The sony earbuds are about the best I’ve had for sound quality and noise cancellation. Much better than AirPods, but not nearly as nice integration with the Apple ecosystem.

I find AirPods Pro 2 to be “good enough” where I gave away my set of XMs to someone who will actually use them.

Call (mic) quality in AirPods is better as well, if that matters at all to you. At least that’s what folks on the remote end of calls told me.

I got the InZone gaming buds version which are supposedly very similar to Sony's WF-1000XM5 (https://electronics.sony.com/audio/gaming-audio/all-inzone-h...) I wanted to try out the higher-end wireless Bluetooth LE Audio and their USB-C transceiver, and I wanted something that would let me side-step the Bluetooth stack on my Steam Deck (AirPods are horrible and get lag on Deck after 30 mins; that one is Apple's fault), but even in the best case I find Bluetooth on the Deck is annoying.

I would say the sound is great and overall better than AirPods Pro 3 when I compare the AirPods and InZone buds playing Spotify Lossless content from my iPhone, but the sound is not to my taste. Not sure how much of the quality comes from the LE audio vs better sound hardware engineering. They sound more detailed in vocals, mids, highs, but are a little warm and muddy in the lows. I can't get the sound profile to match my AirPod Pros 3 or my Kef bookshelf speakers with EQ, but I didn't try very hard. The left bud also sometimes takes a bit longer turn on once I put them in my ears, up to 30 seconds before it starts playing audio.

AirPod Pros 3 are ahead in noise cancelling, transparency, and touch controls -- the InZone buds use long touch vs short touch for volume up/down which is confusing, it's much easier to increase the volume and harder to decrease it. AirPods win out for convenience when using with Apple hardware also since I have to use the USB-C dongle since Apple hardware doesn't support Bluetooth LE Audio / whatever the codec is.

Overall I'm happy with the purchase -- they do a great job as Steam Deck headset use case.

I want to try out the new WF-1000XM6 as well, which seem to review better than the WF-1000XM5, but don't have any friends with them yet.