It’s a good week to get started on your holiday shopping. That’s because Amazon’s October Prime Day is live now and runs for 48 hours. But one of the best deals on headphones is already available and doesn’t even require a Prime membership. You can get a pair of blue Sony WH-1000XM4 Noise Cancelling Wireless Headphones on sale for $198 at Amazon, a huge discount over the $350 retail price.
What’s so great about Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones? It’s the combination of comfort, quality, and thoughtful features. They fit nicely, with soft earcups and a design that relieves pressure for long-term use. They have active noise cancellation to shut out outside sounds when turned on.
They also offer up to 30 hours of use on a single battery charge. And when you want to use them and you find they’re out of juice, you can charge them for 10 minutes to get five hours’ worth of audio playback.
Built into the M4s is a high quality microphone, so you can take and make calls while wearing them. If you need to talk to someone in real life while listening to music or a podcast, just remove them from your ears, and the headphones detect that and pause play until you put them back on.
These are actually the previous-gen version of the headphones (the M5 headphones, which we reviewed and gave a 9/10, are the latest model), but these M4s are way cheaper with this discount, and they’re still packed full of useful features and sound great. That makes them some of the best over-ear headphones money can buy.
Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN's board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Threads.
