Sony WH-1000XM6 vs Bose QuietComfort Ultra

Which should you buy?

Six rows, three of them a tie. Both weigh 254 grams, both run Bluetooth 5.3, both fold flat. So the choice is not made on the sheet as a whole; it is made on two rows, and which of the two counts depends entirely on the phone in your pocket.

Start with the phone, because it decides whether the Sony’s codec advantage exists for you at all. LDAC and LC3 need an Android device that supports them. On an iPhone the Sony falls back to AAC, which the Bose also does not offer any advantage over, and the row that Sony wins quietly becomes a tie. If you are on Android, the same row is the strongest reason on this page to pick the Sony.

Then read the two battery figures at the setting you would actually use. Sony quotes thirty hours, and twenty-six on LDAC — so if you chose the Sony for LDAC, twenty-six is your number. Bose quotes twenty-four, and eighteen with Immersive Audio switched on — so if you chose the Bose for Immersive Audio, eighteen is your number. Compared like that the gap is not six hours but eight, and it runs the other way from the way the boxes are labelled.

Immersive Audio is the one thing here the Sony cannot do at all. It needs nothing from the source, so it works the same on an iPhone, a laptop or a television, which is exactly the situation where the Sony’s codec support does not help. That is the trade in one line: the Sony asks the right phone for its best mode, the Bose asks six hours of battery for its best mode.

Two rows deserve less weight than they look like they deserve. Twelve microphones against eight is a component count, not a measurement of how you sound on a call, and we have not measured that. The three-minute quick charge on the Sony is real, but it needs a USB-PD adapter that is not in the box; the Bose returns two and a half hours from fifteen minutes with what it ships with.