Sony WH-1000XM4 revealed by Anatel Certification

Sony's highly anticipated WH-1000XM4 has been revealed by an Anatel Certification. This is similar to last year when the upcoming WI-1000XM2 was revealed by a certification as well. Anyways, it does not come as a big surprise that the design of the WH-1000XM4 is almost identical to the WH-1000XM3, similar pattern between MDR-1000X and WH-1000XM2 occured. The model in the photos is a pre-production unit so the quality of the materials will look better on the final product.

With the external design similar more or less, the biggest change appears to be the internal components. Bluetooth 5.0 is confirmed via the manual in the filing and the maximum battery life has been increased from 36 hours to 40 hours with Noise Cancellation On but with ambient sound Off.

Another piece of information from the manual is the power consumption, the WH-1000XM3 is rated at 8W, while the WH-1000XM4 is rated at 2W, so this is a significant drop most likely due to Sony switching to a new Bluetooth chip. It will be interesting if the battery size remains the same or has been decreased to lower the weight. With less power consumption, the battery would not have to be as large to have a similar battery life to the current model. Remains to be seen.

One major difference between the WH-1000XM3 and new WH-1000XM4 is the lack of aptX support. Only 3 codecs are supported, SBC/AAC/LDAC. This is down most likely to Sony switching to a Mediatek Bluetooth chip, as I reported in the first post from the FCC filing. I have cut out the section regarding codec support from the manual below.

I am sure this will disappoint many users but all new Android phones have LDAC support included as part of AOSP, and Apple does not use aptX on any of their models.

The AC adapter information has changed as well, it used to be:

USB AC adapter
A commercially available USB AC adapter capable of supplying an output current of 1.5 A or more

And now it states:

USB AC adapter
A commercially available USB AC adapter capable provide an output current of 0.5 A (500 mA) or bigger.

A new function, speak-to-chat has been added, this is for Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, but no mention of Siri. This speak-to-chat will likely require a button to be pressed for its activation, or perhaps maybe using the touch sensor. Hopefully Sony will carry over the function to deactivate the touch sensor.

Update: Looks like the WH-1000XM4 has also appeared on Indonesia's certification body. A release is close for sure.

Here are the rest of the photos from the certification. Unfortunately there are no internal photos showing the internal components. If I find anything else out, I will update the post.

Source: Twitter | Anatel