Sony ULT WEAR Headphones Review

The Sony ULT WEAR have a sound profile that's defined by their powerful bass response. We tested them with the ULT mode off, and their hefty dose of low-end draws comparisons to the bass-forward sound signature of the Sony WH-1000XM5 Wireless. However, the ULT WEAR sound even more low-end focused due to a big dip in the treble, which more closely resembles the SoundGuys.com Headphone Preference Curve than our own. There's plenty of thump and rumble on tap that you can boost even more with the ULT button. If you prefer a different sound, you can always adjust the sound profile via the graphic EQ and presets.

Interestingly, using these headphones with a passive wired connection somewhat tames the bass frequencies, resulting in a different sound profile, but when wired and active, they sound largely the same as their wireless frequency response. There are also slight changes to the sound profile when the ANC is enabled/disabled.

The Sony ULT WEAR have very good frequency response consistency. If you can achieve a solid fit, you'll experience consistent audio delivery across different listening sessions. However, they form somewhat of a tight seal on your head, so if you wear glasses, you might experience a loss of low-end impact.

The Sony ULT WEAR have alright bass profile target compliance. Their bass response supplies exaggerated low-end, so basslines and kicks are emphasized in your mix. On songs like 'I Used to Love Him' (feat. Mary J. Blige), the bassline and lower frequencies of the breakbeat sound visceral and punchy, though some listeners may find them boomy and bloated. It's really a question of taste: if you want to feel the bass, these deliver.

The Sony ULT WEAR's mid-range target compliance is outstanding. The response is well-balanced across the entire range, resulting in the detailed and balanced reproduction of vocals and instruments. There's a very slight bit of overemphasis in the low-mids, which can add some warmth to snares and bass overtones. There's also a slight dip in the high-mid that slightly thins out the upper harmonics of vocals.

The Sony ULT WEAR have middling treble target compliance. The response is uneven across the entire range, which causes different frequencies to jump out or sound distant. The low treble is veiled, resulting in a loss of definition in the upper harmonics of vocals that sounds warm but unclear. This extends to the lower part of the mid-mid, after which the response peaks. As a result, lower-pitched sibilants, like S and T sounds, can sound dull and lispy, but higher-pitched sounds, like the harmonic content of cymbals, can come across as relatively bright.

The Sony ULT WEAR have a good peaks/dips performance, meaning they mostly follow their own sound profile. A gentle peak in the mid-bass and high-bass adds warmth and punchiness to kicks and basslines. The mid-range is even until a series of jagged dips and narrow peaks weaken or add focus to vocals. Due to an L/R driver mismatch, the left side of our unit produces an uneven and harsher-sounding peak than the right driver, which follows a similar curve but at a relatively lower output, causing the same frequencies to sound distant and veiled. A smaller but narrow peak follows where the low-treble transitions to the mid-treble, rendering sibilants to sound artificially exaggerated, and it ducks down for a slightly more even sound. Finally, there's a very large peak in the mid-treble that can add shrillness and excessive brilliance to higher-pitched sibilants, like cymbals.

The Sony ULT WEAR's drivers are well-matched in amplitude and phase response from the low-bass up through the mid-mid regions. Above that, there are some deviations in the amplitude and phase response. There's an especially notable difference in amplitude and phase response in the low treble, which can cause sounds like vocals to be improperly placed in the stereo field. 

These headphones have satisfactory group delay performance. The group delay falls almost entirely below the audibility threshold, so bass sounds like kick drums feel tight and punchy, and treble-range sounds like cymbals feel crisp and accurate. What appears on the graph as a small amount of negative group delay in the high-mids is caused by the amplitude and phase differences in that same region. 

The PRTF measurements indicate a disappointing amount of interaction between your audio and pinna. These headphones lack the qualities of an angled reference speaker as their design doesn't facilitate audio interaction with your outer ear. 

These headphones have excellent harmonic distortion performance. Even if you're listening at loud levels, they'll reproduce your audio cleanly, with little audible coloration.

These headphones don't require an amp to drive them and can play back audio at high listening levels on mobile devices.

These headphones are compatible with Sony's 360 Reality Audio feature, which can help create a more immersive, 3D listening experience using Digital Signal Processing (DSP). It can even analyze your ear to adjust audio to suit your unique ear shape. However, you'll need to be subscribed to a compatible app, like TIDAL or Nugs.net, to take advantage of this.

These are the settings used to test the Sony ULT WEAR. Our results are only valid when using them in this configuration.

While the Sony ULT WEAR are the first of the ULT product line, their design bears some resemblance to other Sony wireless over-ears, like the Sony WH-1000XM5 Wireless and the Sony WH-CH720N Wireless. They feature a sleek, recycled plastic design with yokes integrated into the ear cups. This integrated design, coupled with a monochromatic color scheme that's punctuated only by a silver Sony logo on the headband, makes for a unified aesthetic. They come in three color variants: 'Off White,' 'Forest Gray,' and 'Black.'

These over-ears are comfortable. They're as lightweight as the Sony WH-1000XM5 Wireless and feature large plastic ear cups that sit nicely on your ear. While they can clamp your head quite tightly, this is mostly mitigated by plush, soft earpads. However, the earpads are so soft that they can cause some fatigue in parts of your head over time, especially if you have a larger head.

These headphones have a large array of controls that are spread across a touchpad on the right earpad and three physical buttons. For users that have a visual impairment, there's even an indent carved into the left ear cup so you can tell right from left. The touch surface is large and responsive, making it easy to register commands, but the physical buttons are almost too responsive and located in a place where they can easily be accidentally pressed. There are audio prompts to acknowledge various functions, like powering on/off, pairing status, battery level, ANC mode, ULT mode, and min/max volume. It's worth noting, however, that the user guide that comes with these headphones is extremely long and dense, so finding out how to perform simple commands can be a challenge.

On the left ear cup:

Power button:

• Press once: Checks battery level.
• Press-and-hold: Turns headphones on or off. If you continue to hold this button past turning the headphones on, you'll enter Bluetooth pairing mode.

ULT button:

• One press: Cycles between ULT 1, ULT 2, and ULT OFF (ULT 1 for a deep bass sound and ULT 2 for an even bassier sound).

ANC/Ambient Sound button:

• One press: Cycles between active noise cancellation mode and ambient sound mode (which uses the mic to filter in some external audio).

On the touchpad on the right ear cup:

• Double tap: Plays and pauses audio. Also answers and ends a call.
• Swipe forward: Skips to the next track.
• Swipe forward and hold: Fast forwards through your track.
• Swipe backwards: Skips to the previous track.
• Swipe backwards and hold: Backtracks through your track.
• Swipe up: Turns the volume up incrementally.
• Swipe up and hold: Turns the volume up continuously until you release.
• Swipe down and hold: Turns the volume down continuously until you release.
• Cover the ear cup with your palm: Enters quick attention mode, which turns down all audio and increases the volume of ambient sound.
• Cover the touchpad with one finger: Activates voice assistant for duration of the hold.

As with other over-ear headphones, these headphones aren't very portable. While they can swivel to fold flat, they'll still take up quite a bit of room in a bag. Thankfully, they come with a great carrying case that can help you bring them with you on the go.

They come with a great circular carrying case that's made of a soft tweed-like material that's reinforced to better protect the headphones. There are two compartments to store cables and other accessories. You can see a picture of the interior here.

The Sony ULT WEAR have a good, sturdy build quality. They're made of high-quality recycled plastic with solid hinges and yokes. The ear cups are large and comfortable, but their stiff material means that users who wear glasses or have thick hair might struggle to achieve a solid seal. The ear cups are covered in a comfortable, spongey material, which is also used on the headband. It's possible to see how this material might lose some of its springiness over time and become less comfortable. As with most other wireless over-ears, these headphones don't feature any kind of IP rating for protection against dust or water damage. While you can purchase replacement earpads online, not all the parts are easily replaceable, as with the Fairphone Fairbuds XL.

These headphones are more stable than the Sony WH-1000XM5 Wireless. They'll stay in place as you move around in your daily life, including jogs and light exercise. However, they're liable to tilt and lose their seal if you need to break into a sprint to catch your bus.

• Sony ULT WEAR headphones
• 1/8" TRS cable (125 cm / 49.2 inches)
• USB-C to USB-A charging cable (21 cm / 8.3 inches)
• Manuals, warranty, and 360 Reality Audio trial subscription
• Carrying case

The Sony ULT WEAR have an amazing full-range noise isolation performance. While they're not quite as effective in this regard as the flagship Sony WH-1000XM5 Wireless, they do a great job of blocking out external noise across the entire frequency range. Their ANC system offers a similar level of attenuation against bass-range noise to the XM5, which is great for blocking the sounds of passing bus engines. While they're not quite as adept at blocking out higher frequency sounds, like car horns and street noise, they'll still insulate you from these noises and allow you to focus on your tunes. There's even an Adaptive Sound Control function that recognizes common environments that you visit and adjusts the ANC levels to match your environment.

These over-ears do an excellent job of blocking out kinds of external noise encountered in common day-to-day scenarios. They can effectively attenuate the sound of rumbling plane engines, the scrape of chairs, and the chatter of co-workers in an office. They're also great at reducing the noise of a busy street.

This test allows you to hear how much voice is blocked out by the ANC system. Depending on your needs, you may want to block out all sounds or block out most sounds aside from voices.

If you want to use the voice passthrough mode on these headphones to hear your conversation even more clearly, we found a noticeable increase in the volume of voices. You can hear recordings of different voice types while using this feature below:

• Male Voice 1

• Male Voice 2

• Female Voice 1

• Female Voice 2

Wind noise is hard for the ANC system to counteract as it directly interferes with the microphones, often producing a high-pitched squeal. While the headphones don't have a dedicated wind noise feature, they do have a wind noise reduction structure built into the mic itself that helps reduce some of this unpleasant noise.

The Sony ULT WEAR have an alright leakage performance. Leakage is present across the entire frequency range but is particularly prominent in the mid-range, so leaked audio sounds relatively full-bodied. If you like to crank up your tunes, others situated close to you may hear it, especially in quieter environments.

The Sony ULT WEAR have a decent mic recording quality. There's a high shelf in the response, which means your voice lacks airiness and can sound a little closed off. That said, the rest of the range is quite balanced and doesn't have the bass roll-off that's present in the Sony WH-1000XM5 Wireless' integrated mic, for example. As a result, your voice will sound natural and easily understandable to whoever's on the other end.

The integrated mic has an impressive noise-handling performance. It does an excellent job of separating your voice from moderately noisy environments, so you'll be easily understood if you need to take a call in a co-working space, for example. While it still performs well in noisier environments, like a train station, some louder background noises will find their way into the microphone's signal.

The Sony ULT WEAR  have an excellent battery life performance. The manufacturer advertises 40 hours of continuous battery life with the ANC enabled, which can be stretched to 50 hours if it's disabled. However, we measured slightly more than this at 44 hours with the ANC enabled. There's even an auto-off timer that can help you preserve battery life by powering down the headphones after a period of inactivity. The manufacturer advertises a quick charge feature that gives you 90 minutes of battery from a three-minute charge. However, battery life tends to vary on use so your experience will differ.

These headphones use the Sony | Headphones Connect app, which will be familiar if you've used other wireless Sony over-ears. It's a great app with a huge array of features and parameters to adjust, which you can see in action here. The app gives you control over everything from the sound (via graphic EQ and presets) to ANC and Adaptive Sound Control (which adapts the ANC based on your location and activity). You can also re-map certain physical controls, though the possibilities here are limited. For example, it's possible to create a hotkey to turn on Spotify by pressing the ANC/AMB button twice, but you won't be able to re-assign this as a single-press command.

These headphones come with a 125 cm (49.2 inches) 1/8" TRS analog cable that you can use to support a wired connection. However, you can't use the integrated microphone if you use this connection type. Latency is extremely low when using the headphones passively with this connection type, and it's only slightly higher when they're powered on and connected via the audio cable.

These headphones have excellent Bluetooth connectivity. They support LDAC for high-quality audio streaming and Bluetooth multipoint, so you can connect with up to two devices simultaneously. That said, you can only use LDAC if you have disabled multipoint connectivity in the app, so the two features are mutually exclusive. The headphones support Windows Swift Pair for Windows 10 and Google Fast Pair for seamless integration with Google devices. Latency levels are good when using the default SBC codec but slightly increase when you switch to LDAC, so you'll likely experience lip sync issues when using this codec to watch videos. However, different apps and devices will compensate for latency differently.

The Sony ULT WEAR have full audio and mic compatibility when connected wirelessly to Bluetooth-enabled PCs. You can also use the 1/8" TRS cable, but you'll only receive audio and can't use the mic.

These headphones can only receive audio when you plug their audio cable into your PlayStation controller's AUX port, so you'll need a separate mic to communicate with your teammates.

These headphones can only receive audio when you plug their audio cable into your Xbox controller's AUX port, so you'll need a separate mic to chat with friends.