Sony's Newest WH1000XM6 LEAKED?!

Sony is one of the biggest players in the wireless ANC over your headphone space, and it seems like a few of the details about their newest have just leaked online. So let's go ahead and talk about what some of those details are. Before I go any further, I definitely want to mention that this video and all the videos on this channel are made possible by headphones.com. So if you want to support us here at the Headphone Show and the kind of coverage that we do, definitely consider making your next headphone purchase at headphones.com. Before moving further, I definitely want to shout out two other people. The first is Akella from our Discord server, who's kind of our resident Sony enthusiast. Anytime there's any new information about a Sony product, he's usually the first to post about it. So thank you, Akella. And second, I want to give a shout out to the Walkman blog, who is the original source for this leak. And all of the information you're going to find in this video will be available at their blog, which will be linked in the description. So obviously what we're going to be talking about today is the sixth entry into Sony's flagship over-ear ANC wireless headphone lineup. Thanks to this leak, we have some insight as to what might show up in terms of the headphones design or features. So let's talk about the design first. I think the first big change that people are really going to be interested in is that it goes back to a foldable design, unlike the WH-1000XM5, which was a little bit bulky for portable use due to not being foldable. And in the spirit of that more portable design, it seems like it's also going to be shipping with a more portable case. and apparently the case comes with a magnetic closure design, so it should be a little bit quicker to both open and close the case and access your headphones or put them away. The second feature advertised as a new upgrade from the old WH-1000XM5 is that the new headbands apparently have more padding on top as well, which for me the WH-1000XM5 was extremely uncomfortable on the top of my head, so if the new iteration fixes that, that's great. In terms of design aspects from the previous WH-1000XM5 that may not be different on the WH-1000XM6, the first is going to be the weight is mostly the same or exactly the same. It seems like it's going to be right around 250 grams. And the second is that the driver size is probably going to be the same. So the WH-1000XM5 had a 30mm dynamic driver producing the sound and the WH-1000XM6 will have the same size driver at least. A lot of people don't know this, but the WH-1000XM5's 30mm driver was actually a slight size downgrade from the WH-1000XM4's 40mm driver. However, this slight shrinking of the driver size didn't correlate to a loss of quality or anything like that. In fact, the 30mm driver in the WH-1000XM5 came about as part of a five years long R&D effort on Sony's part to make a smaller driver perform equally to the 40mm driver found in the older models. And you might be asking, "Well, why do you want a smaller driver?" there are two main benefits there. One is that a smaller driver is obviously going to be lighter, and the second is that a smaller driver is going to take up less room in the ear cups, which means they'll have more room for other things in the ear cups. Well, why do they need more room in the ear cups? Well, that brings us to the second item, which is features. Now, obviously, the most important feature with a device like this is going to be the ANC or ambient mode, whatever they call it. And with this, it does seem like the WH-1000XM6 is going to be taking a step forward versus the WH-1000XM5. Specifically, it seems like they've added three microphones over the WH-1000XM5's 9 microphones, so now it's 12 microphones total. And I don't know if that's 12 microphones per ear or if it's across both ears, so 6 per side. But regardless, it's more than the last one, which means they're going to have a more complete capture of the sound pressure inside the ear cup. And that's really important for ANC because ANC, you need to be monitoring the sound pressure in the ear cup so you know what to cancel out. Furthermore, something they claim to be keeping from the WH-1000XM5 is the Auto Noise Cancelling Optimizer, which this term basically seems to describe the adaptive process that the ANC algorithm takes based on what the acoustic conditions of the ear chamber are when you have the headphone on your head. So for example, if you're getting a little bit of leak due to hair or due to the headphone not seating perfectly on your head, the Auto Noise Cancelling Optimization is meant to adapt to that and still provide the same great ANC that they're known for. One other feature that I'm not sure is new or not is they have an array of six microphones on the outside of the headphone for voice calls and stuff like that. And apparently these microphones are going to be assisted by AI in some way or another. Now, I don't know if it's going to be either the AI is helping equalize the voice to sound more normal on the voice call, or if it's going to have something to do with intelligently rejecting the outside background noise that isn't your voice. All of these features that are going to have to do with adapting to, rejecting, canceling noise. Those are all gonna be handled by Sony's new chip, the QN3 chip, of which again, I have very little information about, but it stands to reason that with the new array of microphones both on the outside and the inside of the cup that they would need a new chip to handle that. Okay, so now let's talk about the features that have nothing to do with noise cancellation. And this is actually where things get really exciting for me personally. One of the things that isn't changing is that it's keeping the same quick charge feature from the WH-1000XM5. So it had that feature where you can charge it three minutes and get three hours of playback time, that's still going to be supported on the WH-1000XM6. And the WH-1000XM6 will also have multi-point pairing support. So you'll be able to pair it to multiple sources. But something that people didn't like about the WH-1000XM5 is that you couldn't use it while you were charging it. So it might have had a good battery life and might have had a nice quick charging feature. But if you wanted to use it without depleting any of the battery, you couldn't. But the WH-1000XM6 fixes this, and now you'll be able to use it while charging it. Now for someone like me, that's a huge win, because I love the benefits that come with active devices like this, like active noise canceling and transparency mode, but I hate my headphone running out of battery and me having to take it off my head, plug it in, and then switch to another headphone. So something like this, where I can just use the headphone all day while still on the charger, that's a massive win for me, because I still get the same great features, but don't have to deal with the battery depletion. Which brings me to the last non-ANC related feature and easily the one that's the most exciting for me personally. The WH-1000XM6 with the included Sony Sound Connect app is going to have 10 bands of included equalization for users to tweak the sound to their preference. So even if the sound isn't perfect out of the box, a 10 band EQ is enough granularity of adjustment that you might be able to find a setting that works great for you, but then also gets you the benefits of class-leading ANC and transparency mode. One last detail I want to leave people with before I go is the price, which has leaked. Now, the original leak happened on Amazon in Spain, and it was in Euros, and it was around 400 Euros, and it's since been updated to be around 470 Euros. Now, obviously, this isn't concrete. It's already changed once. So, grains of salt on this, as well as all the other details. And that's going to wrap this up. That's all the details I have about this headphone. So, uh... Funny story. Two things I missed, one of which came out since I started editing the video, that being we have a picture of the headphone now. So the headphone itself looks to have, yeah, the extra folding mechanism that wasn't there on the XM5, as well as a kind of wider, flatter headband surface, which bodes well for prospective comfort. So definitely excited about that. And the second thing is that I actually forgot to mention the release date of this headphone, which is May 15th. Alright, back to past Griffin now. So if you want to discuss this headphone, or any headphone, or anything audio related really, with me or other like-minded audio enthusiasts, make sure to check out our forum at forum.headphones.com. I'm going to be starting a post there about this headphone in particular in case new information pops up between now and release, or our Discord server which is at discord.gg/headphones and that'll be linked in the description. If you liked this video, definitely make sure to like it down below. And if you want to see more videos like this, definitely subscribe to The Headphone Show. With that, it's been Listener from The Headphone Show. You guys have a good rest of your day. Later. See you later.