When you're light like the Sony, you only need a little headband and you can still stay comfortable. And while the Sonys do handle 360-degree audio, there's no integration as good as this. It's better than most home theater systems. However, AirPods Max do have Apple's Spatial Audio with head tracking, and with Dolby Atmos movies on your iPhone or iPad, this is incredible. You have to buy a custom cable for the AirPods Max to do that. Plus, they have a regular old 3.5mm jack for when you might want to plug your expensive headphones into a plane entertainment system or work computer, or anything like that.

And you can just hold a hand over one earcup to let in sound temporarily, which is much less overly noisy than the AirPods' transparency mode. The Sonys offer different levels of noise cancellation for different activities, and will switch between them, which works really well. And the Transparency Mode is very transparent. The AirPods Max offer ANC on, Transparency Mode, and ANC off.

Both have active noise cancellation, and I'd say they're roughly on a par – but with an edge to Sony because it offers more options for noise-cancellation. Speaking of the Sony app, let's talk about the other things the Sony does well. Most people won't play with these, so the AirPods still win generally, but the AirPods really lack in the ability to tweak or improve their sound in other ways. You can tweak sound personalization to improve the audio further, and you can even use LDAC connectivity for higher-resolution streaming from your phone, assuming your phone supports it.

The Sony app gives you great control of the EQ, among other options. However, Sony allows you to make more adjustments to the sound. Ultimately, I'll take the AirPods Max any day of the week for the out-of-the-box sound.ĪirPods Max: very good at sound quality. It feels like a precise and powerful ballroom dancer covering every inch of the dance floor with their steps and swoops, while the Sony XM5 is a frantic latin dancer, making expressive sharp motions with their whole body, but in a tighter, defined area. The AirPods Max go further and feel more expansive across the frequencies – the midrange is more neutral, but doesn't feel flatter because of it. A cymbal crash through the AirPods Max subsides more naturally the XM5 has to swallow the same crash into the overall mix more quickly.

Where the Sony XM5 feels like its treble is doing as much sparkling as it can within the constraints of an (admittedly fairly large) box, the AirPods Max bust straight out the top of the box, lifting highlights more cleanly out of the midrange and giving them more life and detail. What you notice in the AirPods Max is the sheer dynamic range. In direct comparisons, I noticed that the Sony product is naturally heavier in the bass (even though the AirPods Max are no slouch in the low-end) and just a little warmer in the midrange particularly, but everything feels more compressed. They're an improvement in many ways, especially in the control of the bass and some extra punch at the high end, though some at TechRadar feel they lack a bit of detail compared to the XM4.īut they're not enough of a leap forward to compete with the sheer aural awesomeness of the AirPods Max. The thing about the Sony WH-1000XM5 is that they're not a big leap forward from the XM4 when it comes to sound quality, despite the higher price. Sony WH-1000XM5 vs AirPods Max: sound quality

Sony xm5 vs airpods max