Expert review of the Sony WF-1000XM3
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- With active noise canceling, you can close yourself off from your surroundings.
- You can adjust the sound preferences with the equalizer in the Sony Headphones app. Thanks to the battery life of 24 hours, you can listen to your favorite music for long.
- The noise canceling of earbuds doesn't reduce ambient noise as well as that of headphones.
First impression of the Sony WF-1000XM3
My first impression is that the earbuds look very slick. The charging case may seem a bit large at first, but it easily fits in your pocket. This means you can take it with you everywhere without any problems. When you first take the earbuds out of the case, you notice they don't have physical buttons right away. You can control everything with your finger on a touchpad or via your phone.
Good noise canceling for earbuds
Earbuds and noise canceling was never a very successful combination. Especially not compared to the noise cancelling headphones have to offer. With the WF-1000XM3, Sony has tried to fix this and offer as good an experience as you get with headphones. Did they succeed? Sort of. For earbuds, the noise cancelling is good. Outside and in the office, you listen to music with less ambient noise. But heavy wind is problematic, as it cracks through the sound.
Great sound with the app
The sound of the earbuds is decent. They have a good bass and the earbuds hit the treble tones well. So it's fine, but the party doesn't get started until you download the app. You can adjust everything to you liking via an equalizer, so you're fully immersed in your music. I'm a big fan of the preset 'Enthusiast' in the equalizer. This really makes music come to life.
Poor controls
So the noise canceling and sound are good, but the Sony earbuds aren't as great in terms of controls. With the touch controls on the left side, you can turn off noise canceling. And with the touch controls on the right side, you can pause the music. This means there's no way to change volume via the earbuds. This makes the lack of physical buttons a major shortcoming.
Stable connection
With fully wireless earbuds, the connection is always important. It makes or breaks the earbuds. With a bad connection between the two earbuds, your appetite for music draws away. And with a good connection, you can listen all day long. As for this model from Sony, the connection is stable. While listening, the connection dropped once. But after a few seconds, they were paired again.
Pause automatically
More and more earbuds have this feature. Remove an earbud from your ears and the music will pause. A great function, provided it works properly. And unfortunately, it doesn't work well with the WF-1000XM3. Sometimes, the music pauses, other times it doesn't. The responsiveness of this function also lags. A missed opportunity.
Conclusion
With the WF-1000XM3, Sony is moving in the right direction when it comes to earbuds. Despite the poor controls and failing smart function, these earbuds are of a high standard. The noise cancelling is fine for earbuds and the sound quality is also definitely very good.
