Sony ULT WEAR - Wireless Noise Cancelling Headphones, ULT POWER SOUND, Ultimate Deep Bass, Same Processor as WH-1000XM5, Clear Calls, 30hr Battery, IOS & Android - White

....is what my brother and I used to say growing up going to blues and dances halls. Bass at blues and dance halls in East London we would expect the speakers to rearrange our internal organs. We would expect the speakers to be vibrating with bass before so low we could not hear it.Well, the Sony Ult Wear speakers have too much bass. For the first time ever for a pair of headphones I have said 'That Is Too Much Bass'.I have Soundcore Liberty 4 NC's (x4) and the Sony Ult Wears are better.I have the Soundcore Liberty 4 Pro's and the Sony Ult Wears are better.I have the Soundcore Space One and the Sony Ult Wears are better.I have the Soundcore Space One Pro and the Sony Ult Wears are better.I have the Beats Studio Pros and the Sony Ult Wears are much better.I have the Beats Studio 3 (X2) and the Sony Ult Wears are better.I have the Beats Studio 2 (X5) and they are on the same level as the Sony Ult Wears.The Sony Ult Wears don't just produce a lot of bass. They do bring forward the mids and treble after tinkering with the many EQ settings, LDAC, DSEE, Clear Bass, etc. It takes time setting up the sweet spot.My test tunes come out as they should on the Sony Ult Wears. Unravel by Bjork is delivered perfectly with the vocals and bass reproduced perfectly. Resolution of the Godzilla Minus One Soundtrack builds in volume and complexity and reaches a majestic crescendo towards the end. It's Happening Again by Agnes Obel mellifluous and haunting and delivered perfectly. A new (old) test tune of mine is My Heart WIll Go On by Celine Dion in CD quality and LDAC - when she sings 'You're Here' at the 3:25 mark your headphones or sound systems needs to be able to reproduce that so that it cleans the earwax out of you ears - and the Sony Ult Wears do just that and are almost painful if I play it too loud - no distortion - just Celine at her cheesiest best. Venus As A Boy - bass and vocals balanced and soulful. Traitor by Olivia Rodrigo - vocals are perfectly produced when tuned correctly. On the Nature Of Daylight on the Arrival Soundtrack is a hard piece to reproduce properly - it has a rumbling bass line that is deep in the background that lesser speakers I have fail to produce at all - I presume the frequency is too low for those devices but with the Sony Ult Wears it is there as it should be.I have tried the ULT1 and ULT2 settings and most of the time the ULT1 setting is just about right. But depending on what I am playing it is too much bass so I have to dial it back. The bass does not distort it just gets thumping and loud and uncomfortable - as it should be if I want it to. These are headphones for bass lovers..Audiophiles will most likely prefer the constrained and restricted sound of say the Beats Studio Pros or Airpod Max's. Well, I don't as these so called high end headphones are far too narrow and dull for me. I like, my headphones to be able to produce controlled extreme bass and treble and this is what the Sony Ult Wears and my other favourite headphones do. I like to be in control of it and not have it controlled for me by the manufacturer.I got the Sony Ult Wears with a big discount of £98.10 here at Amazon using a 10% discount voucher on an already discounted price. An absolute bargain. The first set I ordered I did not get as the courier must have stolen them - he said that he delivered them to a resident at my house at a time when I was not in and my 2 CCTV cameras had nothing for the time he said he delivered them - I hope Amazon fire that thief. So I got a refund that very same day and ordered again but changed the destination to the local post office and I got them the second time. Great service from Amazon - just need to employ some more trust worthy couriers...The Sony Ult Wears are comfortable to wear. I have had them on for a few hours now and it's like they are not there. The ANC is quite brilliant as I cannot hear anything in my office with my various computers whirring in the background.One thing that is new to me is the touch controls on the right hand ear pad. These do work for me though I did get it stuck with Google Assistant reading through my notifications which I had to wait for it to finish for about 90 seconds before my music started playing again. But doing the volume and moving backwards and forwards in the tracks and pausing and playing work.One thing that I had to disable was the Adaptive Sound Control as it was adjusting the sound as I was walking about trying to figure out what environment I was in. I'll come back to this again when I get more used to the app which is quite comprehensive.I tested the transparency mode by putting the palm of hand over the right earcup and the voice of my other half was totally natural. It did not sound processed at all - it sounded like the headphones were not there at all.I had to figure out how to get it in LDAC mode as there is not a setting in the app for it as far as I can tell. I had to change it in my Bluetooth settings. Not everybody will know how to do this so it should be made clearer. But as this is the first time I am using this Sony app for headphones it might just be me.I have not had them long enough to test the battery life but it seems to be o.k. 10% of battery usage after about 90 minutes.So the Sony Ult Wears are on a par with my trusty Beats Studio 2.0's. This means that they are equal best headphones I have ever owned. So what I will do is buy a few more Sony Ult Wears in the different colours in the next few months in future sales so that I can use each one sparingly and have them lasting a decade at least - this is what I am doing with my Beats Studio 2.0's which all work fine after nearly 9 years.So I am in it for the long run with the Sony Ult Wears. Bravo, Sony. Bravo.Update 07/01 Had my ULT wears for a little while now and it is sounding looser and less tight as the drivers are run in which is great. Battery life is at 59% from when I first charged it so looks good in the long term as I am using LDAC codec and ANC all the time. Bass is still too fierce.Also, I tried the 3.5mm audio jack from my old Sony NW-A45 and was surprised at the sound quality using this method. On all of my other Bluetooth headphones connecting this way usually results in below par and quiet sound quality but not with the ULT Wears.Update 25/02. Bought the Grey and Black versions today at a discounted price of £118 each and am running them in to loosen up the drivers so that they sound exactly like my Off White pair. All going good so far. I think I prefer the look of the black ones the most. So between the 3 of them I reckon I'll get at least 9/10 years out of them.Update 03/03 Couple of useful tips. 1) Use the Safe Listening activity in the Sound Connect App to make sure you don't damage your hearing. What it does it takes how loud you have listen to stuff over a week to see whether you are causing long term damage to your hearing. Some of the SoundCore headphones I have have something similar but this is a much better implementation. 2) When raising or lowering the volume using the touchpad on the right headphone swipe up from the middle and hold your finger in position to keep on raising the volume and release when you get to the desired volume. Swipe down to reduce volume and hold to keep reducing - thought I'd mention this as a YouTube reviewer of the Sony Ult Wears complained that he had to swipe up and down many times to raise or reduce the volume - no need - just hold. And the instructions on how to do this are not exactly clear on the Sony website.

So these are great sounding. Firstly on my iPhone, really nice at pro res quality but spoilt by lack of limited volume by the iPhone. so skip over to my Sony Flac Player and seriously now were talking. Great sound. love them. Connected to my turntable etc seriously great sound so I can't fault these at all. I also like that I can use a cable or use bluetooth. Sony app is good too. You can find settings for your ears, a sound you like best. great battery life. Easy to connect. I've listened to all kinds of music and they're great headphones. the phone side of things as in, made a call, no complaints from me or the caller about sound. Another Sony Winner. The drivers used are big and don't distort like another brand I had. Mid , treble and lows are clean. TBH over ear like these is always going to be best.

Amazing headset,bass is huge and on high setting is overwhelming but on setting 2 of the ult button it’s astounding and sound well balanced overall,i only used the Sony headphones app to update so I’ll be using these with only the buttons on the headset,fast and stable Bluetooth connection,very comfortable to wear as after a while I didn’t notice I was wearing them(around 10 minutes) great fit over head with no looseness issues once adjusted,not tried the 3.5mm audio cable connection yet but i don’t expect any problems using them this way,got these at a great discount price but on hearing the quality you get I’d have happily paid the original price for this headset,they look and feel good and sound amazing,the best overhead earphones ive probably ever had,highly recommended by myself.

IMPORTANT Update April 2025 (~8 months use): So the left earcup holder snapped at the swivelling part - I thought the headband as a whole had started to feel increasingly weak but figured I might just be imagining things, until one day after taking them off my head, the left joint completely snapped without warning. IMPORTANT: if this happens to you, do chase up with Amazon and then Sony themselves as it seems there is a range of serial numbers where there is a "known fault" where the earcups snap at the joints - Sony even have a diagram showing the exact angle and location where the break happens, and are honouring a free fix. to be fair to Sony, they arranged a courier pickup, repair and return all for free and repaired it quite quickly, but the repair seems to only come with a 90day warranty. I believe they are extending the warranty on affected units to sometime in Jan 2026 however.Background: First off, I'm a middle-aged guy who likes "tech" but grounded in practicality of design choices and a general "spade is a spade" mentality . I bought these ULT headphones as a replacement to my old "Sony H.ear On MDR-100ABN" headphones which are technically still working after 8 years (bought in 2016!) but the headband + plastics were starting to crack, but otherwise have been attached to my head multiple hours a day as I have worked from home, self-employed since 2016. The h.ear set have been superlatively comfortable with great active noise cancelling (ANC) giving me a lovely "cocoon" effect that I love. I listen to a range of music from general electronica to classical and a bit of "rock". I'm no audiophile but found the soundstage and tone/warmth of playback OF THE OLD headphones to be more than adequate for the money. There was no app available for them - simple, on/off for power and ANC, and that was about it. You use your device's or apps' EQ settings to play with the sound. If the physical aspects of the product had lasted longer, I wouldn't have bought anything else.Actual ULT review:Sound:These new ULT headphones are priced around the same as the old h.ear set: Great.Sound quality is also *almost* as good as the old product.... When you have the "ULT" bass booster OFF. I can't quite put my finger on what the difference in that "almost" is. Maybe I just got used to the old set and don't like change after all? At ULT level 1 it still sounds ok, but sometimes feels like the bass is encased in a bit of cotton wool - it's just a bit muffled rather than actual more low endy. At level 2, it sounds like listening to the bass coming from a bass bin encased in a boy racer's hot hatch with the windows closed when you're standing about 20m away from it. Even in my younger bass head years, this would have sounded awful. You're better than this, Sony. Let's hope a firmware update makes it better.Physical Aspects:The headband is mostly comfortable when you get used to it, but still feels a little tighter than the old h.ear set, and I do find I sometimes lift the ear pads to release the pressure whereas I never needed that with the old unit. I think the quality of the ear pads have gotten a tiny bit worse over the years. Same with the plastics. They're still good enough for the money but it does remind me that in the ever constant search for more profits as time goes by, the quality of things is generally worsening - a sense of what do manufacturers think they can get away with without getting review panned too much.Forest grey is grey. I absolutely can't see any green tint at all and I don't consider myself colour blind. Luckily it goes better with my grey hair than I expected.So what are the "weird design choices"?Really it's just the confusing audio feedback when you cycle between ULT levels and turning ANC on or off. And the ridiculous number of unnecessary options in the accompanying app. Forgive me as I go into "Boomer" mode.First the noise when you switch between ULT levels sounds a bit like a retro 8 bit explosion that gets increasingly like a Michael Baysplosion is completely ridiculous and jarring when listening to anything tranquil. I have learned to keep this option switched off anyway so not a problem for me but what on earth were the design team thinking? Secondly, I do sometimes like to turn ANC off - there's a notification noise for that too. A slightly but not entirely distinctly different noise for off or on, and my brain processes a descending tone as "off" whereas Sony design team seem to think it means "on" - the sound cue just seems switched the wrong way round to me.The haptic gesture control is never as sensitive as I want it to be to change volume, but always too sensitive when I want to shift the ear pads or take the headphones off. At least you can turn it off completely in the app settings and use your device to control the volume, skip tracks, pause etc like a normal person. How lazy are we getting that we need to stroke our headphone's ear covers rather than reach for the device?I DO like that taking the headphones off automatically pauses the music/video I'm watching.The ability to customise the EQ for the headphones in the app under Headphones > Sound > "find your equalizer" is helpful but my old h.ear headphones didn't need this as they sounded great anyway.Why do we need gamified badges for using the headphones?? Yet more red icon notifications in app to distract us unnecessarily. Please stop with this nonsense.Overall: Good value for money but not great. Not so bad as to return them, better than spending considerably more on more high end units unless you're flush. Pray for for firmware updates to make the stupid features better.