Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones could look familiar but pack awesome new features

Sometimes, it makes sense to stick with the look and feel that people are familiar with, which is what Sony seems to be doing with the release of the WH-1000XM4 headphones. According to newly leaked rumors, not a lot has changed visually from the WH-1000XM3 (nor has the extremely clunky naming convention), but things have taken a significant step forward under the hood.

Thanks to teardowns done by Twitter user @justplayinghard and XDA Developers, we’ve managed to learn quite a bit about the upcoming Sony headphones, with the first major takeaway being that they will probably look almost the same as the previous generations.

However, a new feature likely coming to the WH-1000XM4 over-ear headphones is multi-device pairing. Users can pair two devices at a time, but doing so will get rid of the high-quality LDAC codec. Thankfully, while only two devices can connect at once, the headphones will store more than two pairings, meaning users can simply switch between other devices.

Another exciting bit of information from the teardown of the WH-1000XM4 comes in the form of a feature called Smart Talking. Presumably, this feature will let the headphones detect voices and automatically turn on Ambient Sound Mode. This could make life a lot easier for anyone who finds that people like to approach them while wearing their earphones. Instead of turning the music off, pausing, or placing your hand over the cup to temporarily turn on passthrough, the feature would allow them to automatically hear the sound outside while people are talking and then get back to their music when the conversation ends.

The app teardown also found something called DSEE Extreme, which is currently thought to be an AI-enhanced version of the existing DSEE HX. This is an upscaling feature that could come in handy for listening to music.

Colors available for the WH-1000XM4 headphones will probably be black, silver, and a new white.