(wind rushing) (slow music)
- As much as I love the AirPods Pros,
I have to admit that daily driving them
with an Android phone is not the greatest experience.
Not because Apple couldn't make it so,
but because they choose not to.
Oh no, you aren't enough our customer,
you have to buy more of our products
to deserve to be able to update your firmware.
Which is why I'm super, super excited
about Sony's WF-1000XM4s.
They need a better name for these things.
It's like, do I want AirPods Pro, or do I want WF-1000XM4?
I'm really hoping that I want the WF-1000XM4.
These have Sony's new integrated V1 processor,
which is supposed to give them
much better active noise cancellation
than their previous generation product.
They also have actually a comparably-sized battery case
compared to the AirPods Pros.
Look at that, it is a little bit thicker,
but the most important thing
is whether it passes the little pocket test for me.
Okay, Dennis, little pocket test.
Ah, it's a little bulky. It's a little bulky.
Here's the AirPods Pros for context.
- [Crew Member] No one uses that pocket.
- [Linus] Yes they do, they use them for AirPods,
I'm starting this trend.
(crew laughing)
I'm a trendy kind of guy.
Charging is handled with USB type C.
And opening it up,
we can see a little charge indicator right there,
and the earphones themselves.
Okay, so much like most other wireless earphones,
they've got these little pushpin connectors
that charge the actual earphones themselves.
So you're supposed to get eight hours
with active noise cancellation enabled,
and then another 16 hours from the battery charging case
for a total of 24.
Why do I keep comparing them to the AirPods Pro?
Because, spec for spec, they're pretty darn close.
Now we actually got two versions, we got the white one,
and then we also got this press kit that has the black one.
And I wanted to see both because,
as much as I like the AirPods Pros,
I don't like the color, I don't think anything
that you stick in your ear should be white,
and I would really rather have black earphones,
so this is the one I'm most excited about.
Okay, so here's the color. Ooh.
Okay, I can see how people could get into
the kind of earthy-toned white ones.
I wouldn't even call it white, it's more of like...
It reminds me of stone, kind of a stone color.
But the black ones look pretty sharp.
Oh, look at that.
All recyclable packaging paper.
What do we got in here?
Okay, so they come with the medium tips pre-installed,
and then they also include small and large ones color-coded,
and you get a type C charging cable.
I don't know if my high expectations
are because I think they will be good
or because I'm just really, really hoping that they're good.
Let's start with just a fit test.
Interesting, they're using a memory foam style ear tip.
The advantage of these is they provide
an excellent seal against the ear canal
with very little noise bleed,
but the disadvantage is that they are not the best
in terms of durability.
Now apparently they've got four microphones total now,
so two on each one.
One microphone on the outside,
that's gonna be for hearing ambient sound around you
that it needs to cancel.
Oh wow, this noise canceling kicked in.
I can barely hear myself talk now.
I mean, I can inside my own head, but that...
Just everything went away.
And then they have a second microphone on the inside
for checking that the noise canceling is working well.
So the four of them all work together.
Let's go ahead and get these paired, though,
and then we'll try it out.
Look at that, just showed right up. Connect.
The ANC on these is eerily good.
Like, I...
- [Crew Member] Can you hear what I'm saying?
- I mean, I can tell you're talking, Brandon, but I...
- [Brandon] You can't really hear me?
- I can read your lips, I can't really understand.
- [Brandon] I'm speaking at a normal volume
but you can't hear me.
- Just barely.
- [Brandon] Wow!
- It's pretty good in terms of
the pressure feeling on my ears as well.
I would say it is
maybe not quite as good as the AirPods Pros,
but it's also a significantly stronger
active noise canceling effect,
that's really, really impressive.
I would say a lot of that probably comes down
to using the foam style ear tips
rather than like a silicone style ear tips.
But obviously the microphone type
plays into it very heavily as well.
So when I'm running it's gonna let ambient sound through.
And then you can decide exactly
what level of ambient sound you want to allow through.
So all the background noise of the warehouse just went away,
but what if I talk to Jono?
- [Jono] Hey, how you doing?
- Yeah, I can hear you, but it's quiet.
If I had music on, I probably wouldn't be able to hear you.
Sorry, the noise canceling, sorry, what?
- [Jono] Send your ear pics.
- Send your ear pics, that's creepy!
- [Voice Assistant] Remove the headphones from your ears.
Next, turn your face forwards
and fit it within the frame on the screen.
Please move the camera away from your head.
Turn your head slowly to the right.
Captured photo.
- [Linus] What the?
That's my left ear, apparently.
Hold on, why don't we try that again?
Okay, got my ear that time.
- [Voice Assistant] Please capture photo.
- Analyzing your ears,
this will take approximately 30 seconds.
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So within the app you can prioritize sound quality,
so it'll use the highest quality codec that it can.
It does support LDAC, so that's pretty sweet.
Or you can prioritize a more stable connection.
And then I found out what DSE extreme is,
so maybe I don't have to
reactivate my Apple Music subscription,
because supposedly it'll actually use the V1 processor
to upscale more lossy files.
So here we go.
This is great.
All the EQ presets you could want, or just off.
You can set a couple of custom ones. That's awesome.
Wait, manual, how do I adjust it?
I can't do it.
Okay, well whatever, if that actually works,
then I guess it'll be pretty neat.
These sound great.
Like, they sound really good.
Punchy, not overdone, great clarity in the highs.
Now I feel like I gotta throw in the AirPods Pros
just to kind of side-by-side them.
The AirPods Pros, to be clear, are not the benchmark
against which all headphones are measured,
they're not great sounding headphones.
But what they are is
excellent active noise cancellation earphones
that are super convenient.
Oh wow, by comparison these just seem like
I don't even have noise cancellation on.
The difference is way more-er than I thought
when I hadn't side-by-sided them yet.
Man, I don't know if I can go back.
The case is kinda thicker, though,
which is a pain in the butt.
And they're not cheap, they're almost 300 US dollars.
Type C charging, though,
means I no longer have to have lightning cables in my life.
But then, I rarely use lightning anyway.
Do they have wireless charging?
They do have wireless charging. Okay.
They're just not really that comparable,
to be honest with you.
But there's more to earphones than sound quality,
and what Apple does really well is ergonomics.
These are so comfortable,
and something that I do that probably most people don't
is I sleep with earphones in every night.
They are, they're not as comfortable.
The tighter seal against the ear,
the fact that they're so bulky...
So you can see, the size difference is marked.
All right, let's try the other thing.
So apparently they've really tuned it
to deal with wind noise.
Select this if wind noise is bothersome.
Using this function shortens continuous playback time.
So I guess I'm not supposed to be able to hear that fan.
Oh yeah.
Oh wow, it works really well.
So I'm getting that exact same effect, the (vocalizes),
kinda sounds like someone
flapping a flag in the wind or something
as the wind passes over the mic.
Oh, that's really cool.
So the noise cancellation
is what takes away the actual whirring,
but then the wind noise reduction is what takes away
the (vocalizes) sound of the wind blowing over the mic.
That works surprisingly well.
I really like these. I'm impressed.
I think I'm gonna try and make the switch,
'cause they really do sound a lot better.
So grab the short circuit.
The case pin also is not as ... it's all right.
This is so satisfying as a fidget toy.
This is like, yeah, it's all right.
That's a very minor gripe, obviously.