Sony’s adding a top end feature to its new affordable headphones
Sony has announced a new addition to its Extra Bass range of headphones. These new cans, the catchy Sony WH-XB900N’s, show a noted effort from Sony to bring some of the high end class of their prestige headphones in at a lower price point.
In fact, there are several features from the WH-1000XM3 headphones, which former AV editor Ced Yuen described as “the best noise-cancelling headphones ever made.” This brings Sony’s impressive wireless noise-cancelling tech to its Extra Bass range, along with a few other features.
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This means swipe-based controls, and a cool feature which kills the volume of your music and allows outside noise in when you slap your hand over the right cup of the headphones. I regularly use noise cancelling headphones in the office, and this feature sounds like it would be a real help for any sort of co-working situation.
These changes make them feel very fancy, and once you’ve layered on support for smartphone assistants like Amazon Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant. There’s also some 30 hours of battery life, meaning you can get a week’s commuting time out of it without too many issues.
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The price is decent. When it comes to the UK in July, it’ll cost £230, saving you £40 quid on the WH-1000XM3 headphones, which were £330 at launch. This might sound pricey, but if you take a look over our list of best noise-cancelling headphones you’ll see that it’s 30-40 quid cheaper than some of the better performing cans there.
Whether it manages to fulfill the promise of an Extra Bass alternative to Sony’s 5-star WH-1000XM3 headphones remains to be seen, although we’re very keen to take them for a spin and give them a review. If it can hold up, it’ll be an impressive entry to Sony’s headphone family.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.