Why we chose this
Three months of daily testing on commuter trains, transcontinental flights, and noisy cafes left us with one conclusion: the XM6 is the first ANC headphone where we forgot we were wearing them. The fact that Sony also fixed the two real complaints about the XM5 (no fold, mediocre call quality) without raising the price is the rare combination of iteration and restraint.
The review
Sony's WH-1000XM6 is the sixth iteration of a headphone that has quietly defined what 'great consumer ANC' means since 2016, and the small refinements stack into a meaningful upgrade. The new HD QN3 processor handles twice the simultaneous microphone inputs of the XM5, which means the cancellation no longer falters when wind hits the cup or a barista's grinder spins up two feet away. The cup itself folds again — a small ergonomic mea culpa after the rigid XM5 design — and the headband has been re-tensioned so longer wears no longer leave a hotspot at the crown. Audio is where Sony continues to lead: a redesigned 30mm driver with carbon-fiber dome composite pushes the low end further without smearing the midrange, and LDAC bitrates over Bluetooth 5.3 mean that lossless-adjacent listening is finally a default rather than a settings dance. Multipoint pairing now covers three devices instead of two, and Sony's Adaptive Sound Control has matured into something useful rather than uncanny — it'll quietly drop ANC when you sit down at your desk and re-engage when you board the subway.
