Sony Ult Wear Review: Bass Leads The Brand's Big Brand Evolution In Headphones

For some people, music is all about the bass. Those people need the thump to get them moving, and there is nothing wrong with that. Entire lines of headphones have been built on this premise. Sony is jumping into that particular fray with its next generation of audio products, which includes the Sony Ult Wear headphones.

Of course, in this line of headphones, Sony Ult Wear's predecessor was "Sony WH-XB910." So right off the bat, the alphabet soup naming convention is gone and we can be thankful for that. But these headphones also have a unique and dynamic sound that bass fans will love to rally around. Add to that the comfort, the longevity of the headphones, and really good active noise cancellation (ANC) and you have a great set of cans for that genre. This review was written after three weeks of testing a set of Sony Ult Wear headphones — provided by Sony specifically for this review.

The biggest change to the headphones comes in the name, which means a lot of the controls you're familiar with are still here — with one notable exception. On the left ear cup, you'll find the physical controls. There's a power button, which is also used for Bluetooth pairing, an ANC button, a USB-C port for charging, and a 3.5mm headphone jack if you're a wired kind of person.

The other button is the Ult button. "ULT" officially represents (according to Sony) the "ultimate step into the evolution of Sony's portable electronics." Functionally speaking, the Ult button is a bass boost, plain and simple. There are two levels of bass boost — thump, and rump shaker. Those are not the official names, but essentially, that's what you're getting with the Ult button.

Over on the right side, you have your touch controls. A double tap plays and pauses, a finger swipe forward and back scrubs your music/podcast, and a swipe up and down adjusts the volume accordingly. A single press and hold activates your phone's assistant and covering the right cup completely reduces the volume of your media and trunks on pass-through, so you can talk to those around you. Most of these translate over from Sony's other offerings.

Each earcup is constructed of plastic with 40mm drivers on the inside. The ear cups are made of very comfortable foam with a large opening for your entire ear. The sides of the headband are hard plastic, but the top segment is flexible also with soft foam. Wearing the headphones for an entire workday will not be a problem.

The headphones come with a case — and the headphones neatly fold into them — but the earcups don't rotate a full 180 degrees. If you don't turn the earcups in the correct direction, they won't sit flat, so the case won't hold them. That's not a big deal, but it can get annoying when you're trying to tuck the headphones away quickly.

Speaking of wearing them all day, the headphones come with a 30-hour battery with ANC or 50 hours with ANC off. Additionally, a ten-minute charge will give you five additional hours of playtime. These are all advertised numbers by Sony, but they're consistent with testing.

As for the sound, it has to be evaluated at all three levels of Ult...Ult-ness? You can have Ult turned off, press the Ult button once to turn on level one, and press the Ult button again for level 2. A third press of the button starts the cycle over again.

With Ult off, the sound coming from the headphones is pretty clean. There's a little bit of bass that comes through when you're supposed to hear it. This level is going to be great for podcasts and music that doesn't rely on booming bass.

At Ult level 1, you start to hear what Sony is chasing after. The bass gets boosted by more than a little bit. At this level, the bass booms, and the rest of the sound doesn't suffer from it. Overall, you're going to dig this sound. Artists like Gravity Kills and Disturbed will benefit from this level.

Ult level 2 is brain scrambling time. If you turn on the Scorpions' "Alien Nation," you will finally notice the kick drum for the first time, and you will never be able to unhear it. The kick drums come at the expense of a lot of the other sounds though. Midrange tones get muddy and less defined. High-end can cut through it, but it has to do a lot of the heavy lifting in this scenario.

Depending on your musical tastes, you'll probably settle on Ult level 1, or maybe leave it off. Ult Level 2 is just too much. It's hard to imagine a scenario where you need to hear those extremely low tones amplified that much. But if you're into the excess, we won't judge.

Of course, the Sony Alt wear headphones have a mobile app that you can use to enable different functionality. Most notably, you can set up your phone's assistant to respond to commands. In addition to normal commands for Google Assistant, like asking questions or controlling your smart home, you can also use those voice commands to enable features on the headphones, such as "turn on ANC," etc.

You can also control what devices you connect to. The headphones support multi-point connection enabling you to connect to your phone and computer at the same time, for example. Sound transfers seamlessly between the two devices, depending on which is broadcasting. For example, if you're listening to music on your computer and a call comes in, it'll break into the headphones.

This is also where you can set your EQ from thirteen different presets, including one "custom" and two "manual" presets. It's not clear what the difference is between those, but you can set them.

That leads you to the other realization about the app. It's boring. There's a lot of text and a few menus, but the app has little visual appeal. Even the EG presets are just lines on a graph. Sony should definitely not lean into any kind of iconography here, but some color couldn't hurt.

Plus, the app has a few odd language choices. The aforementioned "Manual" and "Custom" presets come to mind in this regard. One of the tips in the app reads: "Positioning the widget on home screen enables checking headphone status and setting w/o launching app." 

That's not technically inaccurate, but it's certainly not grammatically correct.

Sony is not new to the headphone game, so it would be nice to see some evolution here. There's nothing wrong with promoting function over form. To that end, the app functions well enough, but the company could stand to tighten things up here and there.

Sony is really flexing its muscles here in the ANC department. ANC is quite good as is the passive isolation provided by the earcups and the padding. Additionally, pass-through/transparency mode is pretty good, though you might want to hear a little less microphone hiss when transparency mode is activated. Ambient sound has a sharp, treble-heavy quality to it.

But the ANC is quite good, eliminating most of the noise of a busy household or office, which is great for those times that you're in the zone. The fact that all three buttons on the left ear cup are vastly different sizes makes them easy to differentiate by feel, which is another bonus.

In the button department, the only thing that would be nice would be a separate Bluetooth control. Holding down the power button is an antiquated method for activating Bluetooth discovery, but it's not great when the headphones are already on. You need to power the headphones off, and then back on just to pair to a different device. When you can only pair to one device at a time, that makes sense, but when you can pair to multiple devices, it's not ideal.

Overall, these are a decent pair of cans, comparable to Son'ys flagship brand, the WH-1000XM5. The sound quality is not quite there, but they're pretty close. Adding bass boost will make these headphones a no-brainer for those who are into that low-end bounce. To that end, these headphones retail for around $199 in the U.S., and you can buy them from Sony's online store or Amazon or your local Best Buy.

That's an attractive price point, considering what you get with these headphones. You get solid sound, familiar controls, and really good ANC and isolation. You can get less for more money depending on where you shop.

As for the sound, Ult 2 is too much bass, because it comes at the expense of other sound. But Sony was smart by giving you three levels of bass boost so you can find your preference. You might want to see more bass boost with Ult off, but those people will be quite happy with Ult level 1.

Above all else, if Sony is permanently retiring the random letters and numbers that denote its branding, that's a win for everyone. For those who want bass with a little punch, this is a good debut.