Sony WH-1000XM3 Review: Best Headphones of 2018?

These are the Sony m1000xM3’s or mark 3 as I might refer to them and these are some of the best headphones that I have tried over the last few months and quite possibly the headphones to beat moving forward into the new year. The headphones that I have been using before have been a bit of a mixed bag. I either switch between the previous version of these headphones, the m1000x Mark 2, or the Bose QC 35’s and Beats Studio 3’s.
All of them had their reasons for why i would come back to them. The Bose QC 35’s were probably the best sounding pair, closely followed by the Sony m1000x m2. The Beats studio 3’s sounded pretty good but the best part about those was the W1 chip that gives you AirPods like pairing across all apple devices, which is just a fantastic feature.
The new Sony m1000Xm3’s honestly encompasses everything that i loved about those other headphones, minus the w1 chip, into one pair. These are the best sounding headphones that i have used so far, they are very lightweight and comfortable and now come with some extra features that some people might find incredibly useful. Oh by the way, the noise cancelation is excellent. That was another area that the Bose QC 35’s generally had the upper hand in but I’d say these are comparable if not a bit better.
I really like the clean look of these headphones with the gold trim surrounding the branding on the headphones adds a nice touch. The left side is where you’ll find your 3.5mm headphone jack, power button, and active noise cancelation button which can be toggled on or off. The right side is where you’ll charge your headphones and quite possibly one of the best upgrades from last years model and that’s the move to USB C. We are one step closer to USB-Cing all things and i love it.
The right side of headphones is where you’ll also toggle between tracks and raise the volume with a few types of gestures. For volume, you’ll swipe up or down to raise or lower and to skip tracks you’ll go left to right. A double tap also pauses the track.
Sony also offers a few features that are really helpful like the ability to hold your hand over the right ear cup to lower the music and noise cancelation, and it sort of amplifies the noise around you so you can hear what’s going on. So if somebody is speaking to you or the flight attendants are announcing something over the intercom, gone are the days of taking your headphones off or pausing your music. Once you let go, everything goes back to normal. This is something that needs to be included in more headphones.
The Sony headphones app, available on android and iOS, gives you access to a few more features like being able to control the ambient sound, fine tune the noise canceling, atmospheric pressure optimization for when youre on a plane, sound position control, etc...
I do thing, as crisp and clear as everything sounds on the 1000XM3’s, the headphones do tend to lean towards a more bass heavy sound profile. This is pretty common in most headphones that i have used in the past, especially pairs like the studio 3’s from beats BUT inside the app you can actually fine tune the equalizer or pick a sound profile like treble boost, which really helps even out the treble and bass and works well for me personally.
If you’re using an Android device, these headphones work well with google assistant and you can actually set the ANC button to act as google assistant when you press and hold it. The headphones can also read back your latest notifications and can all be customized via the sony headphones app. You can also use google assistant to change to a specific track on Spotify so you really dont need to reach for your phone if you dont want to. Pretty convenient.
At $350, which is a pretty common price point for headphones like these, youre getting the best of the best in my opinion for 2018. They are sleek, comfortable and quite frankly sound amazing all while offering some incredible noise cancellation so you can really just get lost in the music or content that your listening to.
You can pick up a pair of the Sony wh-1000Xm3’s by clicking the link in the description down below, which full disclosure is an affiliate link and at no extra cost to you, does send a bit of a kickback to help support the channel when you use the link.
Let me know what you think of these headphones in the comments and always, be sure to subscribe so you dont miss more videos like these in the future. Thanks for watching and i will see you next time.