They're solid for calls and meetings, with one important exception for Apple users.
What Sony improved:
The XM6 has six microphones dedicated to voice pickup, separate from the noise cancellation array. They use AI beamforming to focus on your voice and filter out background noise. The microphone mesh was redesigned to handle wind better.
Real-world performance:
In a quiet home office, you'll sound great. In a busy cafe or coworking space, people can still hear you clearly. The AI processing isolates your voice from ambient chatter and typical background noise.
Wind handling improved over the XM5. Light outdoor breezes are fine. Heavy wind still causes some interference, but it's better than most Bluetooth headphones.
The Mac/iPhone problem:
When using the XM6 for calls on Apple devices, audio quality drops significantly. This is how Bluetooth works, not a Sony issue.
Music playback uses the high-quality A2DP profile. When the microphone activates, it switches to HFP, dropping audio to 16-bit/16kHz. The result: your Zoom call sounds worse than laptop speakers.
The workaround:
Use your Mac's built-in microphone for voice input, keep the XM6 for listening. In Sound settings, select "MacBook Pro Microphone" as input while keeping XM6 as output.
Windows and Android users:
You don't have this problem. Call quality is consistently good.
Bottom line:
Great for calls overall. Mac/iPhone users need to know about the Bluetooth limitation.
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How we researched this
Where this comes from: this answer draws on the product's published specifications and the reviews ShopSavvy collected for it, alongside prices from ShopSavvy's price data.
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