Walmart prematurely confirms the price tag and features of Sony’s next big headphones

Unveiled almost two years ago, the impossibly named Sony WH-1000XM3 are still some of the best over-the-ear wireless Bluetooth headphones with active noise cancellation technology money can buy. Especially when you can routinely get these bad boys at $70, $100, or even 120 bucks off their list price of $350.

Although the $348 tag could well be a placeholder, it certainly sounds plausible, especially after looking over the WH-1000XM4 spec sheet. This is not radically different from what the WH-1000XM3 have going for them, so it’s definitely not out of the question to see the $350 or so MSRP stick for Sony’s next-gen high-end ANC headphones.

Starting with the essentials, it seems that the battery life will go unchanged, which is by no means a bad thing as a 30-hour endurance rating remains hard to surpass. Just like their forerunners, the Sony WH-1000XM4 are also expected to get 5 hours of playback after a measly 10 minutes of charging while making the same factual promises to deliver “industry-leading digital noise cancellation” and “premium sound.”

We’ll obviously have to wait and see if anything is set to change in those two key departments, but one important-sounding upgrade revealed by Walmart relates to something called “Precise Voice Pickup Technology.” That’s an entirely new feature, mind you, and it aims to vastly improve call quality by combining five built-in microphones with “advanced audio signal processing.”

Another exciting add-on is multipoint connectivity, which will allow WH-1000XM4 owners to pair their Bluetooth headphones with two compatible devices simultaneously, while pretty much everything else looks awfully familiar, including ambient sound control, adaptive sound control, and handy touch controls for changing tracks, adjusting the volume, activating your phone’s voice assistant, as well as making and answering calls.