Product test
Nothing Headphone (1) review: a great-sounding fidget toy
by Jan Johannsen
Sony WH-1000XM3: Silence in the noise. And jingles
1.3.2019
Translation: machine translated
Sony has done it and knocked the current leader in active noise-cancelling headphones off the throne. The WH-1000XM3 does a lot of things right and one thing above all: a lot of fun. A travelogue.
The Sony WH-1000XM3 don't look like much. Black, simple, rather small. But that's not what they want or should be. Because the wireless headphones are not there to make a bold fashion statement, but do one thing above all else: transport music into your ear.
Four hours of jet propulsion
The test environment for noise cancelling is once again an aeroplane. But instead of 45 minutes, the flight lasts a good four hours. This shows what noise cancellation can do. Music is stored on the smartphone, a Huawei P20 Pro. The Bluetooth connection is established and I deliberately ignore the information about "life jackets under the seat". I've flown so often in the past few years, I could give the speech myself.
How does this thing sound?
The main question is the sound. How do the headphones, which I'll just call the Sennheiser killer, sound? Good. But this statement comes with a big "but", because the WH1000-XM3 are smart headphones. This means that the headphones work a lot with software and therefore have many small levers and switches that are designed to maximise your listening pleasure.
The headphones themselves are smart.
The app allows you to make settings that adapt the sound to your ear. In addition to an automatic sound optimisation process in which the headphones play sounds into your ear and then adjust themselves so that the sound is right for you. You can then adjust the details in the app.
Eben: Sounds good, but can mean a bit of work.
The crux with the brain
But intelligence can be annoying. Because it's always thinking. Always. Never stops. This can be particularly annoying in the Adaptive Sound Control menu item. This is because Adaptive Sound Control uses the sensors on your smartphone and headphones to determine how much you are moving and automatically and continuously adjusts the sound and noise cancelling.
However, it's worth taking a look at the equaliser settings. Because although the auto sound is quite good, I strongly recommend tweaking the settings yourself. Here's a small caveat: the ear is a fine thing and so everything that comes next should be read with a certain degree of scepticism. Just because I think a setting is good and beautiful doesn't mean that it will suit you. Because your ear is not mine, your taste in music is not mine.
I like the bass boost. Because I like nice, warm bass. People often tell me that I like to overdrive the bass. That's fine by me, but I just like it when it has a nice thump. Maybe the treble gets bogged down for me, but I've been prioritising bass for ages. That's why the Bass Boost setting is made for me and my music.
But it's not just the settings where Sony does a lot for you. My favourite feature is one that Sony shouldn't even have, because they pride themselves on another feature. If you place the palm of your hand on the right ear cup, the music is turned down and the noise cancelling is switched off. I don't like this feature. I prefer to quickly press pause and remove the headphones from my ear.
Super, on the other hand, is the following: So I pressed pause, told the flight attendant that I was having my coffee with milk and sugar. I put the headphones round my neck for a moment and sipped my coffee. When I put the headphones back on, Spotify just kept playing the songs and podcasts I had downloaded. Now that's what I call good.
A few hours later
The WH-1000XM3 is more compact than its predecessors. This is noticeable when the onboard entertainment system is interesting thanks to "Back to the Future" and "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", but not interesting enough to keep me awake after a short night and a 7.20am flight. I fall asleep because I haven't heard the engines of the aircraft, whose name translates as "black fortress", since take-off. Silence. Sleep.
So, that's it. I won't be giving my M3s away again and from now on they'll be standard equipment in my rucksack when I'm travelling.
Apropos: When I'm not travelling, I use the WH-1000XM3 in the office, connected to my work PC via a 3.5 mm jack. Noise cancelling in an open-plan office is a must these days, according to me.
This article was published on digitec.ch on 24.10.18
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
