Link:
Sony Wf1000 https://amzn.to/3gRLRAY
Sony XB700 https://amzn.to/2ARyJMP
- I once spent some time with xf1000,
the WF-1000XM3s, which are a premium, truly wireless,
active noise canceling, in-ear monitor from Sony.
But today's blog is not about wf1000, it's about
The WF-XB700s,XB stands for extra bass.
And they're a 7000rs cheaper.
What do you think about that?
Let's see if the expensive ones suck
Come on baby.
I feel like already, the packaging is more austere
than this one, and here it is.
Whoa, very lightweight, plastic AF.
Not completely opaque, and here they are, these are bigger.
These are definitely bigger than the XM3s.
But they're not huge, holy these are isolating.
My voice sounds weird, even.
They're like earplugs, almost.
These do not have active noise canceling,
the isolation that you get when you put them in,
is all you're getting but that might be enough.
The other thing is that these don't have
any capacitive touch, they don't swipe,
they don't have gestures, they're not capacitive,
each has a button, on the right button,
you can play and pause, that's a single tap.
You can double tap for next,
you can triple tap for previous,
you can hold for the virtual assistant,
in my case that's going to be Google Assistant
because I'm an Android boy baby.
And then on the left side, that's your volume.
You click it to increment in steps going up,
louder and louder and you hold it
for continuous volume going down.
So one step while one's continuous is a bit weird,
but it's easy to get used to, you just hold it
until it's as quiet as you want and then you let it go.
So let's see how it actually works with music,
when I pair it to my phone.
One of the differences between these puppies
and the more expensive premium counterpart is battery life.
These ones advertise 18 hours of battery life,
whereas the more expensive ones advertise 24 hours.
Now that's not just on one go from the earbuds,
that's including the charge case.
Interestingly, these ones advertise a longer playtime
from the earbud itself, they say nine hours
from the earbuds themselves,
whereas the XM3s advertise six hours.
I might as well just open these up.
You can already see the packaging is
quite a bit more involved, but here we go.
The charge case is quite a bit bigger between these two,
it's honestly slicker looking, it's got this nice click,
this one you're not going to really be able to fidget with.
But there is the size difference,
this has a way bigger battery I think,
because it provides three full charges to the headphones,
so that's three six hour charges,
plus whatever you can hold on the headphones
for a total of 24,
whereas this one I think is only 100 milliamp hours,
so you just get one additional charge.
So nine hours per charge, total 18.
Okay, let's play some music,
I've been obsessed with this song by Annie Lennox,
called Walking on Broken Glass,
I'm pretty sure it's an '80s song, ever since I listened
to the Strong Songs Podcast from Kirk Hamilton,
he did an episode on this song
and I've just been blasting it, sorry wife, holy cow.
With these things, they live up to the name,
the extra bass, this song sounds almost like a dance remix.
When the bass kicked in it was just pulsing, driving.
If you're a bass head, I think you're going to like these,
but more and more I'm thinking,
these are probably great for the gym.
They're IPX4 rated, and that means that they have no rating
for dust, that's the X, but they do have a rating for water,
in this case it's a four, I believe it's out of nine,
and the four means that they can withstand splashes
from any direction, and that's basically just sweat.
So it looks they are geared towards gym goers,
that obviously makes sense.
It kind of looks like it could get splashed and survive,
it almost has like a boat finish.
They look like they could pop out of my ear
and land on a dumbbell and like they're going to be okay,
someone else could maybe step on them, they might survive.
And this case is just going to easily slip into a bag,
I think these are going to be great for the gym,
especially since they're so isolating,
you can drown out the music that the gym is playing
above your music pretty easily with these.
Yeah, they go loud enough,
louder than I would go for a healthy listening,
you're going to have no problems hearing your music
overtop of ambient noises at the gym and stuff like that.
They don't have fins, let's look at what else is in the box.
Instructions, an adapter for USB-C to A,
and then more ear tips.
A lot of athletic centered in-ears
will give you optional silicone fins that you can put on,
and they kind of nest into this part of your ear.
These didn't come with that, but I think it's okay,
like they feel pretty sturdy
and it's because they used the same design mentality
as these ones, which is the three point contact
kind of system in your ear, and they're really stable.
You could do box jumps, you can head bang,
you could fall off your skateboard,
and you know, hit something
because you weren't listening properly with these,
and they're probably going to stay in.
Your shoes might fly off though.
Similar to the higher priced premium version, the case,
it does have these little indicators which I really like,
red and white is also indicated on the headphones
so it's just a no brainer when you want to put them
back in the case, and they snap in really nicely too.
Uh-oh, my tip fell off, just the tip though.
Let's listen to some more tracks.
They are punchy on the bass,
you're going to love these if you like EDM and stuff,
but when I'm listening to non-dance content,
they're still good headphones.
They're really articulate,
I'm noticing things that I might not notice
when I'm listening in my car for example.
Now as for the high frequencies,
which can be harsh on crappier headphones,
if I'm listening to some rock and roll,
a lot of the times those guitars can sound harsh
on crappier headphones, on these,
they still sound nice and clear, not bad at all,
they don't hurt, and these,
I would say are competent on the higher frequencies.
But are they the best?
I mean do you think that these have the same sound quality
as these ones for a 100 dollars more?
Let's find out.
Okay, yeah you can see there's a lower profile,
they're rounder kind of sleek looking.
Yeah, these sound different.
They do sound better, they sound different,
it's not just an EQ thing.
The more expensive ones have an app, a companion app,
and there's various EQs presets,
and you have the ability to make your own,
and then you kind of adjust the music as you like it.
These ones don't have a companion app,
they have no ability to change the EQ,
so I thought maybe they just had a bassier EQ applied
to them and locked in, that doesn't seem to be the case.
They sound quite a bit different
than the more expensive ones but they do sound good still.
These are pretty comfortable,
they come with several different ear tips,
and you should change them out
because if you don't get a good seal in your ear canal,
you're not going to feel that really good bass,
you need that.
Three different sizes on here in addition
to what they came with, so you'll probably be pretty covered
and they're the standard ones
that you can buy replacements on Amazon, stuff like that.
One note that I found
about the Google Assistant functionality,
is that you cannot hail the assistant using just your voice.
You have to hold and press the button down
for the assistant to get hailed.
That doesn't mean that it blocks the voice,
like if I just say blank bluegill,
my phone will still hear it and pick it up,
but I'm talking to this microphone.
Other differences include the Bluetooth actually,
these have Bluetooth 4.2, rather than Bluetooth 5.
I mean functionally, it's probably going to be okay,
but theoretically, Bluetooth 5 has double the bandwidth
and four times the range so depending on your use case,
you might have some kind of deficiency there,
but you're probably going to be okay.
The advertised quick charge speeds are different.
So if you charge the premium ones for 10 minutes,
you get 90 minutes of playback.
If you charge these ones for 10 minutes,
you only get 60 minutes of playback.
I mean it's still a pretty sweet stat.
I like that spec, it's good, it's just not as good as these.
All in all though, I think for a 130 dollars right now,
these are really good, if they had been included
in my roundup of like 50 wireless headphones
that I did a few months back,
they would have been the best in the bunch, I think.
Of course, they're more expensive.
What was the limit on that one, 50 bucks?
Well these are a lot more.
They're almost triple that, they're a 130 bucks.
I think they're awesome, I think if you're new to audio,
these might be the best headphones you've ever had.
If you have the extra 100 bucks, these are fantastic,
and they have active noise canceling,
they're sick on a plane.
Like if you have expensive headphones,
if you have planar magnetics
that you wear in your bead at night,
and then you want to go to the gym,
and have something that like doesn't kill you,
like I have this pair of truly wireless that are garbage,
and I don't even want to wear them when I go the gym,
these aren't going to do that to you.
If you're used to good headphones,
and you just want something not that expensive
to wear to the gym, these are going to be great,
I think these are really good all-rounders
and I recommend them.
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