I’ve been through the fire with these earphones. I’ve testing them longer and more harshly than any other earphone I have ever judged in my whole life. To be even clearer, I’m not talking about Bluetooth earphones ONLY. Even my precious MoonDrop Blessing 2 and 2 dusk have combated and lost to the Sonys. When I say nothing on this planet check more boxes than the Sonys wf1000xm5’s, I mean it. There are those that come really close. AirPods Pro and Bose QcII earphones are easily a few that really have areas that they beat the Sonys in. The Bose QCII still has the best Overall sound quality and best ANC period in history. But they just don’t get out of the way and disappear because of their fit that needs adjustment during use. They also don’t have multiple pairing nor a connection that works consistently enough. The AirPods have “read text messages”, have the best phone call quality, and voice activation for Siri for iPhones ONLY. But they don’t provide multiple pairing to any device, only iOS. And they most definitely don’t even get remotely close to the sound quality of the Sonys.
Everything from LdAC for Android, DSEE extreme for any device, touch to hear, multi-pairing to any device, smallest case, to really nice hear- through, really nice AnC, to decent phone calls, to amazing touch controls, very nice battery life, to custom EQ measurements AI system, to the very best vocals details with pinpoint imaging and tonality vs soundstage placed on earphones today. These things are an ASMR or podcast book lovers’ dream. All while killing the bass in minimal Tech house, rap , or bringing out every single details of Dave Mathew’s bands instrument in the mid range or Alex Ffrench’s piano keys.
Look, a lot of other earphones out there are going to be good at specifics, don’t get me wrong. I am by no means claiming the Sonys perfect. But nothing lives up to the checked boxes like the Sonys do and have done for years. In fact it’s gotten to the point that unless you are Sennheiser, Sony is just as much as a sure thing for people as AirPods are for iOS lovers. So unless specific features or specific fits (because of their foam tips) takes you away from them, it will be pretty hard to walk away from the Wf1000xm5.
So as I stand here this year, I will not be making anymore reviews on earphones until the next 1000 series Sonys are released. And even then it will be almost impossible to top these in any meaningful feature that matters. They sound that great and stay in place so long and I don’t need more of any thing that it does. I don’t need more bass, mids, treble, imaging, soundstage, or battery life. So unless Sony decides to mess these up with bad firmware, this could be my last earphone for years.
Tech-N-Things 