Sony WF-1000XM3 True Wireless Earbuds on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2Pii3ln
Finally found a pair I can live with
After trying a couple of other True Wireless Earbuds (one from Sony), I finally found a set that I'm happy with. The WF-1000XM3 from Sony are great sounding earbuds, they fit well, and they have good functionality including the Sony connect Android app. Here's why.The Case
Sony Wf-1000XM3 Case
Sony WF-1000XM3 Case
The look of the case is sharp looking. It feels high-quality until you open the lid. The lid seems a little flimsy when open.
I like the magnets that make it so the earbuds pop into place. I'm not crazy about the difficulty in getting the earbuds out of the case. I mean its not terribly hard, but it's a little awkward. I've dropped the earbuds a few times trying to take them out of the case.
I like that it's a USB-C connection to the case, rather than the older mini-USB. This means all my USB-C cables (and power adapters) can be used to charge it.
NFC Pairing with Phone
Sony WF-1000XM3 Pairing
NFC pairing did not initially work with my Note 8. You pair by touching the back of your phone to the N symbol on case. It seems it won't pair if the earbuds are still in the case. Or at least that was my experience. It paired when the earbuds were not in the case. Same thing happened with my Pixel 3a.
Sound Quality
These true wireless earbuds sound much better than the previous Sony earbuds (WF1000X/B) I tried. The sound on those was pretty bad, no bass, see my post here. The sound is also much better than the other True Wireless earbuds I tried, the Aikela Wireless Earphones X10. You can see my short review of those here. These WF-1000XM3's have much better sound. The base can be turned up quite a bit using a feature Sony calls True Bass in the Sony Connect app. You can use the Sony Connect app for lots of settings, including an equalizer where I increased bass even more. I typically am more interested in quality treble, but with ear buds, I want some extra bass in there. I would say these are comparable to my Bose Soundsport wireless (not true wireless) earbuds, and those are pretty darn good. They might be slightly better sounding than those.Phone call quality
One word. Horrible. This is the definite sore spot for these earbuds. My Bose Soundsport are a hundred times better. I go back to the Bose for phone calls. My girlfriend says I sound like I'm simply using the phone when I use the Bose Soundsport. With these Sony's, well, she won't have another conversation if I'm using them. Admittedly, my one test of the Sony's was in a Jeep Wrangler on the freeway, but the Bose handle that situation much MUCH better. With these Sony earbuds, I could hear the other person fine, but they could barely hear me at all and reported that I sounded very tinny with crackling happening often. Luckily, I didn't buy these for phone calls (who even calls anyone nowadays), but it would have been nice if these didn't suck as bad as they do, since that means needing to carry both earbuds around if I think I'm going to need earbuds for a phone call. Why such a big difference between my Bose Soundsport and these Sony earbuds for phone calls? My Bose Soundsport are Bluetooth wireless but left and right are wired together and I believe the microphone is on the wire, closer to my mouth. But still, the difference is huge and I wouldn't think that the Sony's were going to be that close to useless for phone calls.Noise cancelling/ambient mode
Noise cancelling is great. When turned on, outside noise is deadening greatly. Sony is very good at noise cancelling, maybe the best. I also like that I can actually use this to simply deaden noise even when I'm not listening to music. I haven't used ambient mode much at all as it's just as easy to remove the earbuds from my ear so I can hear my surroundings. Taking them out of my ear also automatically pauses the music which is what I want.Earbud tips/covers
Sony WF-1000XM3 earbud tips
Sony WF-1000XM3 earbud tips
The earbud tips that come already attached are comfortable for me. But that's usually the case for me. They appear to be the largest size.
There are 6 extra sets of earbud tips in various sizes. Three are a type they refer to as "Long hybrid silicone rubber earbuds", which are the earbud tips that are on the earbuds when it's shipped. The other three are what they call "Triple comfort earbuds". I tried most of both types. You need to have a secure fit in order for the noise cancelling to work properly or most effectively. The ones that are on it out of the box were the best ones for me. They're large and they block the sound better with nose cancelling. The triple comfort earbuds don't didn't work very well for me. I'm not sure I understand why they are supposed to be more comfortable. And they definitely didn't block outside sound as well as the hybrid silicone large size, even the largest size ones.
Listening with only one earbud
The earbuds pause music automatically if you remove either ear earbud. You can disable the setting to pause playback when headphones are taken off in the Sony Connect / headphones app. You can resume playing with one earbud if that earbud is configured with the tap to play/pause action.Music Controls on the earbuds
The Sony Connect app (I only tried the Android version) let's you configure what happens when you tap the earbuds. You can set it for various controls including setting noise cancelling, ambient sound, volume, Google Assistant (or Siri), and playback controls (pause/play, forward/reverse tracks). As far as I can tell, you can't fast forward/reverse within a track using the tap feature.Battery
A low battery warning appears to occur when the earbuds are only at about 50%. The warning is a voice prompt that says "low battery, please recharge". This seems a little early for a warning. And it would be nice if it announced what the percentage left is. I didn't really get a feel for how long the battery lasts since I prefer to recharge both the case and the earbuds very often. But I've been happy with battery life overall on both the earbuds and the case.Voice prompts
You hear voice prompts through the earbuds if you have the setting enabled in the Sony Connect app. A woman's voice will say things like "Battery fully charged" when you remove the earbuds from the case. One little nit pick though is I often miss the voice prompt for the right ear because it announces before I get it up to my ear.Right ear red indicator?
I thought it was strange that Sony used the color red to be the color indicator for the right earbud. The indicator shows on the case, on the right earbud itself, and in the Sony connect app. Red is usually a color used as an indicator for an error. In the Connect app, I originally thought it was trying to tell me something was wrong with the right earbud (like low battery).
Doesn't always turn on sound enhancements (right away)
I'm not sure how else to explain this. Sometimes I can tell that sound enhancements or maybe equalizer settings are not turned on. Volume is much lower and even max volume isn't that loud. I don't know what causes this. Suddenly, it turns on for whatever reason. I don't change anything. I've tried just starting the connect app and playing with settings in there including equalizer and ambient sound/noise cancelling, but neither change when it decides to finally turn on. This is annoying to say the least.Equalizer - Changing to different presets
When changing to different presets in the connect app, you can’t directly go to any preset. You have to change one at a time to each preset until you get to the one you want. You can hear the different presets as you click through them. I'd much rather be able to pick a preset from a drop-down as I often want to compare the sound for two different presets without hearing other presets in between.Pause doesn’t always work when earbuds removed
Not sure why, but the setting “Pauses when headphones taken off” stops working occasionally. The functionality comes back after I put the earbuds away and later use them again. Not sure what causes this issue but it's only happened a couple of times.Conclusion
Overall, I really like these Sony WF-1000XM3 earbuds. My number one priority was sound and they don't disappoint. Other things I really liked were fantastic noise cancelling, how comfortable they are, battery life, and on earbud controls.Sony WF-1000XM3 True Wireless Earbuds on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2Pii3ln