It's happening again: Sony WH-1000XM6 owners flood Reddit with broken hinges

If you’ve owned a pair of Sony’s last generation WH-1000XM5 headphones or even glanced at any of the posts on r/SonyHeadphones, you’re likely aware of the notorious hinge failures. What started as a trickle of posts of snapped headbands turned into a flood and has since become a staple meme. I reported on the widespread failures after our own office pair developed the telltale looseness that owners learned to recognize as the beginning of the end. 28% of our readers also said their hinges broke at the time of publishing.

Since then, the story has escalated beyond Reddit: Sony now faces a federal class action lawsuit (Kanter v. Sony Corporation of America) alleging the XM5’s hinge mounting points fracture under normal use, and that Sony routinely brands the defect “physical damage” to deny warranty claims. But with the release of the WH-1000XM6, it seemed Sony listened to the feedback: the XM6 headphones launched with a completely redesigned folding mechanism with metal hinges embedded in the plastic housing, boding confidence to close this chapter for good.

It hasn’t. While the new hinge itself seems to be holding, the plastic around it isn’t. Fresh reports on Reddit show the failures have migrated to the headband ring and slider snapping, and in one case, the metal swivel plate popped clean out of the earcup after its plastic screw anchors gave way. As one highly upvoted commenter put it, Sony reinforced the hinge but kept the same materials, so the weakest point just moved next door — and the slider is arguably harder to repair than the hinge ever was. In the past week alone, a thread pulled 130 upvotes, one owner reported their headband breaking after eight months of desk-only use, and another asked for help reattaching that popped-out swivel plate. Meanwhile, owners say Sony’s support script hasn’t changed: broken parts get classified as physical damage, and claims get denied.

To be fair, not everyone agrees on how bad this is. One diligent user has cataloged every broken-XM6 post since launch and counts 17 across 14 months — fewer, they argue, than the XM5 had racked up at the same age, evidence that the build quality did improve somewhat. Others counter that Reddit posts are just the visible tip, and the sub even has a bot that tracks how often broken-Sony threads appear (the current average gap is about a day and a half).

Of course, every product has some failures, and people with broken headphones, especially from big-name brands, are always louder than people without. So, tell us: how are your WH-1000XM6 headphones holding up? Vote in the poll, and if yours broke, drop the details in the comments — which part failed, how old they are, and how Sony handled your warranty claim.