Sony WH-1000XM4

The Sony WH-1000XM4 is the successor to what are widely considered to be the best active noise cancelling headphones on the market. While the feature upgrades are minimal, they are nonetheless welcome.

Improved audio, more effective noise cancellation and smart new features make the Sony WH-1000XM4 the over-ear headphones to beat

Multipoint Bluetooth, better in-call voice quality, and small but successful tweaks to the active noise cancelation make these my go-to ANC headphones. They remain competitively priced at $350, too, though some of the close-out deals available on the old WH-1000XM3 are certainly tempting. For now, while travel may be on hold that doesn’t mean home life is any quieter, and the Sony WH-1000XM4 are a welcome bubble of isolation amongst the madness.

Simply the best all-round noise-cancelling headphones you can buy.

Supremely comfortable, with a transparent musicality that suits any genre of music, Sony’s WH-1000XM4 noise cancellers are the wireless headphones to beat in 2020.

Sony has made the best even better. With a bunch of seemingly small changes, the company has further improved its already stellar headphones. The WH-1000XM4 sounds great and the custom ANC automatically adjusts if you choose to let it. You won’t find a more feature-packed set of headphones right now, and it’s unlikely you will until Sony updates these again.

It’s fair to say the 1000XM4s are an iterative update, not a radical step up from the M3s. They look the same, sound the same, and feel more or less the same on your head. But Sony’s software improvements — multipoint, Speak to Chat, and nice throw-ins like Fast Pair — aren’t insignificant. And the terrible voice quality has finally been rectified.

Sony continues to serve up some of the finest noise-cancelling headphones on the market – the WH-1000XM4s will be tough to beat.