ANC/Ambient button: Cycles between ANC on and 'Ambient' mode, which allows you to better hear your surroundings without turning off your audio.

Cannot hear a person during a call/low voice from callers, your voice does not reach the person during a call/your voice is low on the caller’s side.This isn’t Sony’s finest ANC outing. The noise neutralization on these cans is inferior to the Mark series, as well as top rivals like the Bose 700 and newcomers like the Shure Aonic 40. You’ll get some quiet time, depending on the environment, but don’t anticipate complete silence. Punchy and powerful, the Sony WH-XB910N headphones sound fantastic and definitely live up to the ‘extra bass’ claims on the box, but they do so without drowning out the treble. They’ll be best suited to those who listen to upbeat dance music because of just how much energy the audio has. This isn’t a pair for listening exclusively to ballads or podcasts, although thanks to the manual EQ you’ll be able to do so from time to time. If you want to hear some outside noise, the ambient sound mode works well to let it in without being too distracting and you can even choose for it to focus purely on voices, so you’ll be able to hear when someone strikes up a conversation with you. You can dial it up or down depending on how much sound you want to let in. Through the app, you can also set up Sony’s 360 Reality Audio feature. It’ll prompt you to take a picture of your ears and then it uses that information to create a more immersive sound, although it’ll only work on certain music streaming apps like Tidal, 360 by Deezer and Artist Connection. The high wearing comfort convinced me straight away. The Sony WH-XB910N fit comfortably on the head and offer good passive attenuation of external noise. The headphones fit tightly enough to be used on the move.

The Sony headphones app is one of the best headphones app out there, with many settings and a nice equalizer (more about that later). Ambient Sound is the superior feature. You get 20 adjustable levels and full control over the amount of external sound that comes through the mics. I could hear everything around me clearly, from construction work across the street to chats taking place across the house. The feature is strong enough that you don’t have to enable the Focus on Voice setting to amplify people’s vocals. Sony WH-XB910N app and special features The hallmark of Sony headphones is sound quality, more specifically, bass. Not only does it come in abundance on the WH-XB910N, thanks to Extra Bass technology, but Sony also added their spatial audio and upscaling features to make music livelier and more engrossing. If only my voice assistant experience was as satisfying. To call it a nightmare would be an understatement. Even after I completed the setup processes for both, Alexa and Google Assistant integration didn’t work. To use the digital assistant, you must place the feature on the native setting in the companion app and manually activate it (tap and hold on the right ear cup). When the feature does work, the mics do an OK job of interpreting voice commands that Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri and Bixby register. The microphone quality is okay, for calls in a quiet environment gonna be fine, but don't expect anything serious microphone quality.

Customer reviews

The Sony WH-XB910N’s built-in DSEE sound enhancement, which according to the manufacturer enhances compressed data formats, can be switched to automatic mode. I simply left it switched on for my test, but did not notice any real differences when switching it off, at least not with decently resolved MP3 files. Furthermore, the test headphones offered optimisation for the 360 Reality Audio format, but this is supported in principle by every pair of stereo headphones. The three-dimensional sound impression and the object-oriented panning of corresponding audio files, which are available via Tidal or Deezer, for example, are strongly production-dependent, however, and we will not be evaluating them in further detail here. Furthermore, there are some bugs that Sony forgot to flush out. One that stands out is the digital assistant not executing commands when using the Sony Headphones Connect app. Sony WH-XB910N audio quality I would describe the sound image in active mode as “pimped” and I definitely mean that in a positive sense. These Sony headphones have no claim to audiophile neutrality and do not pursue HiFi-style tuning. Rather, they aim to be fun to listen to. And that’s exactly what they do well! There’s a push from the drivers and a shove in the low bass – it reminded me a little of a visit to a club or watching an action thriller in the cinema.