Sony’s excellent WH-1000XM4 headphones are on sale for a new low price today
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Today's Dealmaster is headlined by an early Black Friday deal on Sony's WH-1000XM4. The wireless noise-canceling headphones are currently on sale for $278 at various retailers, which matches the price we've seen advertised for upcoming Black Friday sales events and ties the lowest outright discount we've seen. (An Amazon Prime Day deal last month dropped the headphones down to $298 with a $25 Amazon gift card.) Normally, they retail for $350.
We recently recommended the XM4 in our home-office setup guide, deeming it the best pair of noise-canceling headphones on the market. Like its predecessor-another Ars favorite-the XM4 provides an excellent blend of comfort, convenient features, customizable sound quality, and, above all else, active noise cancellation that's just about best-in-class. Now, though, it offers the ability to connect to multiple devices simultaneously as long as both devices use the AAC codec, which shouldn't be an issue the vast majority of the time. The new XM4 also has a motion sensor that automatically detects when you've taken off the headphones and pauses playback accordingly, and it has a nifty "speak to chat" feature that can do the same when it detects you talking to somebody else. We've found the touch controls on the side of the earcups to be less hyper-sensitive than before, too.
Beyond that, the headphones still get a little over 20 hours of battery life per charge, which is solid, and charge over a USB-C port. They still have minimal issues in the way of Bluetooth connectivity and offer a useful "ambient sound" mode that lets you listen to music while better hearing outside noises. The mic quality still isn't ideal, but it's fine, and while the mildly bass-forward sound isn't as detailed as you could get from a good wired pair, it's still full, fun, and customizable thanks to the nifty EQ tool in Sony's companion app. While we'd like the XM4 to offer the ability to tone down its noise-canceling strength a la Bose's Noise Cancelling Headphones 700, the overall package here is excellent.
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