Sony is celebrating a decade of its 1000X headphone line — the series that has set the benchmark for wireless noise cancellation since 2016 — with a halo model called the 1000X The ColleXion. It arrives at $649 in Black and Platinum, a striking $200 above the WH-1000XM6 it sits beside rather than replaces.
The pitch is materials and craft rather than a new feature list. Where the XM6 is largely plastic, the ColleXion is built from metal throughout and wrapped in textured vegan leather across the ear cups, pads and headband. That construction carries a cost: at 320 grams it is noticeably heavier than the 253-gram XM6, a trade buyers will want to weigh against long-session comfort.
Inside, Sony has reworked the parts that shape sound. The drivers now use unidirectional carbon fibre, which the company says adds rigidity for cleaner high frequencies and a wider soundstage, paired with its most advanced DSEE processing and an upgraded V3 chip. Connectivity moves to Bluetooth 6.0, and battery life is rated at 24 hours with noise cancelling on, or 32 hours without.
Notably, the noise-cancelling hardware itself is carried over from the XM6, and early reviews describe the result as excellent but, in places, a touch softer than Sony’s own best. The ColleXion is therefore less a technical leap than a luxury statement — arriving the same month Sennheiser’s $399 Momentum 5 pushes from the value end, the flagship category is visibly splitting into a price-conscious tier and a premium one. We will publish a full review when a retail unit arrives.