This is the comparison between the Sony WH-XB900N and the JBL E65BTNC. The Price of the headphones is very different and very far away. Both the company had the strong base in the audio field, check out which one will be better for you and your budget.

Sony WH-XB900N	JBL E65BTNC
BUY NOW	BUY NOW
PROS	PROS
Extremely comfortable. Impressive battery life. Quick Attention Mode is a brilliant addition.	Great sound-quality. Noise cancelling is great. Excellent value for money.
CONS	CONS
Disappointing ANC and isolation. Bluetooth 4.2 instead of 5.0. Uncomfortably bass-heavy.	Could have a looser clamp.

Expert Reviews of Sony WH-XB900N: 

By T3
the Sony WH-XB900N delivers the right amount of bass and noise cancellation features to make it a less expensive alternative to the WH-1000XM3. For 899, casual users looking for a decent pair of everyday wireless headphones. can consider the…

By Digit
Essentially existing as a bridge between Sony’s Extra Bass series and the much-acclaimed Sony WH-1000XM3, the Sony WH-XB900N attempt to provide something of value to numerous kinds of users at a lower price point than the exorbitantly-priced WH-1000XM3….

By pickr.com 
The wonderful thing about sound is that everyone has their own preferences to what they hear, and that means there’s no “right” pair of headphones. We all listen a little differently and we all have a style we like.When picking a pair of headphones,…

By firstpost.com 
The Sony WH-XB900N is priced at Rs 16,990 with a one year warranty but can be purchased close to Rs 15,490 online. If you are looking for a set of wireless headphones with good sound clarity, active noise cancellation, loads of bass and excellent…

By Stuff 
People love bassy headphones. Sony’s Extra Bass range takes that to its logical conclusion, with so much of the stuff it dribbles out like sticky aloe vera gel. These headphones have categorically too much bass by any sane metric, and their active…

Expert Reviews of JBL E65BTNC: 

By HeadphoneReview 
JBL has built an excellent pair of headphones here, and one that stands as one of the best options for those looking for a great pair of noise cancelling headphones under $200. The JBL E65BTNC headphones are well-designed, reasonably comfortable, and they sound great.

By MyMac 
JBL’s E65BTNC headphones fall short in a couple of physical ways. The petite controls clustered close together on the right earpiece are difficult to locate and operate solely by touch. Not including a travel case is a disappointment as noise cancellation is most often used when traveling to overcome plane engines. On the positive side, these headphones sound terrific and have outstanding battery life. The design and build quality are excellent.

By BrustedWallet 
The JBL E65BTNC Headphones will not only feed you your favorite sounds, they’ll block out everything else that might interfere with the experience. You’ll get your moneys worth out of this noise cancelling headphone!

By goodhousekeeping.com 
These are a great pair of headphones that certainly tick the stylish design and great sound quality boxes. Simple to use, they offer plenty of listening time from one charge and trhere’s even a cable so you can use them when the battery has run out.

By PC Mag 
These are a great pair of headphones that certainly tick the stylish design and great sound quality boxes. Simple to use, they offer plenty of listening time from one charge and trhere’s even a cable so you can use them when the battery has run out.

Detail Review: 

INTRODUCTION:

Sony WH-XB900N

The XB900N are a much more approachable pair of noise cancelling headphones. So, while they probably won’t have the same level of noise cancellation as the much more premium XM 3, there’s still a lot to like here especially at this price point. The built quality and comfort is also good. 

JBL E65BTNC

This headphone has best active noise cancellation, sound and also battery life. Also, the build quality is pretty good but the comfort and fit is not much good, not only this even their expensive headphones had this issue. 

DESIGN: 

Sony WH-XB900N

The XB900N actually shares a lot of design similarities with the much more premium XM 3. This is a good thing because the headphones actually looked a lot more expensive than they are. The exterior is mostly hard plastic but the headband has a very nice foam padding on the underside. There’s also a tiny NFC logo on the left ear cup.

This is actually really convenient because you can just tap a compatible Android phone to pair it with these headphones. Apart from that there’s Sony branding on both sides of the headphones and you also notice these really cool base vents on the ear cups.

JBL E65BTNC

Overall, the build quality of these headphones is pretty decent. You’ve got a cool textured design on the plastic body panels, the headband is covered in a fabric mesh which I personally like cause it doesn’t get stains like other headphones that have leather underneath their headband, and the faux leather used on the ear cups feels pretty good.

COMFORT: 

Sony WH-XB900N

Sony has done a fantastic job on nailing comfort on the Wh-XB900N just like the more premium XM3. There’s a very cushiony headband and super soft way sturdy your pads that have around your fit. The headband in particular has a good amount of tension with the headphones feeling nice and secure around your ears, so there’s a good amount of noise isolation to help with the noise cancellation. The headphones also weigh away like 254 grams. So, even after wearing them for a couple of hours you won’t feel like they’re pinching your brain or anything.

If you live in a very humid place, you will get a little bit of moisture building up between the ear cups and your ears, so you might want to take a break every couple of hours but essentially that XM900N is really best suited for travel, whether it’s your daily commute to the office and back or it’s a train or subway ride. In any of these situations you could really comfortably wear the XB900N for a couple of hours with no problem.

JBL E65BTNC

An poor fit isn’t just an issue thats exclusive to the E65BTNC, even JBL’s more expensive headphones like the Everest Elite 750NC’s suffer from poor fit as well but not as bad as the E65BTNC. 

The padding is too soft for my liking, but its still pretty good. These headphones can be laid down flat or fold up, and the hinge that allows this is pretty well made.

Build quality on these headphones is pretty decent. But, when it comes to fit, it’s not that much impressive. These headphones have a considerable amount of clamping force and the ear cups don’t apply even amounts of pressure around your ear instead they place the majority of the pressure on the anterior portion of your ear. This is both uncomfortable and annoying. The reason these headphones do that is because of their hinge. The ear cups on these headphones swivel more than enough, but they don’t have as much range of motion when it comes to pivoting.

An other headphones that use a similar hinge design like the beats studio 3 or the Sennheiser HD1 might not sit as comfortably as headphones that have a fork design like the Sennheiser 4.50BTNC or the Sony 700N.

Headphones that have a fork design like this almost always fit very comfortably on your head as long as they don’t have too much clamping force.

So much in fact that I can only wear these headphones for 30 minute intervals and sometimes they just give me headaches. I know that might not be the case for some people.

FEATURES:

Sony WH-XB900N

On the left ear cup, you’ll find two buttons and the type-c charging port along with a headphone jack, so you can use these headphones wired as well. Now one of these buttons is the power button but the other button is a little bit more interesting. You can actually use that button to trigger a voice assistant.

You’ll also notice a tiny microphone pinhole, you’ll see another microphone pinhole on the right here cup as well but the interesting thing about the right ear cup is this entire flat surface which is completely touch sensitive. In fact just like the XM3, the flat surface of the right ear cup has touch enabled pads. You can basically swipe up or down to increase or decrease volume, you can swipe right or left to skip a track and you can double tap in the center to pause music and you can also tap in the center of these headphones to answer a phone call or end a phone call.

My favorite feature has to be the quick attention mode. This feature is actually really helpful and it will automatically silence or lower the volume of whatever you’re listening to so you can hear what’s going on around you. All you have to do is just cover the right ear cup with the palm of your hand. This feature is actually really handy if you’re wearing headphones in the office or in a cafe so these gestures take a little bit of getting used to but you’ll either find them super useful or super frustrating but either way they’re cool.

Sony allows you to choose between Google assistant or Amazon’s Alexa has your voice assistant of choice on your phone. Now you can choose to have this button for a digital voice assistant or you can also use this button to cycle between the different noise cancellation modes, not that there’s too many noise cancellation modes is actually only two and these headphones. There’s an ambient noise cancellation mode where the noise cancellation is slightly chewing down but you can hear what’s going on around you, and then the second mode is obviously the full-on noise cancellation. You can trigger them right from one button on your headphones.

I should also mention that you can use these headphones in Wired mode and nice translation switched off as well. The only real advantage to this is battery life because audio quality doesn’t really change that much. These headphones actually fold up which makes it a lot easier to store or carry them around.

Sony has a headphones connect app for Android and iOS which lets you tweak the equalizer settings. So, you can change the default bass heavy equalizer to a completely different sound-stage. The Sony headphones Connect app also lets you tweak more settings for the headphones including the equalizer, adaptive siren control, ambient sound control, and Sony’s dsee sound enhancement system, and a bunch of other settings as well.

JBL E65BTNC

An poor fit isn’t just an issue that’s exclusive to the E65BTNC, even JBL’s more expensive headphones like the Everest Elite 750NC suffer from poor fit as well but not as bad as the E65BTNC.

The Bluetooth connection is pretty stable, and since they have very little latency these headphones are decent for watching videos.

The headphone’s button layout is perfectly fine. They’re easy to find and they’re easy to tell apart from one another. I don’t like that you have to press and hold the volume up or the volume down buttons for a few seconds to skip or go back track. This just takes too long compared to most other headphones out there. Instead, I would like if we could just double press or triple press the center button to skip or go back a track. But instead on these headphones, if you double press the center button you activate your voice assistant.

MICROPHONE: 

Sony WH-XB900N

You can also use these headphones to handle phone calls and the microphone quality is really good. The mic sounds pretty much good also in noisy environments like road, noisy cafe or restaurant, and busy street. 

Now the XM900N Doesn’t have the same QN1 noise cancellation chip that’s used on the flagship XM 3. So, just like most other headphones the jack has to handle noise cancellation duties as well. So these won’t be as impressive as the XM 2 the noise cancellation for sure because that also customizes the noise cancellation for atmospheric pressure when you’re on a plane but it still does a really good job. Once you switch on that noise cancellation, all those annoying sounds around you in the background just kind of fade away, it’s not as silencing as the XM 3 but it’s definitely one of the best in this price range.

JBL E65BTNC

The active noise cancellation on the E65 also does a pretty descent job of blocking out a good amount of low frequency sounds like road noise and a good amount of chatter. Objectively, these headphones block out more noise than the Sennheisers and Sony. Even though the E65 are able to block out the most ambient noise here, they have a considerable amount of cabin pressure.

SOUND QUALITY:

Sony WH-XB900N

The Sony WH-XB900N headphones are powered by 40mm dynamic drivers with a frequency response rate of about twenty to forty thousand Hertz. When used with Sony’s own high-quality LDAC codec at about nine hundred and ninety kbps. They connect over Bluetooth 4.2 but that’s support for a whole bunch of other Bluetooth audio codecs.

This is something that Sony does that most other headphone companies don’t do and it’s much appreciated. The support for AAC, SBC, APTx, APTx HD and LDAC codecs. If you’re gonna use these headphones with just an iphone or ipad then it’ll only use the AAC codec but if you’re using it with an android phone or anything that has better source equipments, you’ll get a try out the additional codec support which definitely helps with a better listening experience.

The XB900N stands for extra bass, there’s very prominent branding on the box itself just to mentally prepare you for this. As a result, the XB900N is more suited for bass heavy music tracks that have a lot more thump to them. If you’re a fan of EDM or hip-hop or very bass heavy pop music then you’re probably gonna love the audio quality of these headphones but if you don’t listen to a lot of bass pounding tracks then you might find the audio quality a little exhausting.

Overall though I’m a really happy for the audio tuning on these headphones but then again I’m all about that bass, that thumpy bass is really tight and resonates really well in these headphones. There’s clean clear audio coming through across the frequency range and vocals are very crisp as well. If we listen to a lot of softer, instrumental, or acoustic genres of music, you will have to tweak things in Sony’s headphones app instead.

JBL E65BTNC

When it comes to sound quality, my biggest issue with these headphones is lack of clarity. I can’t help but feeling that these headphones sound a little fuzzy and when you crank the volume up higher everything still sounds a little distorted. The sound stage is also a little narrow, instrument separation is a little weak, and these headphones do tend to sound a little shallow. The Bass on these headphones is little weak as well, and since these headphones don’t connect to JBL’s headphones app you cant directly change their EQ settings. 

BATTERY:

Sony WH-XB900N

The Sony XB900N boasts a massive 30 hours of battery life with noise cancellation switched on. This is pretty much exactly like the XM 3 which is a lot more premium and a lot more expensive. According to my test, it’s actually pretty spot-on as well, not only is this exactly like the much more premium XM3 but it’s also very accurate as well.

It charges over USB type-c, I’m happy to see more and more things charged with USB type-c. A ten minute charge and these headphones will give you about an hour’s worth of battery life but a full charge would take about three to four hours which is not so great but not too bad either considering the kind of battery life you’re getting out of these headphones.

JBL E65BTNC

When it comes to battery life, the JBL E65BTNC are below average compared to other $200 ANC headphones. These headphones have a claimed battery life of 24 hours but thats with ANC turned off. With ANC turned on these headphones only managed to get 14 hours of playback time.

CONCLUSION:

Sony WH-XB900N

The Sony XB900N is totally worth the price. These headphones are great for the price. It has sound quality Arrivals headphones that cost a lot more and that coupled with a solid noise cancellation makes this a really great buy at this price point.

Now remember the audio tuning does tend to be a little bit heavy. So, if you like that kind of music you’re set but if you’re not a big fan of that you will have to use Sony’s headphones app to handle it. Again, if you want the best audio quality, you will probably want to save up and get the Sony XM3 instead but honestly at this price point as an all-around package, there’s just no beating the Sony XB900N.

JBL E65BTNC

The headphone’s button layout is perfectly fine. They’re easy to find and they’re easy to tell apart from one another. I don’t like that you have to press and hold the volume up or the volume down buttons for a few seconds to skip or go back track. This just takes too long compared to most other headphones out there. Instead, I would like if we could just double press or triple press the center button to skip or go back a track. But instead on these headphones, if you double press the center button you activate your voice assistant.