Thanks for nothing, Sony. (WH1000-XM5)
I have templates for metal parts you can cut and bend with hand tools and a cheap dremel. I can send it to you if you want.
Would love to see a picture of the metal headphones
Similar vibe… whatever that shitty material that they put on the top padded band and foam ear coverings that starts to crack and flake off on my bald head making me look like I have a skin disorder. I’ve had headphones ranging in price from $30 to $300 and they all do it.
It’s called “protein leather” and it’s the worst shit ever
Sony parts prices are insane. The urethane pleather on my headband started cracking on my xm4’s. A replacement headband was half the price of a new unit. So I ended up getting a silicone cover that will hopefully keep the pieces from flaking off into my hair. I also needed new earpads. Oem pads were around $40 for EACH side. The pleather just has a certain degradation time and once it hits, it all falls apart at the same time. Replacing all the pleather parts on my unit would have cost just as much as a new headset.
I hate having something designed to be somewhat repairable but practically speaking it isn’t due to pricing.
The urethane pleather on my headband started cracking on my xm4’s. A replacement headband was half the price of a new unit.
This is third-party, but it’s $19.
It’s also just the pad, but I assume that that’s what’s failed, if you’re talking about pleather.
Yeah it’s a pain to install however. One of our dogs had a chomp on the wife’s set, took me quite sometime to disasemble the headphones just to install it.
Honestly if you can get something to wrap over / stitch over the top go that route. The XM4 are fiddily as fuck to tear down just to replace the headband.
Oh those are a clip on version. FML might have to get that to replace the black band on the grey set of headphones.
Wicked cushions had some good replacement parts for xm4s. I bought a couple replacements from them. They had really good customer service when I had a bad clip on one or the earpads too.
I paid 30$CAD 2 years ago for mine. The Sony OEM ones are very comfortable but they compress quickly imo. My ears are a little angled so they are always pinching when the OEM pads compressed too much. The wicked cushions ones I got are a bit taller to start off with and haven’t had a single problem with them compressing so far. Only bought the second set of pads because I wanted a different colour.
I will buy more from them when I get a new headset. Stupid hinges on xm4s
I have found that the backing cloth under the pleather is durable as hell. Take some masking tape and do a wrap around your fingers - sticky side out like you’re gonna de-lint a shirt - and use it to pull off the peeling pleather. Took me all of 20 minutes to get my ancient Denons free of the peeling pleather…
I already bought 3rd party replacement pads, but I’ll keep that trick in mind for the future.
Same happened on my hph-mt5 yamahas, i took a piece of wire and my soldering iron and basically melted rebar into it, and that fix is still going 3 years on
I don’t know if heads have gotten bigger over the years, I have a mutant oversized melon for a head, maybe they just design the phones for small heads?
Steel stick. Set with krazy glue first, so it’s aligned then get the steel stick and mix up a marble-sized ball and mold it around the break. Leave to harden for 24 hours. Shit’s amazing.
I’d never heard JB Weld called steel stick, so I had to click!
PC-7 is another brand that’s identical to JB.
Built to Fail: The story of 21st century consumer technology.
Absolutely. Added to that, they seem to be actively ruining their headphones with software updates as well. My XM5’s randomly turned off every few hours and thanks to a Chinese hacker I was able to downgrade the software - guess what, the problem went away.
They’re either doing this deliberately so you buy the latest model or their development team is utterly incompetent.
Maybe they vibe coded the driver. :-D
They’re either doing this deliberately so you buy the latest model or their development team is utterly incompetent.
I’m gonna choose Door Number 1, Monty…
Yeah, several years back I had a pair of the Sony earbuds that I bought refurbished off of eBay. A firmware update borked the battery in one of the buds and Sony was replacing them free if charge, but since mine weren’t bought new and weren’t from an actual store, they told me to screw off, so I did and haven’t been back. Before Sony ruined then they were really nice buds, but I’m not trusting them with my money anymore since they have proven a willingness to unilaterally decommission their devices.
This shit right here is why I don’t let working stuff update anymore. I shouldn’t be sweating if the software update I’m downloading is going to make my life worse or not.
It’s a dangerous position to put people in: run vulnerable software or we will break your device. No one should have to choose between breaking their TV via update or staying on an insecure OS version and getting hacked.
In a functioning economy, the consumer goal of not getting hacked and having a functional device would be shared by the consumer AND the manufacturer.
Built to Fail*
*after 3 years, when mandatory warranty expires in the EU.
Especially if you look at the Samsung Fold/Flip-phones, god damn do they break. And they’re not cheap.
My brother got me an audio technica ATH-M30 in 2011. This before they even had the 30x. I’ve easily put 12k hours in em, just needed to change the ear cups. I drop them all them time from desk height too.
Every few years I’ve thought about upgrading for better quality but they get the job done well enough that I never pull the trigger. It’s a consumers dream
The Audio-Technica ATH-M line are quite sturdy, I’ve never really seen them break. The same goes for the Beyerdynamic DT-770-880/990 lines. And both companies sell replacement parts at decent prices in my experience for those rare times when sometime could break.
I have the M50 and its also still working, no problems. Also test winner in audio tests.
I may get the ire of some for this but don’t buy Sony headphones. Sony has a lot of good products, but their headphones are overpriced garbage. It may be very subjective, but never once have I listened to Sony and thought I like the music out of them. In the cheap range they’re outclassed by Philips, in a bit pricier by Sennheiser and JBL. I’ve had my JBL Live 770 for over 2 years now, and I only need to get replacement pads, same with my 6 year old pair of Sennheiser 4.40HD. Also metal hinges.
Sony used to make some really awesome high end headphones (like the Qualia 010 MDR-1 or MDR-R10), while were definitely overpriced (IMO), they were definitely not garbage. They do still make at least one actual high end non-garbage headphone (MDR-Z1R) it is for sure overpriced. I don’t think it’s garbage.
Also, few sane people are buying them, so I doubt they’ll last.
Yeah, this is a huge problem. I found the best solution is to buy a 3.5mm audio cable with a microphone (these can be had for 10-20$) and attach them to a nice set of metal band headphones (closed or open depending on if you want sound isolation). I gave up on gaming, Sony headphones and the like a long time ago they are all trash no matter how much you pay for them, they break and become e-waste in the first year.
Planned obsolescence
I gave my old WH1000XM2’s away to family because it was sitting in a drawer after I bought the xm4, both still work like a charm and the xm2 only has a slightly reduced battery even after being used for 6+ hours daily for years. I don’t know what the quality of the newer ones are, but the older ones are build to keep working. The noise-cancelling is the best one on the market for over ear headphones, the Bose ones put pressure on your ears which is really uncomfortable even after a few minutes (at least for me).
But if they sold you a pair that lasted for decades, you wouldn’t need to buy any more.
I’ve moved onto earbuds. Earfun Air for a staggering £22. The sound genuinely isn’t bad either, I’ve no idea how you can even make them for that. Slavery, probably. Still, £22 is £22.
The expensive ones are also made with slavery, they just charge you more for the branding.
This is the second time these broke on my WH1000-XM5’s. At least they’re easily replacable by just removing a few screws and dropping in a new one.
Compared to that, this bad boy is over 30 years old and never broke once - thanks to a headband which is made out of metal. Despite that, it’s even more comfortable than Sony’s modern one:
The older headphones there don’t look like you can rotate the pads, yeah? I mean, it’s that rotating hinge which failed here.
I guess one could say “well, I don’t want headphones with rotating pads”, but it’s that rotation that lets the XM5 headphones fit into a fairly-flat carrying case.
I will say, though, that the XM5s probably weren’t going to last over 30 years, if for no other reason than because they use an internal battery…
On their older models, they had a different design and you could fold the earcups inwards. It was a really useful feature, they easily fit into a small bag. The newer ones can’t do that anymore and come with an extremely large carrying case. Sony has really lost the plot, but they still have excellent noise cancelling (the main reason for me buying them).
But that’s gonna be my last model now.
I have a pair of AKG 240 of the same age if not a bit older that have seen plenty of other headphones come and go. Not the best headphones in any other categories but damn the most reliable and durable of studio cans ever built.
How did the arm break? I have a pair that’s a year old, I’ve been tossing them in a bag with other bulky items and generally not being too gentle with them so your post has me worried.
I just put them on my head and it made “crack”. You have to slightly flex the headband every time when putting the headphones on your ears, and I guess doing this for a few hundred times weakens the plastic to the point where it just gives up.
Those are over 30 years old???
Yeah dude if they’re 30 years old I feel like 2 “easy” replacements is … good.
The good ones are 30 years old. The one they needed to fix is the sony one, which was not specified how old but “modern” implies not very.
Yeah WH1000XMs are a very popular bang for buck wireless set. 5 is the latest.
That said, I have 2s that still go strong besides the battery. 4s going strong for a few years. Partner has had 5s for a while, no issues. All plastic hinges.
Not sure what OP is doing. Seems like a difficult part of the headset to break.
5 isn’t the latest, the 6 is out
Not sure what OP is doing.
Nothing special, I just wear them every day and I have a regular-sized head. I also have XM2’s which still work, they have a more sturdy hinge design. Sony cost-optimized their latest models too much, the headband is much thinner than on the XM2’s as well, which puts more pressure on my head and makes them slightly more uncomfortable. I can only suspect they did that so they have to mold less plastic and save a few cents on each model…
5 has notoriously bad hinges
Yeah well what if I can’t read?
At least they were probably expensive.
250€ 🫠
