A voice from the headphones tells you when the process is complete and when the noise-cancelling is engaged. It also chirps up when you turn the headphones on, during Bluetooth pairing and at various moments to tell you the level of the built-in battery.
Another key feature that helps set these Sonys apart is the Quick Attention mode. Holding a conversation whilst wearing a pair of over-ears usually involves some kind of awkward positioning of an earpiece or the complete removal of your cans. The ‘1000Xs save you from all this hassle.
Place your hand on the right headphone housing while listening to music and it immediately cuts out. You can now hear what the other person is saying in crystal-clear quality. Take your hand away and the music snaps back into place. It’s a smart, appealing way of interacting with the headphones.
The MDR-1000Xs also offer an Ambient Sound mode, which has two settings. ‘Normal’ allows a little outside noise through, so you can keep an ear out for sirens, bicycle bells and the like. ‘Voice’ means the headphones focus on allowing conversations in. Switch between the two and you can hear a subtle difference in the frequencies being filtered.
The outer surface of the right earpad doubles as a touchpad, with finger movements on the faux leather surface controlling music playback and volume. Tapping on the middle plays and pauses, tap and slide up or down to change volume and left or right to skip track.
Altering volume and skipping track works reasonably well, but we found tapping to pause and resume music doesn’t always produce the desired results. The earpad cover is all one material and there’s no ‘x’ to mark the centre. We struggled to find the middle every time, and even when it feels like you’re tapping the right spot, the headphones don’t always respond first time.
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