Sony reissues its 2020 headphone at $300 on the same noise-cancelling chip

The only assessment in Gizmodo's review of the WH-1000XM4C that came from someone other than the reviewer was a phone call. The person on the other end heard a lot of background noise and rated the call 6.5 out of 10 ^[6]. Calling on this pair is about as mediocre as most wireless headphones, the review says ^[19].

The rest is one listener's judgement of a headphone he had nothing to compare against. Sony says it upgraded the sound profile ^[3]. The reviewer, who had not used the 2020 pair ^[10], praises the stereo separation and the brighter default EQ without being able to say whether either is new ^[22]. He does credit the C with clearing up some of the hissing that people heard from noise cancelling in the last generation ^[15], and calls transparency serviceable while putting the pricier AirPods Max 2 above it ^[13]. Sony's DSEE Extreme upscaling carries over ^[18].

Gizmodo does not print playback hours for either model, so the battery difference sits in the review as a con and not as a number ^[20].

The 10-band EQ is described in the review as nice if you are the type of person who wants to adjust that sort of thing granularly ^[23]. In my view that is a feature most owners open once and never again. The default tuning is what they will hear for the life of the product.

Counted against the original, the review names four changes to the listening experience, one regression, and no change to the cancelling hardware ^[16]. Tuning and firmware can alter how a headphone sounds and how reliably it pairs. The cancelling chip is the one from 2020, sitting on industrial design that first shipped that year ^[14], six years before this version ^[17].

The buyer this fits is one person spending $300 who wants sound and cancellation and charges the thing at a desk. Gizmodo's verdict on the audio is that the XM4C is an excellent-sounding pair that will impress most people, especially for the price ^[21].