Sony WF-1000XM4 vs WF-1000XM3: A new TWS ANC king?

hello guys andrew here with headphones.com and today I'm going to talk about the

sony

wf-

1000xm4

and the wf-

1000xm3

and in this video we're going to find out which one is better or at least which one I prefer because now I have a clear favorite. Normally I would make some disclaimers here and let you know where these review units come from, but in this case we didn't get them from anywhere, we just bought them and therefore they were not provided. by someone for review and coincidentally that's also why it took me a little longer to post this review, uh, because we didn't get it, you know, before launch, but anyway, we got it now and I've been spending quite a bit .

We actually spent a little bit of time with both and went over the different pros and cons of each, and that's what we're going to look at in this video now to get started, let's start by tal

king

about the case and the accessories. and build and all that now in this case size does matter and clearly the xm4 is the winner there however I want to let you know that when you use the xm4 with this case be very careful what you put in which pocket you would put it in and what else is there in that pocket because you can scratch the case pretty easily in this one, so you might want to know to put something on top of it or put it in a soft case or something like that.

While in the case of the xm3 I didn't have that problem partly because I probably wasn't trying to put it in my pocket, but even with this one there is only slight wear on the top, now let's open them up and take a look at the actual units, for True, the matchup was very good in both. It's almost a perfect thing with my phone, so it works very well, so we can see the differences here. It has a very different look and feel to the xm4 physically. a little smaller but it's actually much less comfortable for me.

I think the xm3 is a lot more comfortable and part of that has to do with the tips. The tips they went with the xm4 are these horrendous foam tips. Well, it's like they're foam, but they're not the type of foam that really conforms very well to the shape of your ear, so I find them very uncomfortable and you have three sizes, but I found that none of them fit. in the smaller size didn't really make it any more comfortable and then on top of that I find that the nozzle here is too close to most of the physical casing causing this to hit the back of my ear so I never I can completely get to a comfortable place when I use it at the proper insertion depth but I tried some extra tips these are just some regular silicone ones and they fit very well and then I find it much easier to get this to fit in my ear ?

Which is strange because normally foam is more comfortable for me, but this seems to work a little better, just because it doesn't bunch up as much as the phone. like these particular foam pads do, but overall you know the shape here is what's a deterrent to comfort for me and of course that's just me. I know a lot of people didn't like the comfort of the xm3 because it's kind of weirdly shaped and, you know, but to my ear, this seems to work a little better now as far as the rest of the build and look goes, aesthetics and all that.

I really like the way the xm4 looks just because it's a little bit more fluid you know the rest of the ear doesn't stand out as much so it's a little bit more discreet which speaks to me yeah I like it a lot. and actually the nice thing about this is that you can see that this is actually the microphone here on the front and I think they have it a little smaller and a little more recessed on the xm3, but I like the way the microphone looks and I think it works well, so the xm xm4 aesthetics for me of course, that's just a subjective thing.

Now let's talk about usability features and app integration and all that. You have the same app for both, of course.

sony

one compared to other, you know, feature-rich wireless headphones, it's pretty good now I'm not going to go over everything because there's actually a lot of things you can do with it and some of them, in fact, a lot of them are there, their tricks. but there are actually some things in there that are very useful to me, uh, and the first one is, of course, the equalizer functionality. You get about five different filters that you can adjust, you know, if you want to make some changes and tweak the tuning.

I can definitely do that and the nice thing about it is that it seems like when you pair this with another device that's not your phone, like for example I pair it with my computer even though I can't pair them at the same time. time as I can, about your Sony, you know, we can't pair, you know, two devices at the same time, I can still keep the preset equalizer, it seems to keep it when I was doing my measurements and I made some adjustments to it. It seemed to keep the preset there which is pretty good now, the other features that are important to me are the ability to change the noise cancellation from on or off to on and vice versa so for example if I'm wal

king

outside center, I want the noise cancellation to be on most of the time and then if I go to a store or coffee shop or whatever and I do want to talk to someone, I want to be able to quickly turn it off and you can assign the button there on the I have it set on the left side so you just touch it and it goes off, which is great, and then what's also important to me is the ability to assign the other side to play and pause.

I know some people might want to have this as volume. or the next track or something like that, but for me again, for that same use case, it's very important to have the player paused and so I've been able to map it to basically have the functions that I need in a wireless device. wireless audio device of some kind other than that the connectivity and the rest of the connectivity that happens here is a little different with the xm4 you actually get ldac here if you want to prioritize sound quality rather than prioritizing connection and with the xm3 i couldn't get ldac, went to sbc and i find there is a difference, particularly when using connection priority mode on the xm3 there is a very noticeable digital artifact effect that continues so i think that really it will only be useful at least on this unit.

I don't know if this is true on all units, but on this unit it's definitely bad enough that I would never use it to listen to music. I would only use it for, you know, phone calls. calls and stuff like that, uh, and then when you change it to prioritize sound quality, every once in a while it actually cuts out, and on enough occasions it got annoying for me, now one thing to keep in mind is that you can have something to do with the phone. It may have something to do with how far away the phone is.

I'm a little tall so maybe it's just that my phone is too low if I have deep pockets or something, and on the xm4 not only is prioritizing the connection uh it's not a digital artifact like it is on the xm3 it's also quite better for overall connectivity in ldac uh in prioritized sound quality so you can leave it earlier at least for me I was able to leave it in prioritized sound quality mode and I didn't have any dropout issues with this and somehow that I just want to say, depending on your use case, that might be the reason to get the xm4 or the worth raising when it comes to noise cancellation of true wireless iems in particular because it's not actually noise canceling, but now dampens more noise, although it's good at both.

These, at least relative to the competition, you know that thinking about the Airpods Pro is not on the level of your Sony WH-

1000xm4

or the Airpods Max or some of the other headphones that do very well at noise cancellation, they do a good job. there I was able to measure approximately a 20 db difference between active and passive, so active, you know, negative 20 db in the overall noise, that is the amount that is actually canceled, however, there are two considerations, one is that it does not It is 20 db throughout, so with the xm4 what I discovered was that it works much better than the xm3 in high frequency attenuation and also it is not exactly 20 db because the passive attenuation is going to have an effect and how it adapts to each person individual.

It will be more or less attenuated if you don't get a good seal, you won't block out as much noise again. This is more of a noise attenuation effect, not a true noise cancellation effect, and will do a good job. attenuate noise background noise which is kind of a consistent tone but not so good for intermittent sounds again in my testing I found that this took a second or two to go from no attenuation to full attenuation that's what it looked like at least I think That the most important question worth asking here is the noise attenuation effect of true wireless devices that have active noise cancellation, an important enough reason to surpass them only with normal wired devices, which also have very good Se they fit and they have a really good seal there because they will also have a noise attenuating effect with just a touch of you know, isolating and occluding your ear canal, so yeah, think about that, I mean, the extra 20 dB that you get? of the active mode here are they really worth it? maybe it's because there are definitely some environments where that's really useful, but there are also other environments where it's not entirely necessary, since I would say that sitting here and where there's an air conditioner on right now really isn't very beneficial for This is the noise cancellation feature over normal Iems because you are already going to attenuate that sound.

Let's talk about sound quality next though, so I suspect this is going to be a bit controversial because there are a lot of people. who really prefer the sound quality of the xm3 and I prefer the sound quality of the xm4, but you'll have to hear me out on this before I explain why I really prefer the sound quality of the xm4. It's worth mentioning that there have been several different measurements of this online that are different from the measurements I've made and both use standard 711 couplers particularly on the treble. I've seen some measurements that have this a little darker than what it is. one shows that you know there could be a unit inconsistency in the unit variation, but you'd like to think the tolerances for these things are a little better, but I just want you to know that this one measures a little more normal than some of the ones that I've seen are really dark, so it's worth keeping them in mind now before getting into the frequency response which I'll show on the screen shortly.

I want to talk a little about the technical performance that both have. pretty decent macro contrast again for an iem, especially for wireless, both are reasonable in detail retrieval, both are reasonably spacious again for an iem, they're not like you know they don't actually have a real soundstage, but like As far as localization in the head goes, there isn't much going on with the center image, but the left and right are pretty well defined and there aren't any major gaps or anything like that that I can hear right now. I'd say this is par for the course, but I just spent some time listening to some really abysmal Iems on a video I came across not too long ago, where I reviewed a bunch that were under 150 and these are head and shoulders above those, they're a lot better for technical performance than any of those and I also think that the xm3 has a little more resolution in detail there in the treble where you also see a little more of a peak and I think that is partly due to that peak that appears this way way it's a little more punctuated, whereas on the xm4 I find that the image separation is maybe not as well defined, maybe a little more cluttered with busy passages, so not as well controlled and then also again a a little softer in the treble, meaning it's also not as scored, so overall I'd give a slight technical performance advantage to the xm3, but it's very close, they're not that different when I EQ the xm3 to the same level as the xm4 and now let's talk about that because on the xm3 I definitely need to EQ this on the xm4 using the app on the xm4 I don't really need to EQ this I mean you can um and I've played with it a little bit and I just went back to the frequency response default with this with the xm3 you have a smooth, uh mostly balanced V shape because you know, the bass to the mids don't interfere with the mids as much, uh, it doesn't, you know. super bloated or something but you also get a bit of spicy treble with a bit of emphasis around 6k maybe starting around 5.5k all the way up to 7k and in the eq app I actually pulled this out. low quite a bit it's at the lower end of sibilance, usually sibilance, the most pronounced qualities of sibilance right in the middle, it hits around 8 to 8.5k and this is more around 6k where I hear the boost and you can see it The graphic is there too, so it's more like the sounds sound a little aggressive on the xm3, like thisI turned it down a bit.

Actually, the fun thing about this is that the xm4 is a little more relaxed almost to the level where I reduced the 6k peak on the xm3 overall. I think the xm4 is a little warmer but I find the treble on the range to 6.3k, which is one of the filter options. in the EQ software it doesn't, it doesn't boost it with a particularly narrow q value, which means that if you want more energy and presence in the treble, you can just boost that section in the EQ software and retain that kind of smoothness. it has um without being that kind of score uh you know the sharpness of the xm3 whereas on the xm3 I found that you know I had to reduce it and when I reduced it you know yeah it helps but it never quite gets there. kind of smoothness quality that the xm4 has now for me, I actually like the bass of the xm4, I think it's totally fine just because they're designed to go out and they're meant to be in loud environments and when you're in those loud environments , if you have low frequency tones that are intermittent, they will intrude on that and have a little more presence there for those lower frequencies, which again you don't know, noise cancellation doesn't attenuate them as well, as it attenuates the high frequencies, I actually think it's fine, but unfortunately this is one of the areas where the Sony app filters don't allow you to adjust that particular range, you can go down 400 hertz, but I don't think the benefits of doing so would outweigh the costs.

You know, I wish it was at 300 or 250 or something like that. Interestingly, even without the app eq, this gets the xm4 reasonably close to my target Iem preference, which I like. To describe it as basically neutral with a bass boost, there is a bit more bass boost again in the upper bass of the xm4, but overall you know that for the mids and highs this is very close to that goal now, if you're wondering why there is There is no peak in the treble as you may have seen in other measurements of this iem, that is because this coupler is the rao4o2 cross coupler which does not have the coupler resonance there and instead dampens it a bit.

So, you know, write it around where you see that little indentation there, that's where that damping effect is and I think there's a good argument to suggest that maybe it dampens it a little bit, so again, this is almost exactly. where I want it for its frequency response for my year the xm3 is the one that needs eq and the xm4 at least this variant or this version doesn't really need eq but the good thing about this is that even if you feel that The way you can equalize this and get it right, you know, you can give it back that shine and it keeps the smoothness without being fatiguing or anything like that, so my conclusion will be that they are both good, but I think the xm4.

It sounds a little better, at least for my use case, and that's going to be a little surprising, a little spicy, for those who prefer the xm3 sound, but that's something important to consider. I know there are a lot of people who really prefer the xm3 sound and if you can find it for less money then this is probably still a good option because I think they are both very good Iems. I was actually evaluating the xm3 for a while. before reviewing the xm4 and I thought I would choose the xm3 over the airpods pro because I really like the airpods pro.

I would probably choose the xm xm3 over the airpods pro. I just think this is a little bit more detailed and then I got to the xm4 and I thought I liked the xm4 better because of the functionality it's a little bit better um like the connectivity and things like that it's a little bit better the noise cancellation is a little bit better um and then I also find it to be a bit softer and the treble less sharp and fatiguing, so I think ultimately, although not as impressive or technically incisive as the xm3, I think the xm4 would be my choice, however, I can see why someone would prefer the xm3 if you're looking for a more V-shaped, uh, and less warm kind of sound, then you know the the sale given that the xm4 exists, the only question lingering in my mind with this is whether or not this is representative, or some of the other measurements that I've seen, like the ratings one, that I've seen, is pretty dark on issues or you know if that one is representative and you know, with a sample size of one, that's kind of a limitation on this, but this one sounds like fair to me, almost except for the bass and the xm3 is like, wow, that needs the 6k to be removed.

So that's basically my opinion on these two. I think they're both amazing, but that'll do it for this video. Stay tuned for more noise canceling videos. Videos with noise canceling headphones in the near future because I'm still searching. to find the best noise canceling headphones for audiophiles, since the police are after me, now is a good time to stop the video, okay that's it for this video, thanks for taking the time to watch it and I will see you on The next one, goodbye. now