The Most Technically Perfect Headphones Of The Year Have One Honest Flaw

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Sony did not just release a new pair of headphones.

With the 1000X The Collexion, the company redefined what its own flagship tier is capable of — and the result is a genuinely impressive piece of audio engineering.

The Collexion’s soundstage is wide and cinematic, its detail retrieval exceptional, and its bass deep, powerful, and precisely controlled.

Noise cancellation, built on the same QN3 chip and 12-microphone array as the WH-1000XM6, remains among the best available.

Call quality holds firm even against strong wind.

The build — metal, faux leather, a slimmer silhouette — carries a premium feel that matches the premium price.

Technically Flawless. Emotionally, That Depends on You

The feature list is equally thorough: LDAC high-resolution Bluetooth, Bluetooth LE Audio, Sony 360 Reality Audio across music, theatre and gaming modes, and DSEE Ultimate making its 1000X debut for upscaling compressed audio.

The battery lasts 32 hours without ANC and 24 with it active.

What draws a distinction in character, not capability.

The Collexion’s tuning leans toward precision and scale rather than the warmer, more visceral personality of its predecessors — a deliberate creative choice that some listeners will find refined, and others will find just slightly cool to the touch.

That is less a flaw than a philosophy, and one Sony appears to have pursued with full intention.

By most measurable standards, the Collexion is the best-sounding headphone Sony has ever shipped.

Whether that particular sound is the right one remains, as it always has been, a matter of taste.

Silence, Awareness, or Somewhere In Between — You Choose

The Collexion gives you three core listening states: full noise cancellation, full awareness, or everything switched off.

Noise cancellation works by firing reverse sound waves at incoming noise, making it particularly effective against the low rumble of trains, planes, and air conditioning.

Flip it to Ambient Sound mode, and the headphones do the opposite — they pipe the outside world directly into your ears, with 20 levels of fine-tuning and a Voice Focus option that filters out background noise while keeping speech crystal clear.

Switch both off entirely, and you get a traditional passive seal, which is the easiest way to stretch the battery.

The smarter features are what make daily use genuinely effortless.

Cup your palm over the right ear, and the music drops instantly so you can hear someone talking — release it, and you are back in your bubble.

Speak-to-Chat detects your jaw moving and pauses the music automatically the moment you start a conversation. Adaptive Sound Control goes further still, reading your phone’s sensors to figure out whether you are sitting, walking, or commuting, then switching modes on your behalf without you lifting a finger.

For spatial audio, the Collexion adds Music, Cinema, and Gaming upmix modes that reshape standard stereo into a three-dimensional field — and a Background Music mode that makes it feel like the sound is coming from speakers across the room rather than drivers pressed against your ears.

Smarter Than It Looks — Google Integration & the Sound Connect App

The Collexion plays well with Android straight out of the box — bring it near your phone, and it pairs instantly, no menu-diving needed.

If you misplace it, Google’s Find Hub tracks its last known location, and audio switches automatically between your phone, tablet, and TV based on whatever is playing.

Press and hold the right earcup to bring up Google Assistant or Gemini hands-free.

The Sony Sound Connect app — the cleaner, redesigned replacement for the old Headphones Connect — is where the real personalisation happens.

It reads your GPS to adjust noise cancellation automatically depending on whether you are sitting still, walking, or on the train.

A short listening test builds a custom EQ profile based on your actual preferences, so you never have to touch a slider.

Head tracking shifts the soundstage as you move, Speak-to-Chat pauses music the moment you start talking, and a built-in ear health tracker keeps an eye on how loud you have been listening relative to WHO safety guidelines.

The app turns a great headphone into one that feels like it was set up specifically for you.

The One Thing Sony Cannot Engineer Away

The Collexion’s boldest design choice is also its most debated one: wrapping a $700 headphone in faux leather.

It looks and feels premium out of the box — nobody disputes that.

The problem is what happens a year or two down the line; faux leather, regardless of quality tier, cracks.

On earpads, that is a manageable inconvenience — you swap them out.

On the headphone’s outer shell, there is no fix; you live with it, or you buy another one.

This is not a hypothetical concern.

Owners of the XM4 and XM5 have been through this exact cycle, and the Collexion uses the same material logic at twice the price point.

To put it plainly: the faux leather exterior will inevitably crack — the only question is when.

For a headphone positioned as a luxury object, Sony has not fully answered the durability question.

Great engineering deserves materials that age as gracefully as the sound.

Where to Buy & Current Deals in Malaysia

The 1000X THE COLLEXION retails at RM2,799 — but if you shop smart right now, you can do better than that.

Harvey Norman Malaysia is running a straight price cut on the Silver edition, bringing it down to RM2,499— a clean RM300 off, no codes or vouchers needed.

On Shopee, authorised preferred dealers are listing from RM2,469, with additional shop-tier vouchers that can push the final checkout price lower.

Lazada authorised sellers start from RM2,599 (7% off) before any bank promo codes are applied.

Not sold on the Collexion’s price tag?

The Sony Store Online Malaysia is running an aggressive campaign on the standard WH-1000XM6 — use code MDR300 at checkout for an instant RM300 off, and you’ll also walk away with a complimentary WF-C510 wireless earbud and RM50 Touch ‘n Go eWallet credit upon warranty registration.

Ten Years in the Making

Ten years ago, when Sony launched the first 1000X, active noise cancellation was still a niche tool used mostly by pilots and business travellers.

The idea that an everyday commuter would want — or need — it felt almost absurd.

The 1000X changed that. It brought professional-grade noise cancellation to the masses, making quiet a thing anyone could carry in their bag.

Every generation after that pushed the bar higher — smarter noise detection, longer battery life, more natural sound.

By the sixth generation, Sony was flying Grammy-winning studio engineers in to tune the headphones, treating a consumer product like recording equipment.

The Collexion is not the seventh generation.

It is something else entirely — Sony taking a decade of accumulated expertise and asking not “is this good enough?” but “how good can this actually get?”

Ten years of iteration, distilled into one device.

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