We purchased the Sony WH-1000XM4 so that our expert reviewer could thoroughly test and review them. Read on for our full product review.

The Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones had some pretty big shoes to fill, and I don’t mean a competitor’s. I’m literally talking about the 1000XM3 version that came out a few years ago. Next to the Bose QuietComfort line, Sony’s flagship noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones are truly the most impressive piece of consumer audio tech.

The 1000XM4 take a refreshing approach to the next-gen genre: they don’t try to add too much. They look every bit as premium and high-end as the 1000XM3, and their sound quality is near identical. That’s great, because when I reviewed the third-generation models on Lifewire last year, I considered them to be the best possible ANC Bluetooth headphones you could buy for most people. But as a serious tech reviewer, I couldn’t pass up this new version, so I picked up a pair of the XM4s in black and put them to the test to try and determine what meaningful updates had been made.

The clean, simple design that Sony uses is something that most users will be quite pleased with. When Bose launched the 700 series headphones, the company did so with a serious design overhaul. Sony, on the other hand, decided to emulate last year’s WH-1000XM3s and retain the monochromatic design with the occasional coppery accent color (on the ANC mic ports and depicted on the Sony logo on the earcups).