What Is the Sony 1000X The ColleXion?

The Sony 1000X The ColleXion — styled with a capital X, pronounced “Collection” — is a new premium headphone that sits above Sony’s existing flagship, the WH-1000XM6. It was officially announced by Sony on May 19, 2026, alongside a new “Sandstone” colour option for the WH-1000XM6 itself. Both releases were timed to mark ten years since the original WH-1000X launched in 2016, a product widely credited with turning noise-cancelling headphones from a niche travel accessory into a mainstream category that Sony, Bose, Apple, and others now compete in heavily.

What makes the ColleXion notable isn’t just the price. It’s the naming. Sony did not call this the “WH-1000XM7.” Every numbered increment in the 1000X line so far — XM3, XM4, XM5, XM6 — has followed a predictable upgrade pattern: same core positioning, incremental improvements, similar price band. The ColleXion breaks that pattern entirely. It exists alongside the XM6, not instead of it, at a price point nearly $200 above it.

According to Sony’s press release, the ColleXion is available in two finishes — Platinum and Black — through Sony’s own store, Best Buy, and Amazon, priced at $649.99 in the US (Sony also lists $849.99 CAD for Canada) and €629 / £550 in Europe and the UK.

The headphones also gained some pre-launch attention after being spotted publicly on actor Damson Idris, star of F1: The Movie, in New York in early May 2026 — though at the time it wasn’t confirmed these were the ColleXion rather than another unreleased model. Tom’s Guide later confirmed the headphones Idris was photographed wearing were indeed the ColleXion, noting that “speculations have been swirling about the headphones’ capabilities ever since.”

The Design Change That Actually Matters

Strip away the marketing and there’s one change in the ColleXion that’s genuinely significant: Sony has moved away from plastic as the primary structural material.

Every WH-1000X headphone before this one — the XM3 through to the XM6 — used plastic for most of the frame, including the folding hinge mechanism. This wasn’t just a cost decision; it’s also been a recurring complaint. Owners of the XM5 in particular have reported hinge cracks developing over time, a known durability weak point in an otherwise well-regarded headphone.

The ColleXion replaces that plastic hinge with what Sony and multiple outlets describe as a continuous curved metal headband with polished metal hinges. The earcups and headband are wrapped in a vegan leather material rather than the synthetic finishes used on the XM6. Physical controls, the USB-C port surround, and the 3.5mm jack housing are also metal.

The ColleXion does not fold flat the way the XM6 does — the headband lies flat for storage, but the hinge design that allowed the XM6 to fold compactly has been removed. It ships in a structured carrying case with a built-in handle, formed by the gap between the headband and earcups — a design choice that several reviewers, including TechRadar, compared (not entirely favourably) to a small handbag.

What Reviewers Say About the Sound

Sony’s pitch for the ColleXion centres on a newly developed 30mm driver with a high-rigidity unidirectional carbon composite dome, paired with Sony’s DSEE Ultimate AI upscaling technology — which Sony says the ColleXion is the first headphone to feature. The headline claim is a wider, more spacious soundstage with greater detail — and reviewers who have heard it broadly agree that this is what changes, though opinions diverge on whether that’s an improvement.

TechRadar, comparing the ColleXion directly to the XM6, described the ColleXion’s presentation as more expansive and spacious, while characterising the XM6’s signature as tighter and punchier — and noted a personal preference for the XM6’s more direct approach. What Hi-Fi?, which rated the ColleXion 4.5 out of 5, raised a similar concern from a different angle.

Not every review was as positive. Soundphile Review, an audiophile-focused outlet, was notably more critical of the ColleXion’s value proposition specifically on sound, writing that it functions well as “a fashion statement, a luxury piece, a nice object that is good to look at and feels stylish” but is “less good when it comes to sound” — a pointed assessment for a $649.99 product from a brand built on its audio reputation.

Tom’s Guide, who tested the Platinum finish, offered a more favourable take on the same underlying change, describing the new drivers as delivering “a wider, richer soundstage with the kind of depth I actually wished the regular XM6 had from day one.”

The pattern across early coverage is consistent even where the conclusions differ: the ColleXion sounds different from the XM6 — more spacious, more detailed, cooler — and whether that’s “better” depends heavily on what kind of sound signature a listener already prefers.

Noise Cancellation and Calls

The ColleXion uses the same QN3 noise-cancelling chip and the same broad microphone architecture as the WH-1000XM6 — Sony’s most advanced ANC hardware to date. But several outlets, including What Hi-Fi?, reported that Sony was upfront at the launch briefing that noise cancellation was not the primary design focus for the ColleXion. Materials and sound tuning were the priorities; ANC carried over largely as-is.

What Hi-Fi?’s assessment of the ANC itself was positive in absolute terms: effective suppression across most frequencies, with only the faintest high-pitched sounds occasionally breaking through. Their framing was that the WH-1000XM6 remains Sony’s best-performing model for ANC specifically, but that ColleXion owners are “very unlikely” to feel short-changed by the carryover hardware. New Atlas went further, reporting that multiple reviewers found the ColleXion’s noise cancellation measurably less effective than the XM6’s — not because of the chip itself, but because the redesigned ear pads create a slightly less complete seal around the ear. New Atlas described this as an unusual trade-off for a more expensive model to make.

Call quality

Reporting describes a microphone array combining beamforming microphones for voice pickup with the separate microphones used for ANC monitoring, plus a wind-noise reduction structure. What Hi-Fi? described call quality on the ColleXion as a clear strength of the design.

Features, Connectivity, and One Notable Gap

On paper, the ColleXion’s feature list closely tracks the WH-1000XM6, with a few additions worth calling out specifically.

What’s included

Reported features include Bluetooth 6.0 and DSEE Ultimate AI upscaling — both confirmed as firsts for a Sony headphone, with DSEE Ultimate previously only rumoured for Sony’s next earbuds. Alongside these, the ColleXion carries over LDAC (Sony’s high-resolution Bluetooth codec), LC3 (the Bluetooth LE Audio codec), 360 Reality Audio spatial sound, Sony’s Speak-to-Chat and Adaptive Sound Control features, a battery-care charging mode, a 3.5mm analogue jack with included cable, and USB-C charging from the WH-1000XM6.

One detail worth correcting here: several outlets, citing Sony’s marketing, described the ColleXion’s collaboration with engineers from Battery Studios, Sterling Sound, and Coast Mastering as “a first for the 1000X series.” That isn’t accurate — the same group of named engineers (including Randy Merrill and Chris Gehringer of Sterling Sound, Mike Piacentini of Battery Studios, and Michael Romanowski of Coast Mastering) was already credited with tuning the WH-1000XM6 at its launch in May 2025, as reported by GSMArena. The ColleXion continues that same collaboration rather than introducing it. Whether the tuning translates into an audible difference for most listeners is, per the reviews above, contested either way.

Full Specifications — Sony 1000X The ColleXion

How It Compares to the Market — Without the Sales Pitch

The ColleXion doesn’t exist in isolation. It launched into a market where Apple’s AirPods Max 2 ($549, announced March 2026) and Bowers & Wilkins’ Px8 S2 ($799) already define the premium over-ear bracket — and where Sony’s own WH-1000XM6 ($449.99, now also available in a new Sandstone colour at $459.99) remains one of the most consistently recommended headphones at any price.

Here’s what’s actually verifiable about how these four compare, based on official specs and named reviewer assessments — not marketing claims.

A few things stand out from this. First, Sony confirms the ColleXion ships with Bluetooth 6.0 — the newest standard among this group, though the practical difference for most listeners versus the 5.3 used by the XM6, AirPods Max 2, and Px8 S2 is likely to be modest in the short term, since most of Bluetooth 6.0’s benefits depend on supporting hardware on the other end. Second, the AirPods Max 2’s wired audio situation is more capable than older coverage often suggested: it supports both 3.5mm via the included USB-C cable and genuine 24-bit/48kHz lossless audio over USB-C — a tier of wired performance the ColleXion does not match, since its USB-C port is charging-only. The B&W Px8 S2 matches Apple here, offering full 24-bit lossless over USB-C as well as aptX Lossless wirelessly — arguably the strongest codec story of the four. Third, despite the ColleXion’s premium materials and newer Bluetooth standard, its reported battery life (24 hours with ANC) is six hours shorter than the WH-1000XM6’s confirmed 30 hours — a genuine trade-off for the redesign, not just a paper spec.

Why Sony Made This Headphone

The timing and framing both point to the same explanation: the ColleXion is a 10th-anniversary statement product, not a replacement for the XM6. Sony explicitly tied both the ColleXion and the new Sandstone WH-1000XM6 colourway to “10 years of Sony’s legendary 1000X series” in its own press release — language that signals a celebration and brand-reinforcement exercise as much as a product launch.

It also reflects a broader trend across the premium headphone market. Apple’s AirPods Max 2 arrived in March 2026 after a six-year gap with the same $549 price and largely the same physical design as the original 2020 model — its upgrades centred on the internal H2 chip and software features (Adaptive Audio, Live Translation, improved ANC) rather than materials. Bowers & Wilkins has spent years building the Px8 line specifically around real leather and audiophile sound credentials at a premium price. Sony’s ColleXion follows a similar logic: in a market where the core technology (ANC chips, drivers, Bluetooth codecs) increasingly converges across brands, materials, branding, and “exclusivity” become the differentiators that justify higher prices.

Whether that’s a direction buyers want is, based on the early reviews above, genuinely split. The reviewers who focused on materials and build quality were largely positive. The reviewers who focused primarily on sound-per-dollar were more skeptical — and at least one, Soundphile Review, was explicit that the ColleXion functions more as a design object than an audio upgrade.

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