Two Kinds of Sound?? Sony WH-1000 XM5 vs Bose 700

What do you get when two flagships go against each other? Broken flags? Sinking ships? This is Sony’s latest WH-1000 XM5 taking on  Bose’s Noise Cancelling Headphones 700.

Let’s get the similarities out of the way first.

2 Similarities

Number 1: The design idea of both these headphones is pretty much the same. Sure they use different materials – plastic on the Sony WH-1000 XM5 and a stainless steel on the headband of the Bose 700, but both are:

• Not foldable
• Us a combination of touch and buttons and
• Have a telescoping headband for adjustment.

And Sony having followed the Bose, we can see where the inspiration comes from –  down to the magnetic compartment in the case.

And Number 2: both of these headphones are great for you work-from-homers and multi-device-owners since they can connect to two devices at once and in our opinion get the job done. In their respective apps you can even switch the connections between all your paired devices. You might have some bluetooth connectivity hiccups but that’s got more to do with the current state of bluetooth rather than the headphones specifically.

The price difference is MASSIVE!

Now – as to where there’s a significant difference and what might affect your purchase decision, here’s the lowdown. As shocking as it may seem, there’s almost a $150 difference between the Sony and Bose.  Sony being the more expensive one. Another important difference, it’s almost impossible to find Bose headphones on offer, whereas with Sony the chance is much higher.

Good news! The Bose are currently on offer – so keep an eye out on the links in the description. But let us ease that price shock by telling you that Bose’s current flagship was released 3 years ago in 2019! Yes 2019 – you know, before the whole  

work-from-home-oh-no-I-need-headphones-now period. Since the Sony was released in 2022 – you’ll easily be able to enjoy the flagship status for another 2 years easy.

Comfort & build quality – we can’t believe how good Sony has gotten

But do they feel easy on those auditory organs of ours? Although the Bose is just 4 grams heavier, the Sonys seem so much lighter in weight and lighter in clamping force compared to the Bose. The comfort is phenomenal when you’re A/B testing the two side by side. In case you wanted to know how they do in terms of heat management, we tested that too. Bose heated up to a temperature of around 29-30 degrees after 30-40 minutes of wearing in 27 degree room temperature. The Sony on the other hand is about one degree cooler. In terms of overall build quality, they’re both solid devices and don’t feel like they’ll easily  fall apart. Obviously, we’ve had the Bose a lot longer than the Sony. The age, the color and the  telescoping headband design all have led to some damage on those stainless steel stems of the Bose.  But the premium materials also ensure that there’s not much creak in the bodies – a thing brutally underrated when it comes to audio products!

The Sony, albeit built without any visible metal, felt perfectly durable with no creaking or wear & tear so far. And because the headband doesn’t have stainless steel the amount of flex is unparalleled and is also very creak-free. And yes – similar to human bodies,  the more flexibility the less chance for injuries.

Design & looks – Bose’s colors will WOW you!

Moving to design. Whether you’re apathetic towards the look of your headphones or like us you feel somewhat attached to those cups that cushion those soft ears for hours and hours every day, let us tell you about the different versions you can get. The Bose comes in your standard silver or black. We just have the boring silver here. But you can sometimes even find them in Soapstone or Blue or Black and Gold. We’re sure we forgot some other colors they’re available in.

The Sony is for those apathetic few of you. Go and enjoy it in either a boring silver or black. We have it in, you guessed it, boring silver. Which isn’t even really silver but more like a beige. But who knows – just like the previous XM4s you might be able to get them in Blue or a limited edition White!

Battery life – Pretty Straightforward

From scratching the surface to surfacing the scratch.. Yeh we need help with our segues.  Yeh.. battery life. Pretty massive difference here. With ANC on full, the Sony can last 30 hours and the Bose 20 hours. Crunching some numbers, we take the 30 minus the 20 then divide by the 20 and then multiply by a 100. So yeh, that means Sony can last 50% longer on a single charge!

The Bose charges to full in 2.5 hours and the Sony in 3.5 hours. Takes longer but as we’ve mathematically proven, it also has a bigger battery. Both do have quick charge, Bose can get you 3.5 hours of playback with 15 mins of charge but the Sony, get this,  can do 3 hours of playback with 3 mins of charge. Yes – 3 mins! It obviously matters what kind of power delivery adapter you use.

Despite both Sony and Bose being able to playback audio while turned off, the cable they use is different. Sony, keeping with the times, have stuck to their 3.5 to 3.5mm audio cable. Good guy Sony. But for whatever reason it wasn’t enough for Bose to stand out with offbeat colors but is still trying by supporting a 2.5 to 3.5mm audio cable.

We exaggerate of course, this isn’t such a huge deal but the few of you who will end up using these wired and have standard cables lying around, just be aware of this.

Bose has a UC variant

And finally, a win for Bose for making a UC variant of their 700 model. UC stands for unified communications. This model comes with a USB dongle and will allow your headphones to have a more stable connection for when you make those work calls on Teams, Zoom or Google Meet. Do note, that they are more expensive than the normal version. We haven’t tested the UC variant yet – but didn’t face any weird connectivity issues with the 700 either.

Phone calls

And while on the subject of  calls – let’s go take a walk. In our everyday use – both of these have never disappointed. The Sony XM5 has taken a HUGE jump ahead from its predecessor in terms of clear microphones, but Bose has had this thing figured out! So you know – although that’s good for Sony, Bose has been carrying our voices clearly to the other end – since 2019! What we will say is that  the Sony has the Bose beat in windy conditions. On the other hand – Bose also gives you specific features for calling like adjusting how much you hear your voice – called self voice.

You also get the ability to mute your calls without having to take your phone out of your pocket. The basic vakman controls of volume, answer / hangup are available on the Sony as well as the Bose. And while on extra features – Bose has a voice… that speaks… to us. No this isn’t a spiritual connection but a technological one. This voice speaks out which device you’re connected to. This is such a nice touch compared to the cryptic beeps you hear on the Sony. Sony does have a sensor in the left earcup which means Sony knows when you’ve taken off the headphones, helping it enable nifty features like pausing your audio automatically or switching an active phone call to the phone. No such thing on the Bose.

The app on both the headphones is pretty solid. The Bose Music app is a bit cleaner and easier to navigate around whereas Sony’s Headphone Connect App is bursting at the seams with options and choices. You get finer control over your sound – we’ll get to the sound in a bit and so many noise canceling options that you may just have to cancel the noise these choices create in your head.

Active noise cancelling and Transparency

About that noise cancelling – why don’t you use your own ears to determine – which one does better?We’ll see you on the other side. Headphones are recommended to hear the finer nuance. We think that Sony’s noise canceling bests the Bose but there’s a big caveat. 

A couple of people we’ve been talking to and some reddit threads all seem to point to the fact the Sony automatically switches between  high and normal noise canceling depending on the noise around you. This is… pretty stupid.  Considering the deluge of options Sony lets you customize – how could they have missed this one? 

And again – we’ve almost never experienced that the ANC on the Sony was bad – but this automatic AI enabled thing needs to stop. But if everything works ok – these should beat the Bose. But here’s the thing – the Bose is also pretty good! Not A-tier anymore, but they’re not 150$ worse for sure! Where the difference is more apparent is in the transparency or ambient mode. Bose sounds ok, but is largely muffled and does not stack up to the Sony WH 1000 XM5s. This is a big deal if you want to listen to your environment with your headphones on. On the other hand, if you want to listen to your environment… why do you have your headphones on? Either way – Bose’s age is showing here.

As said before Sony has options to automatically change your ANC depending on where you are, what you’re doing, if you’re talking, which cup you’re covering… just way too many to keep track. Bose has an elegant solution of just pressing down a button to automatically pause your music and enable full ambient mode if you need to. And that brings us to sound.

Sound quality

We’ll leave full binaural recordings of 5 different genres of music using the Sony and Bose over Android and iPhone so you can experience these yourselves.

Wrap up

But here’s our conclusion. These are two different kinds of sound. We would call the Bose more restrained and balanced and the Sony more punchy and dynamic. Sony also has MUCH more bass than the Bose. Bose’s bass never really goes so far that it overshadows everything else, but Sony’s does that and more! On the LDAC codec, which the Sony can use on Android devices – the higher resolution becomes more apparent. So there is a tiny bit more detail squeezed out in the higher frequencies.

Conversely, the soundstage on the Bose is much wider on iPhone than it is on an Android. This was using Apple Music. We also tested with Tidal and Apple Music on Android – somehow we preferred how the Bose sounded on the iPhone over the Android. It’s not a very big difference, but this might be important in case you’re an iPhone owner.

Also in terms of volume, Bose is way louder on an iPhone. It’s a difficult choice, but which one you will prefer really comes down to what kind of sound you’re into and which device you use. Sony has the edge when it comes to customization though, so even if you don’t like the sound too much, you can always tweak. The Bose’s EQ settings are more limited. Like we’ve said in videos before – the choice between the Sony WH-1000 XM5 and the Bose 700 is a choice between smart and simple. But whichever one you choose – these are among the very best wireless noise cancelling headphones on the market today and you really can’t go wrong with either.

The Bose does a few things, but does them very well. The Sony, on the other hand, does a lot of things well too AND has a lot of smarts. If money were no object, we would personally pick the Sony every time. But money is very much an object, and the Bose – despite its age – shows how good a product it is that it can still hold up in this day and age.  

Hopefully we’ve given you enough information to make that choice.

Check out the video for Sound samples

You’ve been agonizing and we’ve been DHRME.