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Sony’s WH-1000XM6 offer some of the best noise cancellation you can buy, along with excellent sound and a refined, foldable design. They’ve dropped back to their lowest price, giving you another chance to grab Sony’s best ANC headphones for less.
For anyone looking for a premium pair of over-ear headphones with exceptional ANC performance, the Sony WH-1000XM6 are hard to beat. While they don’t reinvent the wheel, they address many of the concerns of the previous model, such as bringing back the foldable design, and offer even better noise cancellation and audio performance thanks to upgraded internals. At $460, they’re undeniably expensive, but right now, they’ve returned to their lowest price ever.
The Sony WH-1000XM6 are currently down to just $398 at Amazon and Best Buytheir lowest price to date. While they briefly hit the same price over Black Friday, this is a solid opportunity to score them at their best price if you missed that sale. All three colorways are on sale: Black, Midnight Blue, and Platinum Silver. If you’re in the UK, we’ve got good news for you, too. Amazon UK has them on sale for just £350down from £400.
The best ANC headphones on the market
The Sony WH-1000XM6 are widely considered to be the best ANC headphones on the market. According to our friends over at Rtingsthey handily beat rivals like the Bose QuietComfort Ultra and Apple AirPods Max on most performance metrics, including noise cancellation performance, microphone quality, and codec support. Overall, the WH-1000XM6 are not a massive upgrade over their predecessors—if you already own WH-1000XM5, you don’t need to rush to upgrade. However, the improvements and refinements they bring along—a wider headband, a folding frame, a sturdier design, better sound, and improved noise cancellation—add up to a pair of wireless headphones that have rightfully earned their place at the top of “best ANC headphones” lists.
The WH-1000MX6 come equipped with a new QN3 ANC chip, which Sony says is 7 times faster than the QN1 chip in the WH-1000XM5 and controls 12 onboard microphones in real-time to deliver enhanced noise cancellation, voice calls, and audio quality. Sony also touts that world-renowned mastering engineers tuned the new pair to deliver a more balanced sound with “studio-level precision, preserving every nuance, every note, exactly as the artist intended.”
The battery life is rated for 30 hours with ANC turned on and 40 hours with the feature disabled—same as the XM5. However, the new model does offer faster charging, with just three minutes of top-up delivering roughly three hours of listening time.
Other notable highlights include support for LDAC and LC3 codecs, Multi-point connectivity, touch controls, Speak to Chat feature, Adaptive Sound Control, Quick Attention, 360 Reality Audio with head tracking, and a 3.5mm audio jack for allowing headphones to be used in a wired mode.
Disclaimer: Notebookcheck is not responsible for price changes carried out by retailers. The discounted price or deal mentioned in this item was available at the time of writing and may be subject to time restrictions and/or limited unit availability.
Amazon and Best Buy (linked in the article)
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Kristen Spradlin – Tech Writer – 150 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2024
Kristen is a technology writer based in Toronto. He’s primarily interested in smartphone hardware, Android, Apple ecosystem, audio gear, and the intersection of technology and climate change. His first smartphone was the HTC Dream, and while he regards himself as an Android loyalist, he doesn’t mind using an iPhone as a secondary phone. When he’s not scouring his RSS feed for the latest tech news, you’ll likely find him glued to his Kindle Paperwhite reading his favorite non-fiction titles. He has also traveled extensively, having visited Australia, England, Nepal, and India.
Kristen Spradlin, 2025-12-19 (Update: 2025-12-19)
