Sony WH-ULT900N headphones review – Ultimately, these are pretty great mid-rangers

8.1 Ultimately great

Sony's newest over-ears are aimed at a specific segment of the market -- folks who want excellent sound but who aren't terribly bothered about how it works. The result is a simplified product that mixes budget and premium features in an attempt to strike a balance. The weight comes down more on the premium side but there are a few irritations in view. Still, at half the price of the company's headliner XM5's, we can forgive those minor points.

• Design 7.5
• Sound 9
• Build 7
• Battery 9
• Features 8
• Value 8
• User Ratings (5 Votes) 5.6

Until today, Sony’s WH-ULT900N headphones were merely rumours. There had been one substantial leak but very little real coverage of what the company is positioning as its new ULT headphones. The design looks premium but, in common with one of Sony’s 2023 surprises, the C700N buds, there have been a few sacrifices made to drop the price.

Can Sony strike gold two years in a row while offering a more affordable product to the masses? Based on our time with the WH-ULT900N over-ears, that’s just possible. But there are a few items to consider before you put your money down.

Looks are everything

These over-ears are definitely products of Sony’s design lab. In appearance, they come across as a hybrid of the WH-1000XM4 overs from 2021 and 2022’s WH-1000XM5.  The headband resembles the XM5’s but the whole unit folds up in the same manner as the XM4 set. Visually, it’s attractive, but picking them up immediately shows that these aren’t the top of the range. The heft and weight we’d expect are replaced by a slightly hollow feeling that still feels sturdy enough. But it’s not premium.

Our review set was a pre-production model but everything we encountered should be in place in the final retail units. The left ear cup hosts three physical buttons as well as a 3.5mm jack and USB-C charge port. The right cup doesn’t have any external additions but the right-hand panel acts as a gesture panel for play, pause, and navigation.

The three buttons are further indicators that the WH-ULT900N overs aren’t quite for the premium market. The power button also sets up Bluetooth pairing and there’s a key for turning on noise cancelling or ambient modes. The third key is marked ULT. Giving it a poke plays a little sound effect inside the cups and drops listeners into one of three preset audio modes. We found ourselves favouring the default setting but there’s a satisfying bass jump in the middle setting that deepens into an aggressive rumble in the third option.

Sound decision

Whatever the WH-ULT900N’s faults, and we’ll get to a few of them in a second, there’s one thing they do extremely well. The audio is top-notch. As mentioned, we stuck mostly with the default setting which, in our opinion, didn’t need tweaking at all, but there are a couple of bass-enhancing modes available via the ULT button. The first is just a little more bassy. The second would give a speaker-laden taxi a run for its head-rumbling money.

But the ‘ULT’ portion of these cans isn’t really required. Those with more precious audio tastes can lovingly craft their own personal EQ settings in Sony’s app. Others, the folks Sony seems to be after with these over-ears, can simply jack up the bass until it’s capable of crumbling concrete foundations.

If, like us, you’re one of the world’s more or less normal people, at least as it pertains to audio, then Sony’s default setting is an excellent experience. There’s clear separation of lows, mids, and highs, excellent clarity throughout, and whatever you’re playing, from classic 90s thrash metal to more sedate offerings from the softer side of Spotify, sounds as fresh as the first day you heard it. There’s even a little space for nuance in complex melodies if that’s your thing.

Sony claims a solid 30 hours of battery with noise cancelling and Bluetooth enabled and a serious 50 hours with noise cancelling off. We… didn’t get to run them all the way flat before the review was due but that was partly due to their arrival in South Africa, partly the admittedly excellent battery life, and partly the fact that we gave these cans a brief charge about midway through the review that added 15% to the battery total. Not bad for ten minutes’ work.

The catch

Obviously, you won’t purchase a R5,000 set of headphones (the planned retail price for Sony’s WH-ULT900N overs in South Africa when they land) and expect perfection. It would be nice, but there were a few sacrifices made to get there. One of the main ones we’ve already mentioned — the build falls short of being truly premium but it’s quite far above ‘seriously budget’ as well.

There are other aspects that we weren’t thrilled with. The physical controls could have been slightly better placed. A button always seemed to be under a thumb as we raised and removed the WH-ULT900Ns, switching us to a bassier profile or ambient mode without consulting us first. The touchpad on the right side also took some getting used to. Swiping between tracks always worked but convincing it to pause or play on command was another sort of mission.

Noise cancelling… works. We’ve experienced better from Sony itself but even from similarly-priced headphones. Sony chose to focus on one main aspect with these overs. As a result, these will cancel noise well enough but they’re unlikely to blow you away with their stunning silence. It’ll mute the office and traffic and almost everything else in your immediate vicinity. But others have done that task better.

Finally, there’s the audio cutoff when removing the headphones. Initially, it didn’t work at all and now, following a few days with these headphones, it’s still a little iffy. Power management is also a little iffy. Sony’s cans will turn themselves off if you put them down for a while, which is great. But you’ll have to physically turn them on again in order to resume listening. That’s very much a first-world problem but Sony’s pricier headphones have spoiled us somewhat.

Sony WH-ULT900N verdict

Sony’s headphones, at the time of publication, aren’t in South African stores just yet. When they do drop, at that RRP of R5,000, you’d be doing yourself a favour by checking them out. They’re aimed at folks with middling budgets who like some rumble with their tunes but that doesn’t mean that Sony has skimped on the sound. The WH-ULT900N headphones have plenty to offer where it counts and a handful of properly premium features to explore. The few cost-cutting aspects can easily be forgiven when the sound is as good as it is.