little box the XM5s come in, the other sizes of ear tips are all made of the same stuff. I should also note that there's a stiff resistence to the ear tips, too, almost like memory foam which should, I imagine, expand to create a nice seal in your ears to achieve noise cancellation, but for me, they just never felt right. I normally wear a larger size of ear tip, I'm an 'L' in AirPods, for example, but between all 4 sizes I tried on the WF-XM5s, I couldn't find a good fit. The default 'M' felt too big, but Sony's Sound Connect app told me they were too small in its seal test, but the 'L' sized tips wouldn't even fit into my ears. The 'S' tips fell out with little provocation, leading me to go with the good old medium size and hope they would better confirm to my ears over time - spoiler alert: in a day, they didn't. But anyway, surely this is all moot, right? As I said, these were the areas I expected the Sony's to fall down in, so what about the important areas where they should excel - like sound and ANC. Well, this was the next fatal blow against the WF-XM5s for me. I have a fairly standard listening test for comparing speakers and headphones, 5 songs across a range of genres to capture a range of dynamics and frequencies and test the full sonic spectrum. Half way into song 1, I knew I was in for a rough ride with the Sony's. I tend to do a first run with no additional EQ, then dial in my preferences afterward and fine tune until perfect. However, no matter what I tried, I couldn't get the WF-1000XM5s to match the range of abilities I could get from Apple's AirPods, Pixel Buds Pro 2 or even Samsung's Galaxy Buds Pro 2 - up until now my worst sounding pair of buds, in my opinion. Whilst the Sony's do capture clarity (which is perhaps their best attribute), the almost complete lack of bass took me by surprise. I haven't had to add bass into buds in quite a while, but even cranking the lower frequencies didn't ever bring the level of low-end balance I wanted. What's more, the poor seal and fit I got from the eartips meant that what little low-end I could capture just leaked out and left the sound more flat than I would like. This leads nicely into the ANC, which I don't feel I can suitable judge because I just wasn't able to achieve the correct 'fit', despite my trying and even the active cancellation couldn't match the passive cancellation I got with other pairs which gave me a better fit. I know the crux of this review rests on the poor fit - and I must note this is obviously highly subjective. This isn't the first (and I'm sure it won't be the last) pair of headphones that have been ruined for me based on fit alone, but with all the recent offerings I've tried, it isn't an issue I've encountered and poor fits and growing more few and far between now. But this really was the nail in the WFs coffin for me. On top of that, the size of the buds also felt fatiguing far more quickly than my other buds. While the weight isn't noticably higher, the blobby nature of them makes them more prone to errant swipes or taps of the touch control panel and they are the first in-ear buds that have caused irritaton with my outer ear in a long time. Whilst I wasn't able to robustly test battery life, it seemed fine in the ~48 hours I spent with them before ultimately hitting the 'return' button with regret and remorse. I really wanted to like the WF-1000XM5s, but the size and fit was truely a dealbreaker here. I know there isn't much that you can do to test this before you buy, but if you're particularly prone to mis-fitting earbuds, be aware that these may not be for you, either.

I've tried several pairs of wireless earbuds over the years, but the Sony WF-1000XM5 easily stand out as the best I’ve used so far. 🎧 Sound Quality & Noise Cancellation: The sound is rich, clear, and well-balanced whether it's music, podcasts, or calls, everything comes through with excellent detail. The noise cancellation is top-tier, noticeably cutting out background noise even in busy environments. ⚡ Charging & Battery Life: They charge **surprisingly fast, and the battery life is solid. I can easily get through a day of use with a couple of short top-ups from the case. 🔧 Build & Fit: Build quality feels premium and sturdy, yet they’re still lightweight and comfortable. Sony includes multiple earbud sizes, which helped me get a snug, secure fit. That’s a big deal for me—I use them while running and working out, and they don’t move around at all. 📶 Connectivity & Features: Bluetooth connection is stable, even while moving or exercising. The ambient sound mode works well for when you want to stay aware of your surroundings—it's not quite as natural as Apple’s AirPods Pro transparency mode, but it's close enough for everyday use. 🎒 Portability: Compact case, easy to carry, and convenient for travel or commuting. They're also quick to pair with multiple devices, which is a nice bonus. Final Thoughts: If you're looking for high-performance wireless earbuds with great sound, secure fit, and excellent noise cancellation, the WF-1000XM5s are hard to beat. They're a bit of an investment, but absolutely worth it for the quality and comfort they deliver.