First Sony WH-1000XM6 Hinge Failure

Well that did not take long. This first real failure was posted on reddit, but user Character-Zombie-232. The original post is from Chinese Tik Tok, link here. The original user said they were careful with their headset, so they were surprised they actually broke, as the rest of the build quality is solid.

Here is the photo in full size, zoomed in a bit.

I can only speculate as what actually happened, but it appears that the round part from the metal hinge which fits into the support arm on the earcup, popped out of the socket. I think the plastic inside the socket broke or failed, because otherwise, the metal piece would not fall out as it swivels inside the socket.

On my WH-1000XM6 teardown post, I speculated that such a failure could occur, and it actually happened. Here are the photos from the iFixit CT scan.

The red arrow is the metal round part we can see in the failure photo. This going into the plastic support arm. In the CT scan, there is no metal around the metal round part, so it is safe to assume the lower piece is all plastic.

The plastic piece is the one with the Sony logo on it. this is all plastic, and could easily snap or break. If not the external part, then perhaps the internal socket holding the round piece in place.

I suspect the inside of this plastic piece is similar to what we have on the ULT wear. Oddly enough, there is no rubber piece on the metal in the WH-1000XM6. I guess it is not required on the WH-1000XM6.

ULT wear hinge - Source: Reddit

There will be spare parts available for the new model as seen on Encompass, but so far none are in stock. I see Frame Hinge L and R, but those might be the metal pieces. Unless this Frame hinge comes as one entire piece with the metal hinge and plastic piece which fits into the earcup? We will need to wait for these to come into stock to find out if this is the case.

There is no full service manual, just a 2 page PDF with the following important information, "The service policy for this model is Product Exchange". 

Either this 2 page PDF is all Sony will release, or a full service manual is coming later on. For comparison, the French WH-1000XM5 manual on Encompass is the full service manual. So come on Sony, get your act together and upload the full WH-1000XM6 service manual, otherwise why have parts available for sale in the future when there is no service manual?

Hopefully this hinge failure is an isolated case and not the norm in the future. If more failures slowly begin appearing, then perhaps Sony did not really learn from the WH-1000XM5 hinge fiasco. Which btw still has no service program or Sony admitting any fault.

If you wish to support my work here on the blog, you can do so through Buy me a coffee, Click the banner for more details. Thank you.