Design & Construction

Ever since the successful launch of the WH-1000XM5, Sony has been going back to the drawing board to cook up new innovations for the future of its lineup. Gone are the days, where Sony is adament on selling headphones with long product names. Now, we can finally say, we are seeing the next generation of Extra Bass, known as ULT sound. Is it obvious that it is the new Extra Bass line? Not really, in fact, little is known about what it stands for but watching Sony maintain its Extra Bass line is certainly a fulfiling experience. Now we are here facing this new headphone, the ULT wear. Indeed, something to looking forward to after the missteps in the WH-XB910N. Diving straight into the design. the ULT Wear blends all of Sony's learning from the WH-1000XM5 and WH-1000XM4, leaving us with the best one yet. From the top, we are looking at a sturdy rounded plastic headband with plush cushions wrapping the top. The hypbrid plastic-metal arms extender are located near the the top part of the headphone and click in steps. Both sides of the headphone bear the holographic Sony logo with softer, thicker and deeper pleather cushions, suitable for users who wear spectacles like myself. The depth of the earcups are significant; of which your ears will never touch any part of the inside fabric and I got to say, the pleather fits snugly with little clamping force, Onto the exterior of the headphones, it gives off this subtle understatedness with a matte-like finish, featuring a bass port mesh located on the top part of the earcups. The headphones are made up of mostly plastic, to keep it light-weight at 255g. However, dark coloured models do picked up fingerprint smudges and facial oils quite easily in day-to-day use. On the left earcup, there is the (From Front-Back): 3.5mm input, Power button, Noise-Cancelling/Ambient Sound button as well as the holographic ULT button. While on the right earcup, we have touchpad controls for the rest of the playback functions. Swipe down for Vol-, swipe up for Vol+, swipe towards the front for next track, swipe backward for previous track, double-tap will play/pause and covering the whole right earcup will activate Quick Attention. Quick Attention is a feature that allows users to instantly pause the music and deactivate noise-canceling to hear others when people want to talk with you. After you are done, release your hand from the earcup and everything retracts to normal. Alternatively, you can also do the traditional way of removing your headphones from your head and there will be a proximity sensor to track that you did and pause the music automatically. The NC/AMB button can be used to toggle between noise-canceling and ambient sound mode, passive noise isolation or activate Spotify Quick Access and Endel with a double or triple press. It takes about 3.5 hours to charge the headphones up from a dead battery and the power button allows you to check for battery status by pressing once. It is worth noting that the headphones have Quick Charge which only requires 3 minutes of charging for 1.5 hours of playback.

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Sound Quality

Exciting, energetic and upbeat is how I would describe the sound of the ULT Wear. So let's start off with the bass response. In short, it is deep, punchy, and tight. The 40m drivers never manages to distort at loud and maximum volumes and does not bleeds into the mids when it is at a low volume level. The bass depth does rattle the headphone similar to what you can expect from the Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless. However, the Skullcandy Crusher ANC 2's bass is definitely boomier than on the ULT Wear since those uses extra sensory bass drivers. When compared to the sound of the WH-1000XM4, the sound signature of the ULT Wear is much cleaner and tighter. The highs sound bright and are filled with plenty of details and the mids do sound extremely crisp especially with the help of the equaliser tuning that is found in the Sony | Headphones Connect app that really help to configure the sound to your ears. The soundstage isn't quite as wide as the mind-blowing AirPods Max's Spatial Audio but definitely on par with Sennheiser Accentum Plus and Beats Studio Pro. The instrument separation is excellent with distinct left and right channels being heard clearly. If you are not so much of an EDM or Hip-Hop fan, I am glad to report that the ULT Wear works perfectly with all other genres ranging from Pop to Jazz after you fiddle with the customisable sound settings in the Sony | Headphones Connect App available for download from the App & Play Store. In the app, you are first greeted with the status of the headphones battery with the codecs in use as well as DSEE. Moving downwards, we have a few tabs here, starting with the Status tab. First, Adaptive Sound Control allows for the toggling of different noise-canceling modes like Walking, Staying, Running, and Transport. Each has different levels of noise-canceling and ambient sound mode. These are all automatically detected by the headphone itself through its smart Sense Engine technology built-in. Of course, users can toggle the amount of ambient sound let in, focus on voice-only, or just turn it off completely. This feature has improved to be faster and more responsive than before to also track your frequently visited locations and kick in the right amount of ambient sound control when you are there so you don't have to physically switch each time. You may register your locations either from learned ones or from the map itself. However, if you are concerned over giving away your location data to Sony, you may turn off this option as well. There is also the option to enable or disable the notification tone when a mode switches now. Personally, I hardly use this feature but having tried it couple of times, I am confident to say that its accuracy is fantastic. With multi-point Bluetooth connection available, the ULT Wear can connect up to 2 devices at once and you may add or remove another device from the app itself. You will then see the current song playing and adjust the volume slider or skip songs in this setting too. One of the newer features here after the latest update is the option to measure your volume levels for hearing safety. Working with World Health Organisation, the app shows us a range of sound decibels of frequent daily sounds for us to benchmark our volume levels for hearing protection. This feature will keep track of your volume levels for 7 days to understand if you are listening too loud for your own good, honestly quite a handy feature that is very relevant in today's world. Moving onto the Sound tab, we will see the main feature here, Ambient Sound Control. Based on my testing and usage, I am giving the winning title to the WH-1000XM5 for retaining the best ANC amongst its competitors. From the hum of the airplane cabin, traffic sirens, construction noises, strong winds and even high frequencies noises, the ULT Wear blocks all of that using the same HD Noise-Cancelling processor V1 as the 1000X Series to enhance the quality of noise-cancelling and reduce cabin pressure. You may also switch to Ambient Sound Mode where you can utilise the microphones to take in surrounding noises for safety as well as focus on voice which keeps the ambient noise low and takes in more of human voices instead as well as turn off all settings for passive noise isolation. One notable mention of the Ambient Sound Mode is the fact that if any sudden loud noises like sirens are heard, you will not get a large wave of noise intake as the mics do suppress it to prevent both hearing damage and random shocks. Just like before, there is a slider to toggle between level 1 to 20 of ambient sound intake. Comparing the Ambient Sound Mode with the AirPods Max, I would give the edge to Apple's Transparency Mode as it is simply the most natural-sounding transparency that seems to know what to filter out and take in. There is also the essential sound equaliser with presets ranging from Bright, Excited, Mellow, Relaxed, Vocal, Treble Boost, Bass Boost, Speech Etc. You can also choose to customise your own to make the headphones great for all genres of music ranging from soothing jazz to bass-heavy EDM tracks. Now, onto the wildest feature here, ULT sound. In addtion to all the customisable options, ULT levels of 1 and 2 gives you differing depths of bass. In my experience, ULT1 is  comfortable bass-boost that add depth and rumbling to the bass effects in genres such as Dance and Pop, enhancing the joy of jamming out, However, bassheads know that ULT2 is the one to go-to when they want to indulge in party-level EDM hits genres such as House and Techno. ULT2 automatically pushes Clear Bass levels to +10 levels, however the experience is manageable with no distortion to the low-end even at maximum volume. Now, 360 Reality Audio being Sony’s object-based spatial audio technology adds to that immersive experience. However, this feature is currently only available to users of 360 Reality Audio Live, nugs.net, Artist Connection and TIDAL. There is no support for mainstream music streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, or Youtube Premium as of yet. You will need to do a photographic scan of both of your ears and the app will find the most optimised sound field for your listening. Lastly, there is the option to switch priorities between sound quality or stable connection if the Bluetooth signal is unstable and the addition of DSEE Extreme to enhance the quality of the music output. Dolby Atmos support is also available with the compatible Sony WLA-NS7 wireless transmitter when connected to a BRAVIA XR TV. Call quality not too bad either as the caller on the other end feedback that the microphones do pick up significantly less surrounding noises but my voice is a little muffled as the technology overcompensates to block the loud noises resulting in softer volumes even when I speak up. Wind noise reduction was okay as less wind noise could get though even if it was quite strong outdoors. However, when put against the AirPods Max superior call quality, it sadly fails to beat the competition. Moving to the System tab, you may connect up to 2 devices to listen to music on one and take calls on the other. You can change the Voice Assistant from your regular phone's default of Siri for IOS or Google Assistant for Android or use Amazon Alexa built-in, The headphones touchpad can be enabled or disabled too. The NC/AMB button on the headphone can also be customised to cycle between the 3 options of ANC, Ambient Sound Mode and Off or use only 2 options of ANC and Ambient Sound Mode as I have set here as well as customising the double press or triple press on the button to instantaneously activate Spotify Quick Access and play music immediately. You can enable or disable th option to capture your voice during calls so as to hear yourself clearly. The headphones will also automatically power off after a certain period of time. There are other more settings like the enabling or disabling or auto play/pause, language of voice guidance and automatic download of software updates with the option to reset all the settings to original if you mess up any. In other portions of the app, there is a achievement-like dashboard to show your listening hours, locations and actions, listening volumes and earn badges. Not the most useful feature here, but some extra data is better than none I guess. Lastly, the information tab shows all your notifications for software updates and couple of user-friendly tips. In other settings, you can backup or restore your settings when you sign in with your Sony account and turn off the headphones from the app itself.

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Connectivity & Portability

The ULT Wear support the latest AAC and SBC codecs together with Bluetooth Version 5.2 however, there is no support for LDAC codec. The battery life peaks at 30 hours per use with ANC and 50 hours without ANC. The headphones' connectivity to the app is perfect as it is able to detect my headphones when its already connected via Bluetooth all the time. The ULT Wear also support Google’s Fast Pair feature that enable effortless Bluetooth pairing with your Android devices. You can easily locate where you left your headphones by ringing them, check their last known location on your smartphone or receive a notification when your headphones battery is running low so you know when to charge them. These features are further enhanced with Swift Pair on a Windows 11 laptop, desktop PC or tablet as pop-up pairing guidance will appear on compatible devices when pairing mode is selected. If you try to watch videos or movies with these, they do not have any latency in audio transmission. The mic and controls on the earcups are disabled in wired mode and noise-cancelling or ambient sound mode can be used when there is battery life remaining. Users can neither listen using the USB Type-C cable nor charge the headphone and use it at the same time. 

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PROS

• Bass-Focused, Exciting Sound Signature

• Snug & Comfortable

• Lightweight

• Long Battery Life

• Touchpad Controls For Music Play & Calls

• Adaptive Sound Control

• Ambient Sound Control

• In-App Equaliser

• Quick Attention

• DSEE

• Bluetooth 5.2

• 360 Reality Audio

• Multi-device Connection

• Hardshell Carrying Case

• USB-C Fast Charging

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CONS​​​​​

• No LDAC Codec Support

• Mic and Controls Not Available In Wired Mode

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The Bottom Line

In all, the Sony ULT Wear is regains the crown in bass-focused headphones. Lightweight design, strong noise-canceling, energetic ULT sound, long 30 hours battery life and a comprehensive app are some of the features that helps it stay on top of the pack when it comes to recommending the best. Till date, it still holds its ground, marking a remarkable revolution from its Extra Bass days. It is highly recommended for daily commutes and long flights. Three colours of Black, Forest Grey and Off-White are available to fit users of different genders and styles.