Sony WH-1000XM6 review: still the best noise-cancelling headphones for Australia?

I am writing this on the 96 tram, somewhere between Acland Street and Bourke. Tram is full of school kids. Windows are loose. Two seats behind me a man is having a phone argument about a tradie quote. I cannot hear any of it. The loudest thing in my ear right now is the closing bars of Nick Cave's Push the Sky Away, the album version, where the piano holds the room. I have been reviewing a pair of Sony WH-1000XM6 for three weeks. They land in Australia at $A699.95. After two long-haul flights, a redeye to Auckland, and an embarrassing amount of tram time, my verdict is they are the best pair of noise-cancelling headphones you can buy here in 2026. There is one annoying catch, which I will explain.

What are the Sony WH-1000XM6 and what's new?

These replace the XM5, which shipped in 2022. The big change is a new chip Sony calls the QN3. Sony's PR claim is that it runs around seven times faster than the QN1 in the XM5. I cannot verify the silicon. The practical effect is that ANC reacts faster to a door slamming or a tram braking. Sony has also gone from 8 mics to 12, four of which now sit inside the ear cups. That second number is the more interesting one. It is what lets the cans hear your voice in a wind tunnel without pushing it through your skull.

Battery on paper is 30 hours with ANC on. SoundGuys' lab measured 37 hours and 14 minutes in their test, which is roughly what I am getting from a Sunday-night charge to a Friday morning flat. The folding hinge that the XM5 controversially dropped is back. The clamp is heavier. There is now a 10-band EQ in the Sony Connect app. Fast-charge is 3 minutes for 3 hours. The 360 Reality Audio Upmix turns stereo into something close to surround. Drivers are still 30mm. Weight is 254 grams.

How much do the Sony WH-1000XM6 cost in Australia?

Sony's Australian RRP is $A699.95 across both colours. Black and silver. That is the price at the official Sony AU store. It is also the price at Officeworks on a quiet week. JB Hi-Fi has had stock since June 2025 and tends to be cheaper. I picked up my review pair at Officeworks for $A575 in late February. The week before, JB Hi-Fi Commercial was running a $A532.24 deal that I noticed about three days too late. Story of my life. Amazon AU drifts between $A540 and $A600 on black, less consistent on silver. For context, the Bose QuietComfort Ultra has an RRP around $A649. The Apple AirPods Max in USB-C trim still sits at $A899 in Apple's Australian store, which I find genuinely funny.

The XM6 is not the cheapest flagship. It is, however, comfortably the cheapest of the three pairs I would call actual flagships. If you can wait for an Officeworks 5 per cent price-beat, or a JB Hi-Fi end-of-financial-year run, the real number you should pay is closer to $A530 than $A700.

What's it like to use them day to day?

I picked these up on a Wednesday afternoon. First proper test was a flight to Perth that night. Qantas QF777, gate 11 at Tullamarine, full plane, screaming toddler two rows up. ANC went on before we pushed back. The toddler shrank to a faint smudge somewhere far away. The drone of the A330's engines collapsed into nothing, the way it did the first time I put on a pair of XM3s back in 2019. The clamp is the first thing you notice. It is firmer than the XM5. At first I thought it was too firm. By hour two I had stopped noticing. By hour three I was asleep.

Day-to-day, the surprise has been smaller. My building in Cremorne has a very loud espresso machine that fires every 90 seconds. With the XM6 on, ANC at full, no music playing, the espresso machine is gone. Not muffled. Gone. Voices around me drop to a low murmur, which is the right balance. I still want to know if someone is trying to ask me something. Flick to ambient mode and the room comes back with more presence than the XM5 ever managed. I tested it by holding a conversation about a Linear ticket without taking the cans off. Worked.

For music, an iPhone 17 over AAC during the week, a Pixel 10 Pro on LDAC for the audiophile sessions where I sit with a flat white and pull up albums I know too well. Bass is tight, never boomy. Robin Pecknold's vocals on Fleet Foxes' Helplessness Blues sit forward of the harmonies in a way the XM5 used to smear into one wash. The Berliner Philharmoniker's Beethoven 9, FLAC over LDAC, opens out across the stage so I could place the second violins on the right side of the orchestra. The Bowers and Wilkins PX8s, which my colleague Tom lent me for two days as a sanity check, still beat the Sonys on stage width by a noticeable margin. They also cost roughly $A1,500 more, so fair enough.

Sony Connect now houses a 10-band EQ. It also handles head-tracked spatial audio, multipoint pairing, and ANC scene profiles. I have one profile for the tram, which boosts the lows and tightens ANC. Another for flights, with more isolation and a vocal lift. A third for the office, with ambient mode on and the treble dialled down by two clicks. They work the way you'd hope. Multipoint between my MacBook Air and my iPhone is the small feature that has changed my workdays the most. A meeting invite buzzes on the phone. The cans swap from Spotify on the laptop to the iPhone ringtone, then swap back when I hang up.

I also tested them at Hamer Hall on a Friday night, in the foyer during interval, with the Australian Chamber Orchestra playing Vivaldi inside the auditorium. Obvious caveat. The XM6 is not a substitute for being in the room with a string section. Outside a $A2,000 wired set, though, it is the closest thing I have heard. The 360 Reality Audio Upmix is more useful for film than music in my testing. Watching The Bear on Disney Plus on the Perth flight, dialogue sat clearly forward of the soundtrack and I stopped hunting for the volume rocker. With music I left it off.

How do they compare to the Bose QuietComfort Ultra?

I had a pair of Bose QuietComfort Ultras for about six months before the XM6 arrived. So this is not a quick A/B in a shop. Here is where each one wins.

For pure comfort over a 14-hour Sydney to Los Angeles run, the Bose still win. The earpads are deeper. The clamp is gentler. After about hour 9 my ears start to feel the Sony in a way they do not feel the Bose. Valens Quinn at GadgetGuy noticed the same thing on his Sydney-Paris flight. The Bose are the pair I would still pick if I had a long Doha layover and needed to nap through it.

For absolutely everything else, the Sony wins. ANC is measurably stronger. SoundGuys' lab measured 87 per cent of average loudness reduced versus 85 per cent for the Bose. You can feel that 2 per cent on a tram. Sound quality is not close. What Hi-Fi's Andy Madden put it bluntly, that "the Bose sound out of their depth" against the XM6. On track-by-track listening I think that is fair. Battery is roughly 10 hours longer in real-world use. Fast-charge is 3 minutes for 3 hours on Sony versus 15 minutes for 2.5 hours on Bose. That sounds small until you are in an airline lounge with 20 minutes to spare. The Sony Connect app is also a much deeper piece of software than the Bose Music app, which still ships with a 3-band EQ in 2026, and I have no idea why.

If you already own the Bose and you mostly fly, do not sell them tomorrow on the back of this review. For anyone shopping fresh, the XM6 is the right pick.

What are the downsides?

Clamp first. It is firmer than the XM5. If you have a bigger head, or you wear glasses for long stretches, you are going to feel it. Quinn flagged headband ache around hour 8 of his Paris flight. I felt the same thing on a redeye to Auckland that landed at 6am. Not painful. Just present.

The bigger problem is that USB-C audio is missing. The Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2 has it. The AirPods Max in USB-C trim has it. The XM6 does not. You can charge over USB-C while you listen, which is welcome and new for the line, but you cannot plug straight into a seatback screen with a single USB-C-to-USB-C cable. So you fall back to the bundled 3.5mm and whatever airline-specific adapter the seat in front of you wants. On QF11 to LAX last month I ran the supplied 3.5mm into the single-pin adapter into the IFE jack and got 12 hours out. Fine. Still annoying.

The folding mechanism is fiddly. Quinn at GadgetGuy called it "surprisingly tricky to fold them the right way to fit into the case, especially in low light," and I agree. After about a week of practice it stops being a problem. The matte black plastic shows smudges and minor scuffs faster than I would like at this price.

Case is large. Larger than the Bose case. Larger than the AirPods Max smart cover, although that is not a fair comparison, because the AirPods Max case is a national embarrassment and we should stop pretending otherwise. Treble on classical can run a touch bright if you have not touched the EQ. Drop the 8kHz band one click in Sony Connect and it sorts itself out.

Should you buy the Sony WH-1000XM6?

Short answer, yes. Long answer, it depends on the noise around you. If your week looks anything like mine, full of trams and espresso machines and the occasional flight to Auckland, the XM6 is the pair I would put in your cart without thinking twice. ANC is the best I have used. Battery clears 30 hours of mixed real-world use. Sound holds its own against cans that cost a grand more. And if you are patient enough to wait six weeks for an Officeworks or JB Hi-Fi run, the price drops to a number that feels honest.

Where I would push you somewhere else. If you have a sensitive head, or you fly more than 50 hours a year, the Bose QuietComfort Ultra is genuinely more comfortable, and that compounds over a year of travel. If your life is built inside the Apple ecosystem and a thousand bucks for headphones is not a real number to you, the AirPods Max is still the most seamless option in that bubble. If you specifically need USB-C lossless audio for a desk setup, hold off and wait for the XM7. Sony will add it next time. They have to.

For everyone else, this is the answer. My Bose are now in my gym bag. The XM6 is what travels with me. That is the truest test I can give you.

Where to buy in Australia

I bought mine at Officeworks. They list at $A575 and will price-beat any visible JB Hi-Fi or Amazon AU listing by 5 per cent if you ask politely. JB Hi-Fi stocks both colours online and in store, with discount cycles that line up with end of financial year and Black Friday. Sony's own Australian store sells at full RRP and rarely moves on it. Amazon AU is worth watching if you have time, with short-window deals on black more often than silver. The Good Guys also stocks them, at pricing that tends to mirror JB Hi-Fi within a couple of dollars.