I’ve been daily driving the AirPods Pro 2 and thought I could get an upgrade. So I got the WH-1000XM5s, hoping for a better anc experience and audio quality. Ik audio is subjective and all but what I’ve found is that the AirPods have very noticeable better anc than the xm5s, leaving me very confused cuz I thought the xm5s will have much better anc given its size and it’s overhead nature. Also I’m using an iPhone so could that be the reason that I find xm5s r not significantly better than the AirPods in terms of audio quality? The xm5s sounds more mushed and has less clarity in the high freq zones
The Airpods Pro 2 has more “negative pressure” to its ANC over the WHXM5. In recent years a lot of people have realized they biologically can’t tolerate this pressure, leading to brands like Sony carefully tweaking their algorithm to try and minimize it, but this pressure can also give you the sensation that ANC is more effective.