Review of the Sony MDR-1000X Wireless Headphones

As flagship smartphones now come without a headphone jack, wireless
headphones are starting to become an essential purchase. However, it is not
easy to find a piece well-built and good performing set of headphones in the
market, as most of this audiophile-grade equipment are manufactured with a
standard audio cable. The MDR-1000X is a new addition to Sony’s line-up of high
quality wireless headphones. It features state of the art noise cancelling and
wireless audio technology that promises the best possible music experience.
Does it live up to our expectations? Here’s our thoughts.

The
Sony MDR-1000X is made high quality materials to ensure durability and comfort.
It is manufactured with a soft synthetic leather on the housing and earpads,
and it fits extremely well on the head. This set of headphones also can be
adapted to different head sizes with its retractable headband. To ensure the
best possible noise cancelling properties, the earpads are designed to cover
the whole ear, instead of simply resting on top of the ears. The earcups can
also be folded to make it more portable for travel.

We
can see that Sony has adopted a minimalist design for the MDR-1000X wireless
headphones. There aren’t too many fancy designs or patterns, and the headphones
only features a few quick access buttons. More specifically, there is only the
power, noise cancelling and ambient sound dedicated physical buttons on the
headphones. All the other media playback controls are found on top of the
earpads as touch controls.

If
you want to stop, play, skip through tracks, change volume, or activate the smartphone’s
voice assistant features, you can simply touch or swipe on the right earpad.
However, we do find that such controls do require some learning, and that is
not as straightforward as actual physical buttons. Also, it could also be quite
awkward to control the music and volume by touching the side of the headphone,
and then waiting for audio feedback to ensure the correct response. Nonetheless,
we do feel that such a button-less design blends in well for the whole minimal
aesthetic theme of the headphones.

Sony
has utilized an active noise cancelling method to cancel out all the various
kinds of noise from the environment, so that you can enjoy your music in its
purest form. This is done by having two microphones at both sides of the
earcups, which takes in the noise profile cancels them out accordingly.

Moreover,
users can also customize the noise cancelling profile of the headphones to suit
their diverse needs. With the “Ambient Sound” feature turned on, users can prioritize
environmental sounds and listen to them as if they haven’t had the headphones
on. The Ambient Sound (Normal Mode) feature allows the listener to hear every
day sounds such as traffic, while having music in the background.
Alternatively, the Ambient Sound (Voice Mode) focuses largely on the music from
the source, but still allows you to listen to important voice announcements
that are recognized by the microphone.

Understanding
that users can find it quite troublesome to remove the whole headphones from
the head to listen to important messages or to initiate a short conversation,
Sony has invented the “Quick Attention” feature. With Quick Attention, users
can intuitively place their hand on the right headphone housing to instantly
reduce the music volume and listen to their sounds from the outside world.

The
Sony MDR-1000X is equipped with the best possible audio hardware for great
audio performance. The headphones include a powerful 40mm driver with Liquid
Crystal Polymer diaphragm for handling heavy beats and reproduce a full range
of frequencies of up to 40mHz. Moreover, Sony has also included a digital sound
enhancement Engine to upscale common compressed digital music files to make
them sound better.

I
had 2 other team mates to try on the Sony MDR-1000X headphones and to give
their review and thoughts of the sound quality of the headphones. We all
unanimously felt that the MDR-1000X is an impressive set of headphones. It had
its focus on the mid-to-high range frequencies, which really brings out great
music and vocals. It is particularly beautiful for today’s pop music and ballad
styled songs, where every minor detail of both musical instruments and vocals
can be heard clearly.

Together with the ambient sound feature, which makes
listening to music slightly more natural than noise cancelled scenarios, it
seems that we are listening the original singer who is standing right in front
of you, dedicating a song just for you. It’s an experience that is unique to
these headphones, which no other headphones manufacturers can replicate without
proper audio digital/analogue sound engineering and research background.

These
headphones sounded great, and we felt that they expressed the lower frequencies
perfectly too. The drivers could deliver an impactful punch on the critical
drums, performing feels of the “oomph” to listeners. Its bass is also clearly
defined, and will not overpower the sounds of other frequencies. There is
really nothing we can complain about on the sound quality of the Sony MDR-1000X
headphone, and it is a well-balanced set of audio equipment that was able to
focus and bring out the minute details of individual frequencies.

In
conclusion, the Sony MDR-1000X noise cancelling headphone is a luxurious and
high quality piece of audio equipment that brings real pleasure to your sense
of hearing. It was able to weigh and produce sounds of different frequencies in
excellence, while staying extremely comfortably on your ears. Speaking from the
perspective of casual audio equipment reviewers, there were simply no faults
that we can find in terms of the audio expression of the Sony MDR-1000X.