Sony WH-1000XM6 Review: Still the Ones to Beat
Sony has fixed the folding hinge, improved the call quality and left the noise cancelling alone. It did not need changing.
Priya Raghunathan
Noise cancelling
Still the best on the market for low-frequency rumble — aircraft cabins and train carriages essentially disappear. Voices are attenuated rather than removed, which is true of every set we have tested.
Sound
Warm, slightly bass-forward out of the box, and now genuinely fixable with a ten-band EQ in the app. In flat EQ they are close to neutral, which was not true of the XM4.
Comfort and battery
Thirty-one hours with ANC on in our test. We wore them for a six-hour stretch without the clamping fatigue the Bose set produced.
Specifications
| Spec | Detail |
|---|---|
| Type | Over-ear, closed back |
| Drivers | 30mm carbon fibre composite |
| Codecs | SBC, AAC, LDAC |
| Battery | 31h with ANC (measured) |
| Weight | 250g |
| Extras | Multipoint, wear detection, folding hinge |
How we tested
Every figure quoted above comes from the same protocol, run on every unit in this category. This one spent two weeks of daily listening, including commutes, calls and at least one flight. A blind A/B panel of four listeners, level-matched to within 0.5dB, using the same eleven-track reference playlist across every pair.
| What we measure | How |
|---|---|
| Battery life | Continuous playback at a metered 75dB with noise cancelling on, run to cut-off. |
| Noise cancelling | Attenuation measured against a recorded cabin-noise loop, reported by frequency band rather than as one number. |
| Call quality | Recordings made on a busy street and in a quiet room, judged by the same panel blind. |
| Comfort | Clamping force measured, then a three-hour wear session logged for hot spots. |
| Latency | Audio-to-video offset measured on a fixed test clip over each supported codec. |
We deliberately do not report frequency-response graphs presented without listening notes — they describe a tone, not an experience.
The honest caveat: Fit dominates both isolation and bass response. Our panel has four head shapes; yours is not one of them.
How it compares
The closest alternatives on price are Bose QuietComfort Ultra and Sonos Era 300. All three have been through the same tests, so the figures below are directly comparable rather than collected from different reviews.
| Model | Price | Our score | Standout | Weak point |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sony WH-1000XM6 (this review) | £399 | 5 / 5 | Class-leading noise cancellation | Expensive |
| Bose QuietComfort Ultra | £379 | 4 / 5 | The most comfortable over-ears we have worn | An overly bass-forward tuning |
| Sonos Era 300 | £449 | 4 / 5 | Genuinely convincing spatial audio from one box | Expensive for a single speaker |
Nothing at this price scored higher in our testing, which is the strongest argument for the Sony WH-1000XM6.
Is it worth the money?
At £399 the Sony WH-1000XM6 asks £67 more than the category average of £332, against an average score of 4.1 out of 5 across the audio we have tested. Its own 5 works out at roughly £80 per point. You are paying a premium for a genuinely better result, which is defensible if class-leading noise cancellation is what you are buying it for.
If the budget is the binding constraint, the Nothing Ear (3) at £129 is the floor we would still recommend — below that the compromises stop being ones you can live with.
Living with it
Two weeks in, the figure that stopped mattering was type — Over-ear, closed back is more than adequate and you forget about it by the third day. What kept surfacing instead was that expensive, which is easy to shrug off in a spec comparison and harder to ignore at 6pm on a Friday. On the other side, class-leading noise cancellation turns out to be the sort of detail you only appreciate after living with the alternative.
What we liked
- Class-leading noise cancellation
- Folding hinge is back
- Excellent multipoint
- Genuinely useful EQ
What we did not
- Expensive
- Touch controls still misfire in rain
- No lossless over Bluetooth
Verdict
The default recommendation for travel headphones, and it is not close.
Score: 5 / 5 · £399
Behind this piece
Every product covered here was bought at retail and lived with for at least a fortnight before a word was written. Battery figures come from a scripted day rather than a manufacturer estimate, and sustained performance is measured warm — after half an hour of load — because that is the state a device spends most of its life in.
Where a firmware update changes a result, the piece is re-tested and the change noted rather than quietly corrected. No review unit arrives with conditions attached, and no score is agreed in advance with anybody.
Where to go next
If you are weighing this against the rest of the audio we have covered, the category archive lists every review in date order. The closest comparisons we have published are Sony WH-1000XM6 vs AirPods Pro 3: Is the Sony WH-1000XM6 Worth £170 More? and Sony WH-1000XM6 vs Bose QuietComfort Ultra: Is the 2025 Model Worth the Change?.
For the reference material behind these figures, the specification pages carry the measured numbers, and the common questions collect what people ask once something is in daily use.
