Sony Ult Wear review: fantastic wireless noise-cancelling headphones for $200

Extra bassy noise-canceling headphones

Kevin Lee

Apr 11, 2024

Pros:

✅ 🙉 Improved noise-canceling you can use for hours without fatigue
✅ 🎼 Large and detailed sound stage
✅ 🔈 Two levels of bass boosting from a pair of already bassy headphones
✅👂 Large ear cushions for a roomy feel for those with larger ears
✅ ⏯️ Added captive sensor pauses music when you take off the headphones
✅ 🗣️ Excellent beam-forming and isolating mics for voice and video calls
✅ 🔋30 hours of ANC play plus quick charge 1.5 hours in as little as three mins

Cons:

❌ 🪨 Large to carry and even bigger on your head
❌ 🫨 Ult 2 adds overpowering bass with some songs

Review Score: 5 out of 5

Best Buy: Sony Ult Wear deal

Amazon: Sony Ult Wear deal

Shortcut Review

The Sony Ult Wear is a fantastic pair of wireless noise-canceling headphones for $199. Thanks to a litany of updates and improvements – including improved noise-canceling, wear detection, Multipoint connectivity, and spatial audio with head tracking – it’s almost on par with Sony’s more premium WH-1000-series headphones.

Now the Wear Ult isn’t exactly for everyone as they’re physically huge and they’re very bass-heavy. But if you’re into R&B, rap, synth, and anything heavy on pounding bass, you’ll love these headphones. All around they also offer fantastic sound that outpaces other headphones like the Beats Studio Pro too. The noise-cancellation on these headphones is industry leading and the ambient sound mode is still the best and amazingly natural sounding. You can’t get a better pair of wireless headphones for $200 than the Sony Ult Wear.

Full Review

🚲 If it ain’t broke. The Sony Ult Wear is a direct descendant of the Sony WH-XB910N and the likeness between the two headphones is uncanny. The design has only been slightly streamlined with cleaner lines where the headphone band connects to the ear cups.

🎧 Plastic and fantastic. The Sony Ult Wear is unapologetically made of plastic with a thick frame and an even thicker air cushion that rests against the top of your head. But being made almost entirely of plastic also helps keep its weight down to roughly 252g. The frame is also flexible enough to bend slightly without creaking and it folds down nicely on one side to fit inside its included carry case or a bag.

😌 Roomy fit. The Sony Ult Wear has some of the biggest earcups I’ve seen on any pair of headphones so they stick out a lot while you wear them. Connected to those large earcups are a pair of equally large ear cushions to accommodate anyone with big ears. I don’t have the world’s largest ears, but the extra air space was nice to keep my ears from getting sweaty too quickly.

🔊 Bigger drivers. Inside those large earcups, there’s a pair of huge 40mm drivers. These large speaker units create an awesomely large and full sound stage to let you hear crisp lyrics apart from all the nuances of the acoustic track – it’s truly a transcending experience when you listen to a sophonically complex song like Rock Bottom by Black Honey or Knights of Cydonia by Muse.

🫨 Headbanging literally. The bass is already pronounced in the Sony Ult Wear’s default equalizer settings, however, it also features two levels of bass boosting if you really want to feel the music in your ears. There’s a dedicated Ult button that toggles the headphones between Ult 1 for deep, low-frequency bass and Ult 2 for even more powerful bass. With Ult 1 the low-end feels even more pronounced, but Ult 2 ups it even higher where it sounds like you have your ear right up against the drum being hit during the original recording session. Ult 1 feels like a nice dose of added rumble if you want to feel the bass instead of just hearing it. Ult 2, personally, can ruin the balance of some songs and imbalances the EQ so far that it starts muddying some of the headphone’s mid- and high-range.

The Sony logo and Ult button are pearlescent

🙉 Can’t hear you lalalalala. Of course, part of what makes the Sony Ult Wear sound so good is its noise-canceling technology. It uses a hybrid noise-canceling with Dual Noise Sensor technology to monitor external noises and how the headphones sound internally. It’s not new technology, but it’s amazing how the outside world just fades out when you wear these headphones especially if you put them on during your commute or a long-haul flight. The noise-canceling effect also isn’t tiring, I didn’t feel any of the fatigue that can settle in while using noise-canceling after listening with the Sony Ult Wear for multiple eight-hour sessions.

The carrying case has room for USB C and audio cables

🕵️‍♂️ Spy hearing. What’s more, amazing than the noise-canceling on the Sony Ult Wear is how natural sounding the ambient mode is. You can let back in external noise by hitting the NC/AMB button on the headphones or just cup the right earcup if you need to quickly hear an announcement or someone trying to talk to you.

🧐 Fancy upgrades. The secret behind the Ult Wear’s enhanced noise-canceling is it now uses the same Sony V1 processor as found in the latest WH-1000X series headphones. Now the noise-canceling isn’t nearly as 1:1 as good as I’m used to from my pair of Sony WH-1000XM5, but it’s fairly close and it’s astounding the NC is this good on a pair of $200 headphones.

Touch controls on the side to play, pause, change tracks, and volume up/down

⏯️ Remove to pause. Another feature that has tricked down from the WH-1000X5 to the Sony Ult Wear is a captive sensor, which pauses anything you’re playing as soon as you take them off. It’s a little nicety that saves you from having to fumble with your phone to pause the music. It’s also amazing how the headphones will only continue playing once you’re probably wearing them again versus having them wrapped around your neck.

🔋 Long battery life. The Sony Ult Wear promises 30 hours of battery life with ANC turned on and 50 hours without it. I found the battery life estimates to be right on the money and I easily got a full week’s worth of eight-hour workday usage from the Ult Wear before I had to recharge it. It also quickly charges to give you an hour and a half of battery in three minutes or five hours of play in 10 minutes – which comes in super clutch if your headphones run dry in the middle of a flight.

👬 Pair a device or two. Like other newer Bluetooth audio devices, the Sony Ult Wear features Multipoint to let you connect up to two devices at the same time. It’s a great feature that lets me use the same pair of headphones with my phone and a laptop or tablet, or if you’re sharing the headphones with someone. Switching is fairly seamless in the Sony Headphones app too. I just wished activating Multipoint didn’t also disable the high-quality LDAC codec, but that won’t matter if you’re primarily connecting to Apple devices as they’re limited to the AAC codec anyway. If you’re an Android user, you may want to prioritize having high-quality LDAC sound over Multiport.

🗣️ Loud and clear. Thanks to its beam-forming microphones, the Sony Ult Wear does a great job of isolating your for phone and video calls. While calling my partner next to a construction zone, she was able to hear me crystal clear even through all the different engine sounds and high-pitched sirens and chirps. Just make sure you install the Sony Headphones app otherwise the microphones won’t properly work. I answered a call from my partner who didn’t have the app installed to her phone and her voice came over completely garbled while capturing more external sounds than her voice.

Should you buy the Sony Ult Wear?