I wanna 6 you up

The latest evolution of Sony's world-conquering noise-cancellers has brought subtle upgrades in a bid to stay ahead of the pack. Is this the new gold standard?

- 

When you're already sitting comfortably at the apex of the noise-cancelling headphone hierarchy, how do you push things further?

Sony's answer comes in the form of the WH-1000XM6s, the latest version of the flagship over-ears that have been a fixture at the summit of Stuff's top ten list for so long we can barely imagine the page without them.

And we aren't just talking about a couple of minor tweaks to a winning formula here, but a number of thoughtful refinements of what made the XM5s so exceptional – with some genuinely impressive performance upgrades, a list of features as long as both your arms, and one returning design element in particular that was sorely missed from the previous model.

At £400 they cost £20 more than the XM5s did at launch, and face stiff competition from a whole host of similarly priced, similarly specced headphones – including the best efforts of Bose, Apple and Bowers & Wilkins (see p32) – which all want to make their home wrapped around the top of your bonce.