The small black buds (they also come in silver tan) have two visible microphones on the outer shell, a simple Sony logo on the side, and a pair of memory foam eartips in four sizes.

A word to the wise on fit: Once you figure out what size eartips you want (I stuck with the factory-fitted medium, since I have average ears), you actually have to bend and compress the foam before inserting the earbuds. That’s a big part of why these particular earbuds feel so natural to me, and there’s no big reason why.

Total noise cancellation is impossible due to the physics of sound, but the idiots at Sony and Bose (and even Apple) have come very close. Adding foam is a good way to passively cut outside noise, with the ANC software being able to work less hard on top of better passive isolation. The more you can physically remove the outside world from the listener’s world, like with foam earplugs, the better you can determine what actually happens. Foam earbuds aren’t new; Many high-end in-ear headphones have come with these as an option in the past, and the latest AirPods Pro use a bit of foam in their eartips for similar reasons.

Combine excellent passive isolation with Sony’s advanced noise-canceling algorithms and processing, and you get an experience nearly unmatched in the world of portable listening. It feels like I have a light switch on the sounds of the outside world. Neighbor mowing the lawn and bothering you? Not now. I can’t hear the clicks and claps of my mechanical keyboard, and can physically feel it in my chest rather than actually hear it—when I don’t have any personal flights planned, I pipe in 75 decibels (average real noise level) of simulated airplane cabin noise to test the headphones. This kind of isolation makes these headphones an absolute joy to use for work or other activities where you really want to concentrate.

When I do it Wanting to hear the world around you, the WF-1000XM6 does a great job of achieving what many before them have attempted: true audio transparency. The two microphones on the outside of each bud are large and great at picking up everything around you. The audio that these mics pipe in when you want to feel like the earbuds aren’t even on is better than anything I’ve experienced.

As I said in the introduction to this review, I spent hours with them and forgot they were there. I was even listening to music through my normal desktop speakers—a pair of Genelique 8040Bs, for the nerds—during this time. I tested the transparency mode on a number of Zoom calls on the speakers, and for in-person conversations with my wife, and no one ever complained that I was doing what many headphones do.

Enhanced listening

Sound Connect by Parker Hall

Sony’s Sound Connect app has a lot of customization features, and it also comes with some cool stuff for Sony that people really want to explore. There’s a cool mode, for example, that allows you to make it sound as if your music is coming from a pair of background speakers, such as in a coffee shop. When combined with Transparency Mode, you too can play whatever you want with your supermarket speakers, every moment of your life. Who said listening to inappropriate 90s hip-hop while walking your dog past your neighbors can’t be fun? If You get the right. Seinfeld Theme song playlist, you can live as Jerry. Who Said Augmented Reality Wasn’t Practical?

I even set up a kind, Sony-supplied female voice to greet me when I put on the earbuds: “Good morning, today is Tuesday, March 3rd” and to tell me the time every hour so I could keep an eye on it while checking the battery life. “*ding* It’s 8 o’clock in the morning.”

Sound Connect by Parker Hall

While you’re listening, the controls are simple touch controls on the side of each earbud, and you can adjust what the app does to your heart’s content. The touch controls on this tiny headphone seem easy to hit, and it can be at first, but I have to figure out how to hold them (I think up and down, like you’re about to toss a paper plane aside, works best) to adjust them.

I especially like that these headphones really last all day. Gone are the days of four hours of active noise cancellation (ANC) playback on earbuds. I got about eight hours out of them with ANC enabled often, which is advertised. It got a bit smaller when I enabled LDAC — a high-end streaming codec for even better audio quality (but less range). The advanced Bluetooth codec sucked up an hour or two of juice total, with case and headphone total time (advertised 24 hours on a charge) down to around 20 hours. To be fair, I also used varying amounts of volume and other features during this time (testing it for what it is), so most average people will probably notice a bit better than me while constantly messing with the headphones. Practically speaking, when was the last time you had earbuds in your ears for eight hours straight? I review headphones, and this is a rarity for me too. These blow past the annoyances and “who cares?”

Fantastic sound

Photo: Parker Hall

Sony has tended toward drab and clinical sound profiles in recent years, but the WF-1000XM6 is a lot of fun to listen to, especially in the bass. There’s a kind of soft M shape to the frequency response that cleans up guitars, vocals and rhythm instruments in the midrange but still gives you plenty of punch for kick drums and bass. The highs are hyped to be more bright, but the music can be heard without feeling like it’s so bright it’s hurting your ears.