Digital offered a fratricidal duel between the Sony WH-1000XM4 and its successor, the Sony WH-1000XM5. So which one should you choose between these two premium headsets? The answer in our comparison.
Want a new quality headset? Perhaps it is not necessarily necessary to turn to novelty. In any case, this is the lesson that we can draw from our fratricidal duel between the Sony WH-1000XM4 and WH-1000XM5. Although the first was launched many months before the second, it wins in points, despite the few additions enjoyed by its elder. Here’s why.
With the WH-1000XM5, Sony ushered in a design shift. And not necessarily the most relevant, in our opinion. Endowed with always neat finishes, this helmet adopts a resolutely more “modern” and refined look, but no longer folds up. It is therefore more difficult to store, transport, and necessarily less nomadic. And according to our testers, it offers feelings of comfort slightly behind those delivered by the M4.
As we mentioned during our test, the WH-1000XM5 is a notch below its predecessor in terms of sound reproduction quality, and purists will probably prefer the WH-1000XM4. In question, a very slight loss of precision, especially in the treatment of mids / highs. But overall, both models are excellent students.
The M5 does not stand out on the autonomy side either, similar to that measured on the M4. It still has a few arguments to make, such as software monitoring which will necessarily be longer, or even a more advanced algorithm on the hands-free kit allowing the voice to be more effectively detached in noisy environments. In fact, active noise reduction is a bit more efficient on the WH-1000XM5.
In short, as we said at the conclusion of our duel, of which you can find the full article below, the fourth version of Sony’s top-of-the-range model still has a bright future ahead of it, all the more so if we consider the price difference between the two.