

Now to the subject of Google assistant and there appears to be a current lack of clarity around the true functionality here. Choosing the former setting caused real issues - worse than with my cheapo pair. I found the latter to be best on my commute with no dropout.

With the Sony buds you're offered two connectivity modes within the app - ’Priority on sound quality' or 'Priority on stable connection. Also, during my daily commute on overground and underground trains in London, there were several locations where I would always lose connectivity albeit momentarily. Placing my phone (Note 9) in my back jeans pocket was enough to give real patchy connection with plenty of signal loss. One of my bug bears with my previous set was connectivity. (Sorry, I'm not an audiophile so no terms such as 'timbre' to be found here). I quickly realised that the investment was well worth it - best described as the improvement one would notice replacing an old CRT TV with a high end 4K set. Spending £220.00 on a pair of earbuds is not something I do lightly and I was dreading trying them out only to find a marginal improvement. I upgraded from a 30 ish quid pair of earbuds which got reasonable reviews on Amazon.

Overall, the sound quality really impressed. I've had these 48 hours now, so here are my first thoughts. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 August 2019
