Sony ULT Wear review: What do you get for the money?
The Sony ULT Wear are available in black, off-white and forest grey and cost £179. Despite being a mid-range option, they have a reasonable amount in common with the Japanese manufacturer’s flagship noise-cancelling headphones, the Sony WH-1000XM5.
Both use Sony’s Integrated Processor V1 for audio processing and noise cancellation, employ a combination of physical buttons and touch controls and support Sony features including 360 Reality Audio and Adaptive Sound Control.
Connectivity options are similar, too. Both operate over Bluetooth 5.2 and support the SBC, AAC and LDAC codecs. Sadly, the ULT Wear aren’t Hi-Res certified like the XM5 but they do support Bluetooth multipoint, Google Fast Pair and Microsoft Swift Pair.
Physical connections extend to a USB-C port and a 3.5mm port. The former doesn’t support audio transmission so is solely for charging the battery, which should last around 30 hours with ANC engaged and 50 hours with it switched off. Included in the box are a USB-C charging cable, a 1.2m audio cable and a hard-shell carrying case.
Despite weighing practically the same as the XM5 (255g vs 249g), the Sony ULT Wear are designed quite differently. Their headband is attached to the earcups by yokes rather than integrated into the cups as it is on the XM5. This results in a less cohesive aesthetic but one that allows the earcups to be rotated and folded in ways the XM5 couldn’t.
There are some other key differences between the two models. The ULT Wear use larger drivers than their more expensive stablemates (40mm vs 30mm), have half the number of microphones (four vs eight) and make do without Sony’s HD Noise Cancelling Processor QN1.
Most significantly, the ULT Wear have an extra button on the left earcup reserved for their headline feature: ULT Power Sound. This unlocks two sound modes – ULT 1 (Deep Bass) and ULT 2 (Attack Bass) – both of which dramatically change how the headphones sound.
