Sony MDR-1000X Wireless Headphones Review

The Sony MDR-1000x look stylish and high end. They're made with premium materials and come in two color schemes; Beige and Black. They look slightly similar to the MDR-100AAP, but the headband and ear cups are a lot denser and look more robust. Unfortunately, although the headband lays pretty flat on the head, the thick ear cups tend to stick out. This makes them look like earmuffs on your head, which might not be for everyone.

The Sony MDR-1000x are comfortable headphones but lack a bit of padding. They don't exert a lot of pressure around your ears, and they're also relatively lightweight for their size and build quality. However, the padding on the ear cups and the headband are not as thick as some of the other headphones in their price range like the QuietComfort 35 or PXC 550 Wireless, but they are more comfortable than the Sony MDR-XB950N1.

The Sony MDR-1000x have a good, tactile control scheme that offers a decent amount of functionality. They provide touch sensitive controls for volume, call/music, and track skipping. Additionally, they also offer aware modes to reduce the noise cancellation. This can be done with the ambient sound button that can selectively filter background noise while allowing you to hear voices with relative ease or a unique hand gesture that allows you to momentarily stop all audio and hear an on-going conversation by covering the right ear cup with your hand. Unfortunately, the touch sensitive control scheme is not as precise as physical buttons.

These headphones have a typical closed-back over-ear fit that will make your ears a little warm during longer listening sessions. This also means that they will not be the best option for sports and more strenuous activities but on the upside, they are not less breathable than most typical over-ears and should be fine for casual use.

These headphones are slightly bulky, however, they fold into a relatively compact format for easier transportation. They're a bit cumbersome to carry on your person and won't fit into most pockets, but they're portable enough to fit into bags and maybe some larger jacket pockets.

These headphones come with a sturdy hard case that will protect the headphones against scratches, minor falls, and water damage. It's not the most portable case, but it will easily fit in larger bags.

The build quality looks premium and well built but isn't as durable as once expected. The materials used feel high-end, the headband has a metal frame, and the ear cups are dense and feel robust enough to withstand a drop from about shoulder height. However, there are a lot of moving parts, which allows them to fold and be more portable but also could be potential weak points that will wear over time, especially that the connecting joints are made out of plastic. It's a tough plastic, but it won't be as durable as some of the headphones we've reviewed that use a bit more metal in their build.

Update 18/07/2017: Multiple users have experienced a build quality defect, resulting in a broken headband. We have therefore adjusted our build quality score to reflect this manufacturing issue. Read more

These headphones are a bit bulky, but they're just tight enough, to not be uncomfortable yet maintain a stable fit. Additionally, they're wireless, and won't be yanked off your head because the audio cable got tangled or hooked on something. However, because the ear cups are moderately heavy and stick out a bit, they will sway if used while doing strenuous exercise. In short, they should be stable enough to run with but won't be the ideal headphones for sports.

• Sony MDR-1000x Headphones
• Audio cable
• USB cable
• Manuals
• Carrying case

Above-average frequency response consistency. The bass range of our over-ear and on-ear headphones are measured on 5 different human subjects, 5 times each. The Sony MDR-1000X show exceptional consistency in the bass range across multiple individuals and re-seats. The graph in the treble range shows the consistency of the response across 5 different re-seats on our dummy head. Depending on the positioning, there could be noticeable shifts of up to 6dB at 6KHz, which would be noticeable.

The Sony MDR-1000X have a great bass performance. The LFE (low-frequency extension) is at 10Hz, which is excellent. Low-bass, responsible for the thump and rumble common to bass-heavy music and film scores is over our target by almost 3dB. Some people may like the extra thump. Mid-bass, responsible for the body bass guitars and the punch of kick drums is also hyped by about 3dB. The main remark here though is the 4dB bump high-bass which could add excess muddiness to the mix.

The mid-range is very good. The overall response is quite even and flat, but shows a bit of a tilt favoring lower frequencies. The 2dB overemphasis in low-mid adds a bit of thickness to vocals and a bit of clutter to the overall sound. Mid-mid and high-mid are within 1dB of our neutral target, so the overall mid-range will sound well-balanced, but a bit heavy on the lower mid-range.

The treble performance of the Sony MDR1000X is above-average. Low-treble and treble responses are excellent and within 1dB of our neutral target. This results in a well-balanced reproduction of vocals, instruments and cymbals. High-treble performance, however, is quite poor and tends to take the airiness and brilliance out of mixes. However, this won't be as noticeably as a dip in low-treble or mid-treble. It should be noted that this behavior was only seen when the headphones were used wirelessly. When connected through the wire, the high-treble becomes quite flat and doesn't show as steep of a roll-off.

The imaging performance is decent. Their weighted group delay is 0.45, which is good. The graph also shows that almost the entire group delay is below our audibility threshold. Also, the L/R drivers of our test unit were very good in terms of frequency and amplitude matching. This is important for proper and accurate localization of objects (such as voice, instruments, video game effects) in the stereo field. The phase mismatch in high-treble and the dip in group delay in the same region is the main reason for their lower imaging score. However, this won't be noticeable to the majority of the users and shouldn't be a concern. The newer WH-1000XM2 though doesn't have this issue.

The soundstage of the Sony MDR-1000X, like the WH-1000XM2, is sub-par. The PRTF response shows a good amount of pinna activation, which suggests a relatively large size for the soundstage. However, the bump around 2.5KHz could indicate a soundstage that feels a bit unnatural. Also, since there's not a notch in the 10KHz region the soundstage is perceived as located inside the head.

Excellent noise isolation. The Sony MDR-1000X, along with headphones by Bose and B&W, is one of the best performing noise-cancelling headphones we have measured so. They achieve more than 17dB of isolation in the bass range, which is very good. This is where the rumble of airplane and bus engines sits. In the mid-range, important for cancelling out speech they isolate by about 24dB which is great. In the treble range, occupied by sharp S and T sounds they achieve more than 38dB of isolation, which is also great.

The leakage performance is decent. The significant portion of the leakage sits between 500Hz and 8KHz which is a broad range. However, the overall level of the leakage is low, so the sound leaking out of these headphones would be relatively quiet but mid-rangy. With the music 100dB SPL, the leakage at 1 foot away averages at 39dB SPL and peaks at 54dB SPL, which is just above the noise floor of an average office.

The Sony MDR-1000X have a mediocre integrated microphone. In quiet environments, speech recorded or transmitted with this mic will sound a bit thin and noticeably lacking in detail. It may also be prone to pop and low rumbling sounds. In noisy situations, it struggles to fully separate speech from background noise even in moderately loud environments, like a busy street.

The microphone has a below-average recording quality. The bumps below 100Hz make it prone to pops and rumbling noises. The dip at 200Hz though, make recorded/transmitted speech slightly thin. The HFE (high-frequency extension) of 3.3KHz is not great and results in a speech that lacks detail and sounds muffled.

The integrated microphone of the Sony MDR-1000X is sub-par at noise-handling. In our SpNR test, they achieved a speech-to-noise ratio of 8dB, indicating they are best suited for quiet environments and will struggle to separate speech from ambient noise in moderate and loud situations.

The Sony MDR-1000X have a good battery life at 24 hours of continuous playtime when the noise canceling feature was enabled. They also have a good battery saving feature that automatically switches off the headphones when you're not playing any audio. Unfortunately, they take quite a while to charge, and if you plan on just using the noise canceling feature without connecting to a Bluetooth source, then they will shut off automatically which can be a bit frustrating. They also can't play audio while charging.

These headphones are not compatible with the Sony| headphones connect app like the Wh-1000xm2.

The Sony MDR-1000X do not have simultaneous multi-device pairing like the Bose QuietComfort 35. But on the upside, they do support NFC which makes pairing with smartphones a bit easier.

The Sony MDR-1000x have a bit too much latency to comfortably watch a lot of video content despite having aptX. At 180ms for SBC and 156 when paired with an aptX ready device they perform a lot better than average Bluetooth headphones but will still not be the best choice for latency-sensitive use cases like gaming.

These headphones come with an audio cable with no in-line remote or USB adapter. This means they do not have a mic that is compatible with consoles.

These headphones do not have a base/dock. If you want a versatile headset with a base that you can also use wired, check out the Arctis 7 by SteelSeries.