Best Bluetooth Headphones (Over-ear for Music and Voice Calls)

[Manhattan]

Picked up XM4 and they sound great as expected but wow are they painful to wear! Earcups are shallow so tips of my ears are touching the inside and after just an hour they start to hurt from being pressed down. It has become very distracting to wear. I don't think I have abnormally large or protruding ears. Another thing no one brought up is how hot these things get around your ears. It might be the materials used on the earcup or the seal over the ears but its a total sauna after an hour. My ears are visibly red after a short period of use.

It's a shame because they do sound great as advertised and the features are awesome. Gonna have to go back to QC35 as I was able to wear them all day and 10+ hr flights (easily fallen asleep with them on) while forgetting they were even there. Strange that sony was able to put in all the R&D for great sound and noise cancelation on a flagship model but couldn't figure out the easy part of making them comfortable to wear.

[jwslam]

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Picked up XM4 and they sound great as expected but wow are they painful to wear! Earcups are shallow so tips of my ears are touching the inside and after just an hour they start to hurt from being pressed down. It has become very distracting to wear. I don't think I have abnormally large or protruding ears. Another thing no one brought up is how hot these things get around your ears. It might be the materials used on the earcup or the seal over the ears but its a total sauna after an hour. My ears are visibly red after a short period of use.

It's a shame because they do sound great as advertised and the features are awesome. Gonna have to go back to QC35 as I was able to wear them all day and 10+ hr flights (easily fallen asleep with them on) while forgetting they were even there. Strange that sony was able to put in all the R&D for great sound and noise cancelation on a flagship model but couldn't figure out the easy part of making them comfortable to wear.

Thx for the review. Was gonna go from QC35 to XM4 but I expel heat much more than normal people... guess I'll stick with QC but maybe upgrade

[ExtraSlow]

Settle down Elrond . . .

[blubs]

Just went through this debating between the XM4 and the Bose 700. The one big thing for me was that the Bose has noise cancelling on the microphone side, so if im on the phone in a coffee shop or something the person on the other line wont hear it. It worked so well that often I will put them on while driving vs using my noisy Bluetooth on conference calls. Stupid summer tires make an annoying hum.

[ExtraSlow]

I think the Sony has a little noise cancellation on the microphone side, but yeah, Rtings says the Bose is better for that.

[prodigydud]

Rocking the XM4 here (Previously Q35ii) - microphone on the Q35ii > XM4....actually, I'm not even sure if I got the microphone to work yet. On my work laptop, I have to set the audio to the headphones, while mic is thru my laptop - for some reason, that the best config for it to work - perhaps I'm missing something.

Also, managing multiple BT connections is a pain. I'd be on my Teams meeting (laptop) while a phone call (iphone) would come thru - this would mess up my connections, where I think I hear from my iphone, while people still hear me on Teams. Also, I notice BT connections take like 3 secs to connect when receiving calls from MS Teams. I read something about Teams not being setup for XM4's - forgot what it was all about, someone might know better about this here.

[ZenOps]

There is an authority on this. Steve Wozniak knows the best headphones on earth. And yet, he won't tell anyone what he uses because he doesn't want to endorse anyone or any company. Go figure.