Sony WH-1000XM6: New wireless over-ear headphones shine with better repairability than older WH-1000XM5

The Sony WH-1000XM6 (curr. $448 on Amazon) has been around for a few weeks now after officially debuting on May 15. As a result, iFixit has had time to dig into Sony's latest pair of over-ear wireless headphones to see what makes them tick.

As expected, Sony has installed four additional microphones to take the total volume to twelve inside the WH-1000XM6. While Sony has improved noise cancelling between generations, the same cannot be said for battery capacity. Officially, Sony rates the WH-1000XM6 for the same 30 hours of usage as the WH-1000XM5 despite including new Processor QN3 hardware. The reason behind this appears to be because Sony has installed a 12.5% smaller battery, which drops from 4.56 Wh in the XM5 to 3.99 Wh in the XM6.

Thankfully, other positive hardware improvements exist between the two generations. For example, Sony has replaced the adhesive tape holding down the battery inside the XM5s with two screws and a compact housing. Likewise, Sony has only included five screws per ear cup, which are secured by clips themselves. On top of that, high-wear components like the 3.5 mm jack and USB Type-C cable sit on modular boards.

In short, the WH-1000XM6 is more repairable than its predecessor. Unfortunately, one cannot currently replace any of the hardware inside Sony's latest headphones if they were to break or malfunction. As it stands, the company has not published a repair manual or started selling spare parts. Worse still, the latter never materialised for the WH-1000XM5, despite Sony choosing to list a repair manual. Please see iFixit's video below and our WH-1000XM6 launch article for more details.