It only took a week or so for the leaks of Sony’s WH-1000XM5 headphones to bear fruit. That fruit was in the shape of an official announcement from the company. The latest set of noise-cancelling cans will be available to order from 20 May 2022 and will set buyers back $400 (~R6,500). We still don’t know exactly how much they will cost locally and they’re likely to take a little longer to reach our stores. They will almost certainly cost more than R6,500, seeing as the two-year-old XM4s can be had for that.

As we saw from the leaks last week, the XM5s sport a new design that looks rather similar to the Bose 700. That also confirms what we saw in the leaks. They won’t be able to fold all that much.

Might not be so travel-friendly

Most folks use these for travelling, where the sophisticated ANC will make short work of the low drone of road friction or an aeroplane engine. But when flying, every centimetre of space in your carry-on counts. The fact that these will take up considerably more space might be a deal-breaker for some. Those people will be happy to know that Sony plans to keep the XM4s going at a slightly reduced price alongside the XM5. So you can still ignore people, and stow your bag safely in the overhead bin.

We’ll need to wait until we have a pair of our own to play with but we have high expectations regarding the build quality, comfort, sound quality and ANC efficiency. Sony isn’t likely to disappoint. Well, it hasn’t done so in quite some time, anyway.

It claims it’s improved the ANC capabilities with two dedicated processors, the ‘HD Noise Cancelling Processor QN1’ found in the XM4 headphones and the ‘Integrated Processor V1’ found in the XM4 earbuds. There are eight microphones in total, four on each cup, that’ll work to cancel out external noise while focusing on your voice during calls.