WFH with Sony WH-1000XM4
In the current scenario, working from home has become a new normal for most of us. Consequently, this has lead to an increase in virtual meetings. Attending these meetings from home can be a pain because of unavoidable noise. Noise cancelling headphones have proven to be an excellent solution to combat this problem. So that’s why I got myself a pair of Sony WH-1000XM4.
The main idea behind noise cancellation headphones is to use mic to detect ambient noise and remove it by producing sound which essentially cancels out the noise. Combined with noise isolation that these headphones provide, the ANC (active noise cancellation) of over-ear headphones reign supreme in providing a noise free experience. And of all the headphones these reign supreme in terms of noise cancellation.
The headphones are pretty lightweight and comfortable to wear for long hours. They have decent battery life, it takes me about 3 working days to completely deplete them and they support fast charging. In terms of noise cancellation they are really amazing. Once ANC mode is activated you can’t hear any ambient noise. It truly feels like going into a different dimension. You can also control the level of noise cancellation and allow ambient noise to come in. It has an adaptive ambient noise control mode which detects your state and triggers the level of ambient noise. So if you are walking, ANC will get reduced and some ambient noise will be allowed to go in. This is very useful if someone likes to listen to music while walking on a street. The headphones also sport a wear detect sensor to automatically pause the music when you take them off. They also switch off automatically if they stay taken off for too long. The headphones have a lot more features, but I found most of them to be not useful for me. It has a DSEE Extreme mode that’s supposed to convert audio to higher quality. I can definitely feel a difference in quality when this mode is on or off, but it’s marginal. It also has support for voice assistants Google Assistant and Alexa. Personally I didn’t use it much as I didn’t feel the need to.
Mic quality is mediocre. It is definitely really good for an over-ear headphone, but it’s not as good as laptop’s in built mic or even smartphone’s mic. Although it cancels noise, the clarity of mic is mediocre and I’ll recommend to use it only when you are in a very noisy area, otherwise it’s just not worth the loss in quality. The XM4 also supports connecting with 2 devices at the same time. In my experience this has not been a good experience, as it leads to loss in audio quality and faster battery drain. Also if you pair it with your laptop and phone and if you get a call during your meeting, the meeting audio gets dropped off completely for a considerable amount of time, even if you end the call on phone as quickly as possible. Maybe this will get updated with software updates, but currently it’s a pain to use. For watchng videos or listening to music, the multi point works well, even if you get a call.
My overall experience with these headphones has been really great. I think Sony has done an incredible job at making these headphones perform really well and be very user friendly. Despite all of it’s shortcomings I definitely enjoy WFH with WH-1000XM4 (They should consider fixing this name, sounds like a password).
