Sony 1000X Collexion reviewed: hardly worth extra

A more lush take on Sony’s flagship headphones, the Collexion name brings a leather finish to Sony’s high-end headphones, alongside an equally high-end price. Worth it?

Everything sure seems to cost more these days, and while phones and computers are clearly a big part of that, so too are headphones. Sound gear is pricey, with noise cancelling headphones costing the most. Price tags as high as $700 tend to be normal, but even so, headphone makers are pushing beyond that.

Think closer to the $900 and $1000 price, and you’ll have an idea where we’re going. There aren’t any roads, but there are roads to not having as much money for a rainy day.

A variation on a theme, the unusually named “1000X The Collexion” (yep, that’s the official name) is more or less the upmarket version of a pair of headphones known already to be quite good from Sony: the WH-1000XM6. Normally priced between $600 and $700, the Sony XM6 sits in a long line of excellent noise cancelling headphones, albeit ones that still manage to come in under $900.

The Collexion is therefore… different.

They’re all model numbers with a “1000” and an “X”, weirdly, the WH-1000XM6 name feels less foreign than calling a pair “The Collexion” which not only isn’t a word, but also isn’t a collection. How confusing.

Fortunately, there’s more to the headphones than just the confusing name. There’s the look, feel, and what’s going on under the hood, which Sony says is its best pair yet. Is that really the case, or are the “Collexion” pair of headphones just more of the same priced a little higher?

Design and features

To get it that label, Sony has moved past the soft touch plastics of its other models, and more towards premium feeling materials that give it a little more strength and durability.

That includes a stainless steel band with a texture both shiny and sandblasted, while the ear cups are made with a fake leather. We’re not usually fans of fake leather regardless of how it’s named — fake leather, pleather, leather vinyl, protein leather… it’s all really the same — but the style here is nice and feels soft on the ears, and also to the touch.

Inside, the technology isn’t exactly an XM6, with a custom 30mm driver on each side made with carbon composite material working with 12 microphones (six per ear) and Sony’s processors, the HD Noise Cancelling Processor QN3 and the Integrated Processor V3. Lots of little bits of hardware to handle the sound.

Support exists for noise cancellation and a spatial audio upmix, as Sony attempts to take on the competition with gusto, bundling in a design made to be a little more premium. It’s not just the protein leather or the metal parts. Rather, there’s also how you carry the cans.

Yes, the case may well be one of the more curious premium features: not just a headphone case, and certainly not the loose protection that Apple’s AirPods Max comes with, the 1000X uses a case that includes a built-in handle.

That’ll make it handy for air travel, because you’ll be able to simply grab your headphones out of luggage all too easily, or carry them and your phone as your only major items.

Available in both black and white — and only black and white — we’re reviewing the white 1000X The Collexion model. And may that be the only other time we use its official name in this review.

In-use

The design might be a little different and the name a little weird, but Sony isn’t throwing everything out. In fact, the controls are more or less the same with a slight evolution on what we’ve seen over the ten years Sony has been making the 1000X headphones.

That means there are physical buttons, yes, but there is also a touch panel on the outside of the right can, just like the XM6 and every other pair of XM generation before it. We remember this on the original and its follow-up, the WH-1000XM2. We’re that old.

They are easy enough to get your head around, swiping up and down on the pad for volume, and back and forth for track skips. You can even hold your palm down to do a temporary hear through, just like the old XM models we used through the airport for years. It still works and still feels just as good and natural.

There’s also the use of Sony’s Sound Connect app, which like we experienced on the WF-1000XM6 does feel like it has gone backwards. Options for actual cancellation levels of control are largely gone, replaced with simplicity.

Some will be fine with that, but for this reviewer, it does make one of the world’s most advanced pairs of noise-cancelling headphones feel less advanced. That might just be us.

Performance

Get over the app and you can get stuck into the sound, which is what we’re doing. As usual, that kicks in with the Pickr Sound Test, which you can listen to for yourself, starting with electronic and the vibes from Tycho and Daft Punk.

Already from the get-go, there’s a great bass with excellent heft, delivering a warmth from the mids and lows, with highs just behind. This is all par for the course for a pair of Sony flagship headphones, and much the same as we experienced in the XM6, as well.

This pair is similar, with a nice rounded and balanced sound, heard across pop and soul from Marvin Gaye and Mark Ronson, each of which deliver good earthy sound and detail. Even the bass from FKA Twigs — a regular test track with oomph — fared well, with a relative guttural sound on “Two Weeks”. This one trips most headphones, and the 1000X Collexion handled the reverb well, too.

Most of what we ran through the headphones delivered. Rock was clear and wide, while the clarity of jazz from the likes of Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck offered a warm, speaker-like clarity with a studio sound.

That’s before pressing the button on the left side.

Spatial audio

One of the features people are beginning to look for in headphones (including this reviewer), spatial support has been one Sony has been slow to support, at least in a way that conforms to standards.

There is a reason for that: Sony has its own standard in the form of 360 Reality Audio, a spatial format not exactly used by every company. You can find it in small amounts, and services such as Amazon Music Unlimited and Tidal offer support in small amounts, but it is by no means as popular as Dolby Atmos by way of Apple Music.

And here in the Collexion, the spatial mix isn’t quite what you expect it to be, either.

Here in the 1000X headphones, the spatial upmix is actually found when you press the top most button on the left side. However, it’s more about the “mix” rather than the “immersive quality” that spatial is known for.

It’s not a bad thing, and the sound experience is a lot more open, almost like you’re listening to music in a big room. But if you’re expecting the immersive head-tracking experience Apple and Beats and Bose and the like have been rolling out, you might want to temper those expectations. This isn’t the head-tracking variety that we could find, but it is more spatially aware than we’ve seen from Sony when 360 Reality Audio isn’t involved.

We’d call that a start. We’re not sure anyone is actively using 360 Reality Audio in great big numbers, but at least something is here in case you want some kind of spatial.

Noise cancellation

Given the Collexion is a slightly different generation of the WH-1000XM6, it probably won’t surprise you to learn that this pair does a fantastic job with noise cancellation. That’s been something of a thing of pride for Sony since the original MDR-1000 popped up a decade ago, which is what this pair is largely a celebration of.

Sony’s take on ANC combines the power of several microphones with a piece of the company’s own hardware, and the result in the 1000X is more or less just like it is in the XM6: lots of isolation, minimal bleed in from the outside world.

It’s the sort of isolation that put the XM6 ahead of the game and is still largely up there, but it doesn’t seem as though the 1000X is any better. It’s just more of the same.

More of the same is hardly a bad thing, but it’s not necessarily a “worth spending more on” thing, either. It’s difficult to qualify where the noise cancellation is any better on the Collexion model, and we’re not sure it is at all.

Battery

You’ll find a fine amount of battery life, albeit not quite on the same level as its sibling, offering around 24 hours of battery life with noise cancellation on, which is fine but not amazing.

The Sony XM6 can hit 30 hours without trying, while this more expensive pair falls slightly short of that pair, and much lower than other competitor models. Sennheiser’s Momentum beats it hands down for the past couple of years, and even the Technics A1000, with each boasting at least 40 hours of playback by comparison.

It’s not that 24 hours is insignificant — that’s a long flight if you had to cross from Australia to Europe — the problem is it’s not a long flight with stopovers or delays, aspects of a realistic world in travelling.

You’re going to have to stop listening at one point just to charge, or do it from the air. Maybe do it while you have a bite to eat at the airport.

Value

We do need to talk about the price, though, because sitting at $899 in Australia, the 1000X Collexion is one of Sony’s priciest pairs yet.

The headphones don’t appear to be a dramatic departure from the WH-1000XM6, and yet cost a full $300 over the recommended retail price of that model. At street price, the value is closer to $500 more, given you can find the XM6 for under $500 at the time of publishing. Yikes.

So are the 1000X Collexion worth between $300 and $500 more? It really doesn’t feel like it.

On the one hand, you definitely get a more premium feel, and the sound quality might be a little better, but it’s difficult to tell.

The real differences between the XM6 and the Collexion are smaller than you might think, with bigger and marginally more lush earpads for the Collexion edition, but also nearly 70 grams more weight. The XM6 folds for portability, the Collexion does not.

It’s a weird position, and we’re not sure the 1000X Collexion makes sense. Ignoring the unusual name, the thousand dollar price tag is meant to feel like it applies better to the more fashionable 1000X Collexion than its XM6 sibling, and while we can see the logic, the value just isn’t there.

There are notable differences between Sennheiser’s Momentum range and the more pricey HDB 630, not least of which includes a high-res capable dongle, another of these separate releases using similar hardware for a more high-end market.

It’s already difficult to justify the same price on Apple’s AirPods Max 2, but you at least get replaceable pads to go with the premium materials, head-tracked spatial, and USB-C audio. You also get that on the Sennheiser model. None of that exists here on the 1000X Collexion, and if it does, it’s here in one of the most hamstrung ways.

The thousand dollar price tag doesn’t appear all that justified. It just seems expensive simply because it can be, but we wouldn’t pay more than $800 for these. They can have a minor price bump over their sibling, but it shouldn’t be this much. No way.

What needs work?

There are definite ways Sony could fix this, such as lowering the price tag, or simply adding more to the package, because there isn’t really much that is different about these cans.

Yes, they’re a marginally more fashionable take on Sony’s WH-1000XM6 headphones. Yay?

Frankly we’re not sure it deserves a “yay” at all. In fact, for a pair that’s supposed to be higher end, it’s kind of surprising to see what little Sony has added.

For instance, while you do get a more lush leather look like out of the OG MDR-1000 pair, you won’t see the stuff every other flagship headphone is offering today, such as USB-C audio and proper fold-up portability.

They’re just not worth the price. The XM6 are clearly the better option.

What we love

Deliberately confusing name aside, the 1000X Collexion headphones sound excellent, and are a lovely bit of technology that manages to blend some of the looks of the first model with the design of today.

The leatherette finish was one of those strikingly premium features of the first model back in 2016, and a decade later, it is missing in action on the WH-1000XM6. And yet here in the “Collexion” equivalent, it is back.

It’s almost as if Sony knew just how premium this style would be for those who want it, and reserved it for later. That probably didn’t happen exactly like that, but for folks who love a more premium approach, the Collexion delivers it.

As far as this reviewer’s tastes go, the leather-look is nice, but the shiny chrome arms is less his style. Each to their own, of course, but he wouldn’t pay extra for what Sony is charging more for here.

1000X Collexion vs the competition

And in terms of where the 1000X Collexion fits in the larger landscape, it can feel as though Sony is working to a slight disadvantage. The tech is there, sure, but the price feels like overkill for what you get, and for what else is out there.

Take the Sennheiser HDB 630, headphones which offer more for near the same price, while the Sennheiser Momentum 5 deliver a better sound for less. The look isn’t quite the same, sure, but the lush look of Sony’s isn’t that grand.

And if you’re into the premium aesthetic, you might also want to check out the Sonos Ace Ultra and the Technics A1000, both of which have a lovely design, similar feature set, and also a lower price.

The problem is Sony’s 1000X Collexion doesn’t bring enough difference to the table to account for its roughly $300 premium. Sony’s WH-1000XM6 are just that good, and so is much of the rest of what’s out there.

Final thoughts (TLDR)

As lovely as the 1000X Collexion headphones are, there just aren’t a heap of convincing reasons to spend extra on these headphones. The XM6 are already excellent as it is, setting a benchmark that really doesn’t need a marginally improved sibling that costs a fair amount more.

And crazily, there are things Sony could have done to improve the package entirely that didn’t include simply upgrading the materials to be more premium. They could have remained folding for ease of use, and could have included a USB-C audio capability taking advantage of the sound processor for high-res sound. That’s not there, and yet you’d think with Sennheiser’s HDB 630 it would have been for sure.

They’re a marginally more lush version of the XM6 and that’s really it. For the price, they’re just not worth it. Even high-end cans like Focal’s Bathys put on a better show for what you get, with a massively more premium design and lossless USB-C support. And that’s without justifying whether the Focal are worth it, either.

The point is the Sony 1000X Collexion aren’t worth the extra coin on top of the XM6. There aren’t really any advantages beyond the slightly more lush look, and if that’s what you’re judging on, maybe spend on a better pair of headphones altogether. These are good, but hardly worth extra.