These are amazing. My wife and I each bought a pair for an overseas trip early this year. You know. When there were overseas trips. Anyway, these are now my daily WebEx headsets. Crystal clear audio. Noise cancelling is fantastic. And apparently the microphone works well according to my co-workers. I wear them about 4 hours a day. Very comfortable and only charge them once a week.
I agree, these headphones are peerless. I love mine. The only thing that I have yet to work out is how to make my microphone work as well as you describe, @sjyokel Any insight from your experience or that of your coworkers? My mic registers a bit muddled.
I’ve read mixed feedback on the mic performance. Would love to get these for both music and for video conferencing. Does the mic only work well in quiet rooms?
My theory is that it has to do with the noise cancelling feature. I haven’t tried this out, but I suspect that the noise cancelling that occurs when you listen to music is counterproductive when you actually do want your voice to register on the mic and be transmitted clearly. Almost like pushing the sound of your voice away from the headphones in NC is on. I’ll investigate and let you know if what I’m thinking is correct (I don’t use them to videoconference so I haven’t had to had to address this, but I’m now curious). For audio, they are amazing.
Hmm. Yeah that sounds plausible. I may just buy them anyways. The price is just too good. Damn Woot taking all my money. Lol.
I’ve had my pair (champagne gold, but same model otherwise) for about a year, and they have honestly been one of the best investments I’ve made for my ears.
I love my home theatre and dedicated music HiFi setups, but time to sit and use those is limited. For the other times, these are a phenomenal experience.
Build quality and sound reproduction are amazing. The iOS app to optimise and personalise settings is brilliant, as it allows selection for amount of ambient noise vs. cancellation, atmospheric pressure (which I find to be the thing that I least like about Bose, despite otherwise great noise cancellation), spatial processing (which I largely ignore although it produces some fun effects), very minor HRTF adjustments, and EQ… It can be more processed, or more transparent, depending on your preference. And the touch controls are fantastic after a minor learning curve; The ability to use transport controls, volume, pause noise cancellation for brief conversation - That is all super.
Mic sensitivity and the beamforming are not perfect, but beat most on-ear/over-ear headphones, and come close to many of the better in-ear solutions. They’re obviously not quite on par with the wife’s AirPods Pro for voice on calls, but I do greatly prefer the clarity of the sound that I hear and comfort. I don’t primarily use them for many calls, but I have yet to have anyone complain about my voice quality yet. They’ll have enough clarity for general usage, if not to record your vocals for a backing track (*sarcasm - They obviously aren’t meant for more than basic voice calls).
All told, pretty stellar deal. And I’d still say worthwhile at well over the price. If $250 AirPods Pro at $215 is great, then $350 Sony cans at $220 should be considered a veritable steal.
I’ll pile on and add my “these are awesome” post. Fantastic noice cancellation and extremely comfortable to wear. They are superior to the Bose QC2s I had prior to them. Fantastic price for this if you’re in the market for headphones.
I did neglect to mention that I got my pair on Back Market. They refurbished them to Mint condition and have a year warranty backing up the purchase. They were $199 when i snagged them there, and I’ve been super happy with them.
Just a heads up that the new version of these, the WH1000XM4, are coming out soon. There are a few sites that have feature previews. Not much has changed other than some sound processing and Bluetooth features.
I have the WH1000XM2s and those are amazing. My wife has these and they are a bit better, but I don’t think enough to justify another $200. That being said, if you don’t have these I would highly recommend picking them up at this price. This is already a top-rated deal on a popular deal site, so I wouldn’t be surprised if these sell out.
Does anyone know how these compare to Sony model WHCH710N/B? They are also noise cancelling and look almost identical. I can get these at work as a 5 year service award. Selling for around $130.
Edit: I just compared on the Sony website. They are not even close spec wise.
I bought these from here the last time around. I don’t think they’re worth this price. I am waiting for the next Bose 700 $299 or less deal.
PROS. These XM3’s are comfortable, the battery lasts a long time, and the sound equalization only required a little adjustment through the app. The noise cancellation of a public transit’s engine is acceptable. In an open desk environment where other people can be heard and can get loud, with music playing, they usually work well enough to keep focus. People and voices can still be heard. The mute music feature (cover right side) is handy, but other people won’t initially understand why you’re raising your whole hand instead of lifting an earcup or poking a button. The auto-pause of music when removing the headphones usually works pretty well and is a nice feature.
CONS. They have inferior noise cancellation for the voice spectrum compared to QC35 II’s (Costco). They have to fit just right - “have a good seal” - in order for noise cancellation to really work. The optimization part of the app doesn’t help. The battery drains on its own after a few weeks. I had not used mine in three weeks and they were completely drained after having been fully charged and I turn then off every time I put then away. Once the headset is paired with a phone and the app, you cannot change the noise cancellation and will get a dreaded “The google assistant is not connected”, unless you opt to plug in a 1/8" mini headset - when plugged in the options for ambient, N/C and “N/C off” are available. So unless you have the app and the phone with the app connected or a 1/8" plug handy, you cannot change the noise cancelling. Devices with bluetooth but no app therefore are stuck in N/C on mode. It doesn’t support more than one phone with the app and always asks to set it back up if you do have the app installed with more than one device. The volume control is not very precise as it is a swipe up and hold and wait for it to recognize the volume increase (or down for decrease). Over bluetooth the sound jump from “1” to “2” on a scale of 1 to 10, is too loud for relaxed listening in my opinion. It really needs a 1.5 in quiet environments. Finally the audio navigation (A2DP) is pretty awful. Half the time it thinks I want to pause the music instead of go forward or backward.
I have the previous version of the headphones and I’ve had zero issues with mic performance and I’ve use it for conference calls multiple conference calls over the past 2 years. In fact in most instances people can hear me more clearly thru the headset mic than through the phone mic.
Amazon has these refurbed atm for 199$. Thoughts as to which is a better deal, here or amazon?
https://www.amazon.com/Sony-WH1000XM3-Headphones-WH-1000XM3-Refurbished/dp/B07HJ87WJD
Is this the same as buying the international version since it only has a 90-day limited warranty? Not much of a deal if so…
Sometimes we can get better deals if we carry the warranty.
It’s a nice theory, but no. In reality, there’s a BIG difference between noise cancellation used for removing environmental noise when listening to audio (in an isolated environment such as over-ear headphones) vs sending audio and canceling the ambient noise via a built-in mic. Difference involves different noise cancellation frequencies/ranges, actually regenerating the processed outgoing audio (which would require a DSP) vs generating additional audio noise into the isolated environment to “cancel” the ambient noise, etc. tl;dr - they were never designed to cancel mic noise, only outside noise which impacts the user’s ability to hear audio via the earcups.
I’d say the Woot! deal is a better one than the Amazon because these on Woot! are new at $219 and the refurbs are $199.
I purchased a pair of the refurbs from Secondipity, which is the seller of the linked refurbs, and they are absolutely amazing. I wouldn’t have known they were refurbs other than not being shipped in the original Sony box. The set I received looks like they had never been used.
I did buy the additional warranty Amazon offered due to the price and not wanting to chance it. If I didn’t already have a set (which I somehow got for $170) I’d be hitting the purchase button now.
I’ve had my XM3’s for over a year (June 2019) and haven’t had these problems. I used to use mine pretty solely for travel, but obviously am not doing that. They sit on my home desk and get used every now and then. I haven’t had any battery issues at all. Also, noise canceling has been pretty good for me. I will use them when I mow or snow blow and they drown out the noise pretty well. I just did a sanding project with an electric sander and they were amazing. I think they’re the top of the options in this category.