Sony XM4s

[jonas123]

Hi all,

I've got a link to buy some sony XM4s for £240 which expires tomorrow. I've only used in-ear headphones up until now (bose qc20s - excellent although are falling apart).

Convince me that I should splurge out on them, or go for something else.

Main uses would be work calls (so mic needs to be good), some music listening, gaming and flights (when that happens again...)

 

[Columbo]

Cant comments on the XM4's specifically but the XM3's were absolutely awful for calls for me and a couple of my colleagues cant use their XM4's as their primary call headset so I presume they are the same. None of the reviews highlight how bad they are using them for communicating and I had to get rid them because of it as I was virtually inaudible on Teams / Phone calls and in the end went for the Jabra 85h which are much much better for calls.

The NC on the Sony's is definitely better however and they are much more bass heavy but the Jabra's are not exactly bad, I fly every week for work (or did) and will again when allowed and will stick with the Jabra's. Battery life is astonishing as well. I've gone 3-4 weeks between charges before with maybe 1-2 hours of use most days.

 

[mid_gen]

For office use, the XM3s plus a V-Moda inline wired mic is a good setup. They're amazing for flying as well, wouldn't travel without em anymore.

But making calls over bluetooth is awful with any headset, as there isn't the bandwidth to do decent quality upstream and downstream audio. Once the mic is active, your playback quality drops to telephone standard.

For music listening, they are very good for wireless noise-cancelling headphones. If you want the best music listening experience for quiet environments, you can get a lot better for less.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

If you want an all rounder they will be hugely compromised. I own the xm3 and I only ever use them on planes. I wouldn't dream of using them for gaming or anything else tbh. Only in noisy environment where their noise cancelling is their best feature.

For work calls a cheap headset is more than good enough.

For gaming if you are after quality then akg k702 with seperate usb mic.

If you are after an all rounder hyper X cloud is the range you should be looking at. Starts at £35 for cheap ones and goes up to £150 these days. Their really good stuff is usually priced around £60-£80. The hyper X cloud 2's