If you’ve read a single thing I’ve written on TechRadar, you won’t be surprised to discover I’m a bit of an audio nerd. Not only have I got hands-on experience testing many of the hottest wireless speakers on the market but I’m low-key obsessed with getting the best audio quality and features out of my headphones and earbuds. That’s why, when I was given the chance to check out Sony’s brand new WF1000-XM6 earbuds, you better believe I jumped at the chance.
I’ve been seriously impressed. First off, they sound fantastic for the price, offering juicy levels of bass and a tight, well-integrated sound that shows a lot of genres off in a very good light. While they don’t quite have the laser-etched precision of the similarly priced Technics EAH-AZ100 I’ve recently been listening to, they sound a touch more playful and dynamic.
But what’s grabbed my attention even more is just how absolutely crammed full of features the XM6 are. Without a doubt, they’re among the best earbuds on the market when it comes to features, going far deeper than the adaptive noise-cancelling and spatial audio box-ticking most buds offer these days.
Don’t get me wrong. Not every feature is executed flawlessly. For example, the noise-cancelling has proven divisive. While we found it a little underwhelming in our Sony WF-1000XM6 review – I too found it was utterly unable to nix traffic noise in central London – others have praised its ability to diminish background dim.
Equally, while the XM6’s IPX4 rating will see off a sprinkling of sweat, I’d personally like to see a lot more premium buds go a bit further. I go bouldering on a regular basis and live in Britain’s notoriously rainy West Country, so an ability to keep out chalk dust and shrug off the October – April showers would be a definite plus in my book.
That aside though, these earbuds have the broadest feature set I’ve ever experienced from a pair of earbuds. So much so that I genuinely think you could miss a whole heap of this innovative functionality when you first get hands on with your buds. I could wax lyrical about every function in their repertoire but, honestly, listing every feature here would be exhausting for the both of us. That’s why I’ve limited myself to just the top three.
So, without further ado, here’s a hat trick of features I don’t think you should sleep on when buying the Sony WF-1000XM6.
1. Scene-based Listening
One way in which the WF-1000XM6 can make your interactions with your earbuds more seamless is scene-based listening.
Essentially, it can use context clues like the route you’re taking, your location or your pace to determine what situation you’re using your buds in: whether you’re commuting to or from work, walking, running or hitting the gym. You can then setup preset behavior for each of these scenes, whether that’s resuming whatever you were last listening to, making a ‘scene-based recommendation’ or playing a pre-existing playlist on your preferred streaming app.
Right off the bat, I’ve found quite a few uses for this. Whether I’m pushing for those gains in the gym or going for a run outside, having the buds immediately play my drum and bass playlist is a huge time saver. And I love the idea of being able to trigger specific media on my commute to and from work – again it’s a neat way your buds can reduce your cognitive load and work with you in key contexts.
However, I do think Sony could go even further with this. For example, I don’t really listen to music on the way to or from work – what I’d like to see is the ability to hook up my podcast app and resume whatever was previously playing.
And there are obvious gaps in the scenes available. While the Adaptive Sound Control can detect when you’re sitting or GPS data shows you’re in certain locations, there are no scenes for when you’re sat in your workplace or chilling at home. Being able to trigger a Focus playlist for specific times while you’re in the office or sleep sounds when you’re lying in bed at home would be neat options and would be trivial for Sony to intuit based on the data its app is already collecting.
Still though, scene-based listening is a fun feature to play with, even if I hope to see Sony expand the functionality further as time goes on.
2. Head Gestures
OK, so this is the most millennial-coded thing I’ve ever said. But I do not like speaking on the phone. At all. Telephone conversations are intrusive, rarely timed when you’re actually free and, 90% of the time, could have been a text. And yet, despite this, large swathes of society don’t seem to have cottoned on to the fact that, unless you’re my mother, I won’t be answering your calls.
While it’s not the only reason, part of my irritation stems from the fact that every time a random company calls, I have to take out my phone to discover it’s from an unknown number and reject it. Even headphones that enable you to answer or reject calls largely require you to press a physical button to make the call go away. Using their greasy hand sausages to hang up on telemarketers is something a Neanderthal would do, not a sophisticated, upwardly mobile Cro-Magnon male like myself.
Fortunately, the Sony WF-1000XM6 offer a novel solution to this problem. Rather than fish around in your pocket, you can reject or accept a call hands-free. And unlike voice assistant-based systems that still require me to talk in public, Sony’s solution can be utilized with a shake or a nod of the head, something that feels far more immediate than using digits or speech ever could. The speed with which I can hang up on calls is now nigh-on Pavlovian: the second I hear that ring, my head’s already shaking like a contrary nodding dog.
If you’re using the scene-based listening I mentioned above, you can also shake your head to cancel playback when triggered. But I also think these gestures could be used more widely. Off the top of my head – if you’ll excuse the pun – being able to respond to functions on my phone would be useful, for example cancelling timers. The gestures themselves are pretty versatile, so I could easily see Apple adopting something similar for its ecosystem if Sony doesn’t get in there first.
3. Quick Attention
But, for me, the standout has to be the Sony WF-1000XM6’s Quick Attention feature. Rather than having to fumble around with tap controls or pull out an earbud to switch off both your music and noise cancelling, you can simply hold your finger to the left bud and quickly engage transparency mode.
As my colleague Harry Padoan remarked in his feature on the similarly hidden feature on the Sony WH-1000XM6 headphones, Quick Attention is a game-changing feature. Whether I’m tuning in with a member of my team in the office or just approaching the checkout desk in a store, this mode significantly lowers the cognitive effort in those quick everyday conversations you need to engage in.
In fact, the more I’ve used it, the more the gesture has come to be second nature and the more elegant it seems. Isn’t this clean, digital solution the kind of Jetsonian future we were promised, rather than having to fumble physical buds out of my grungy headholes every time I want a conversation? Honestly, it’s the kind of feature that makes other earbud brands feel a little behind the times and I wish they’d hurry up with their equivalent.
I’ll admit the gesture is a little less fluid than with the XM6’s over-ear sibling though. While the larger headphones use a gesture of a full hand placed over the cup to trigger Quick Attention, the WF1000XM6 have far less surface area, meaning Sony has had to assign this function to a held tap.
That’s still easy enough to trigger. But because it has to differentiate between this and shorter taps, there is a good second before Quick Attention is enabled – not a significant delay I’ll admit but still long enough you could easily miss a little of a conversation’s opening salvo.
Still though, it’s an elegant feature that makes using your buds easier and a real reason to pick up a pair of Sony’s buds.
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josh.russell@futurenet.com (Josh Russell)
