With the latest audio launch, Sony has decided to go bold and loud. I was lucky enough to be invited to the Melbourne launch of the ULT range, and was handed a pair of Sony ULT Wear to try out.
The ULT Wear headphones have an official designation of WH-ULT900N. With the 900 series making it slot in just below the premium 1000 series. ULT in this case stands for Ultimate, and the pitch is over-ear headphones squarely aimed at the younger demographics.
First Impressions
The design language of the ULT Wear follows that of the WH-1000XM5. The earcups are bold, chunky, with a smooth cutoff that mimics the more premium offering. The headband feels solid and where it joins to the earcups is a fork arrangement with connection points on both sides (compared to a single center joint on the 1000XM5).
My review unit is a Forest Grey unit. It is also available in White and Black. Personally I quite like the muted grey green colourway. It is different enough to catch the eye, but not garishly so to catch the stares.
There are the standard buttons – power on (hold to put into Bluetooth pairing mode), ANC on and off. Charging is via USB-C and it also comes with a 3.5mm port if you must go analogue and tethered.
Standing out apart from the small cluster of buttons and connection is the ULT button.
It’s all about that bass
The on-ear ULT button toggles two pre-set bass modes, and also off.
When you activate the ULT bass profiles, you hear explosive sounds and it cycles through “Deep Bass” (ULT1) and “Attack Bass” (ULT2). There is no mistaking it because it is right there, in your ear informing you that you have fired up the bass.
In Use
I have had the ULT Wear on my bench since the launch party in late May, and I use it interchangeably with the other audio gear I have there – another pair of headsets that is my daily driver for work and three pairs of earbuds.
A matter of personal taste, I have a preference for earcups that covers the ear for comfort level. I find that on-ear headphones tend to get very uncomfortable after an extended session. The draw back is the cover-my-ears type is that it can get warm.
With the ULT Wear, I have had been using them in two hour to three hour sessions at a time and have not felt any major discomfort to the heat issue. I do find that it clamps to my ear with some pressure which I feel, but ultimately has not cause me any headaches or other comfort issues.
Aside from the obvious physical buttons, the right earcup is a hidden control surface. Double tapping on the flat surface starts and stops the music. Sliding your finger up and down controls the volume. Track control is done by sliding your finger forward and back. All in all it’s a pretty nifty interface to work with.
What about the sound?
The bold looks and marketing is not just a politician’s promise. Upon kicking off the music, it is immediately apparent that Sony has tuned for a lot of brawn in the sound. The sound palette is all about audacious, Olympic flag bearer kind of stand out with the tunes playing the Sony way.
Even straight out of the cans, the bass is delivered in spades. Activating “Deep Bass” gives that extra thump on the bass line, the change in sound profile is immediate and apparent.
Audentes fortuna Iuvat. The “Attack Bass” is a relentless low-end sonic tsunami that can render you feeling a little helpless from the onslaught. My go to track to test the bass is James Blake’s Limit to my Love and I can only describe it as a bass audio assault in ULT2 mode.
Throwing Hans Zimmer’s epic Pirates of the Caribbean score at the ULT Wear really shows some of the drawbacks of the lead with heavy bass approach. The iconic theme song starts off as a jaunty little tune before the entry of the epic orchestral arrangement. As always the catchy theme is an aural delight, and even with the ULT1 “Deep Base” profile gave the music a solid thumping score at the expense of some of the delicate fidelity. However with ULT2 “Attack Base” it feels like the ULT Wear has thrown everything out that builds up the score, and blasting the bass into your ear. It is akin to the scene where the pirates were down to putting cutlery into the cannons in desperation.
For me, activating ULT1 and ULT2 was to paint in broader and broader strokes with brighter and bolder colours. The finesse of brushstrokes and pastel is ignored in favour of pure impact.
My initial overwhelming impression was that the ULT Wear was just far too bass focussed for my liking. But as a reviewer, it is my job to dig deeper and go harder to see if this is a product problem or an user problem.
The App
The Sony Headphones App whilst is not required for the operation of the ULT Wear, is a highly recommended install.
While I have been a bit critical of the out of the box sound profiles in the previous section, the app provides ample opportunities to tinker via an equaliser. More importantly you can also set the amount of bass boost for ULT1 and ULT2. By default, ULT2 has bass set to max.
By pulling back the bass (Sony calls this Clear Bass) from the edge of oblivion along with some treble boost made a huge difference to the audio experience for the better.
Revisiting the Pirates of the Caribbean theme with the changes locked in is night and day difference in experience. The sound stage was also holding together quite a lot better even at higher volumes.
Cycling through to Lalisa’s Money, the bass is a statement delivered by the ULT Wear that perfectly matches the song.
Battery Life
Sony has rated the battery life to be 50 hours sans ANC. With ANC on then the numbers are pulled back to 30 hours.
These are highly respectable figures and at worse you are easily lasting over a day of non-stop music. Certainly with the ULT Wear on the review bench and using used on and off, I have yet to worry about running out of charge.
For a quick charge of 3 minutes, Sony promises 90 minutes of playtime. A full charge will take 3.5 hours.
Other Features
Noise cancelling on the ULT Wear is pretty good. It’s not a complete cocoon of silence but it does an admirable job of reducing external noise. Things like kids yapping away whilst online gaming, or the little one calling for my attention, tend to fade into the background.
The ULT Wear comes with Bluetooth 5.2 , rather than 5.3. Whilst the update is minor, the later version offers improvements in efficiency and connectivity management. That said, I did not experience any connectivity issues during the review despite setting a preference to sound quality over stable connection in the Headphones app.
The ULT Wear also supports (naturally) the proprietary Sony codec LDAC which is the highest bit rate Bluetooth codec to date. And yes, it’s proprietary.
The LDAC support is only available when there is only one device connected to the ULT Wear. If you enabled multipoint support in the app, then you lose access to LDAC.
The ULT Wear also saw a bit of action in conference calls, with reasonably good crisp performance on voice reproduction. It is not the best at suppressing background noise if you work in a noisy environment.
As one would expect, there is support for Google Assistant and Alexa. There is a small configuration to be done in app but otherwise it works just as you would expect it to.
What is interesting is that Sony has made available premium features such as 360 Reality Audio and DSEE. Some of these requires a Tidal subscription to take full advantage of, but nevertheless it is an available option.
In the Box
Sony has provided a sturdy carry case for the ULT Wear. It also comes with a USB-A to USB-C cable for charging (only). They have also provided a 3.5mm audio cable.
The inside of the case comes with a picture to teach you how to put the headphones back in.
The padding is thin, but the case is quite rigid. The exterior has a nice texture to it with a discreet embossed Sony logo.
Gripes
I found some issues during testing with the multipoint feature. It seems the ULT Wear favours a connection to my mobile over my PC. On every occasion when I have been watching media on my PC and the phone then makes a BT connection to the ULT Wear, the audio stops,.
To avoid that problem and to take advantage of the higher fidelity of LDAC, I turned off the multipoint feature. However I found when I need to swap between devices, such as from watching media on PC to taking a phone call, that swap can take a while to kick in.
Conclusions
Overall the ULT Wear is a solid mid-range offering. On first impression, the most touted feature of the Sony ULT Wear is a blunt trauma instrument. Out of the box the base sound and ULT1 profiles are workable. The default ULT2 profile I feel should be reserved for a medical emergency where resuscitation is necessary.
There is much reward in leaning into the Headphones app and tuning the sound which pulls back from some of the negative initial impressions I had. As I am writing this closing comments the Game of Thrones theme is playing on ULT2 set to +7 (from max of +10) with treble boost and the complex layering of instruments and vocals is sending dragon shivers up my spine.
The Sony ULT Wear has a RRP of $348 is available in off white, forest grey and black. There is a slight wriggle room on Amazon on this figure.
Is the ULT Wear perfect? Hardly, but put the effort in to play with the sound and you could do a lot worse in bang for bucks. After the initial negative impressions, colour me surprised.
DRN would like to thank Sony for providing the review unit.
Specifications
Weight: 255g
Headphone Type: Closed Dynamic
Driver Unit: 40mm (Dome Type)
Magnet: Neodymium
Impedance (OHM): 314 ohms (1 kHz) (when connecting via the headphone cable with the unit turned on) , 32 ohms (1 kHz) (when connecting via the headphone cable with the unit turned off)
Frequency Response: 5 Hz – 20 000 Hz (JEITA)
Frequency Response (Active Operation): 5 Hz – 20 000 Hz (JEITA)
Frequency Response (Bluetooth Communication): 20 Hz – 20 000 Hz (Sampling frequency 44.1 kHz)
Sensitivities (DB/MW): 110 dB / mW (when connecting via the headphone cable with the unit turned on) , 100 dB / mW (when connecting via the headphone cable with the unit turned off)
Unit of Microphone: Electret Condenser Microphone
Direction of Microphone: All Direction
Bluetooth Version: 5.2
Effective Range: 10m
Frequency Range: 2.4 GHz band (2.400 0 GHz – 2.483 5 GHz)
Profile: A2DP, AVRCP, HFP, HSP
Supported Audio Formats: SBC, AAC, LDAC
Supported Content Protection: SCMS-T
