The tech industry seriously hates wires. Not content to simply eliminate their use between headphones and phone, manufacturers have now turned their attention to killing them off between the earbuds themselves.
Apple wasn’t the first to embrace truly wireless buds, but its AirPods brought the form factor into the public consciousness in the way that only that particular tech giant can.
And Sony isn’t the only audio manufacturer to show off such buds at this year’s show, but its WF-1000X true wireless headphones feel like one of the more technologically advanced pairs out there, thanks to the inclusion of noise-cancellation.
Design and features
This comes down to personal taste, but we’re not massive fans of how the Sony WF-1000X earbuds look.
In fact, were they not completely devoid of wires we'd have said that the WF-1000Xs look a lot like the kind of earbuds you’d get for free with a phone.
Their controls also leave a lot to be desired. While the likes of the BeoPlay E8s have come up with innovative control schemes that manage to make the headphones small without compromising on functionality, the WF-1000X earbuds feel a lot more limited.
On the left earbud you’ve got a single button which handles turning the headphones on and off and pairing them (NFC is also supported from the charging dock), and on the right there’s a single button for playing, pausing, skipping tracks, and answering calls.
It’s a nice selection of features, but we would have really liked to have seen volume control included. We’ve lost count of the amount of times we’ve needed to quickly adjust the volume of our music between different songs, and having to pull a phone out of your pocket feels so last decade.
When we asked a representative from Sony about this, they said the company wanted to avoid having people struggle to push small buttons on an already small device, but with B&O adopting touch-sensitive technology, there are definitely options out there.
The headphones hold three hours of charge, and come with a charging case that provides two additional charges. Sony also advertises that the headphones will be able to gain 75 minutes of playback time from just 15 minutes of charging.
Sound and noise-cancellation performance
It shouldn’t be surprising that noise cancellation has been so successfully miniaturised just like everything else in the world of technology, but even so we found it hard to believe just how good the noise-cancellation of the WF-1000Xs were.
It’s especially strange considering the fact that most wireless noise-cancelling earbuds still make use of a neckband to contain their batteries.
On the noisy show floor at IFA, the WF-1000Xs did an admirable job of cancelling out ambient noise. We’d ultimately have to try them out on a flight or underground train to know how effective they really are, but our first impressions were enormously positive.
The compromise is, of course, battery life. At four hours these aren’t going to see you through a long plane ride, but it should be more than adequate to get you through a workout or commute.
The sound of the Sony WF-1000Xs verges on the chunky side. There are not headphones with the refined grace of your favorite pairs of overears, but nor does its sound weigh overwhelmingly on the bass.
App
Of course, if you’d like to modify the sound then Sony’s Headphone Connect app is exactly what you need. It offers the usual combination of pre-set EQs, as well as giving you the option of completely customising the sound, and there are also a number of noise-cancellation presets to, for example, allow you to hear announcements while blocking out airplane noise.
There are also a number of more novel features, such as being able to move the sound around a virtual space to make it appear as though the sound is coming from behind you, for example.
We can’t see it being enormously helpful, but it was a fun feature to mess around with.
Early verdict
With everyone rushing to bring out true wireless headphones, Sony has done well to find a unique feature in the form of noise-cancellation.
What’s more surprising is that it achieves this so well, without compromising on sound quality or battery life.
We’ll have to see how the headphones perform when we use them out in the wild to draw our final conclusions, but first impressions are positive.
- IFA 2017 is Europe's biggest tech show. The TechRadar team is in Berlin to bring you all the breaking news and hands-on first impressions of new phones, watches and other tech as they're announced.
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