Sony’s new flagship headphones automatically use your Pixel’s Bluetooth LE Audio

Sony’s WH-1000XM6 are one of the few headphones that automatically use Bluetooth LE Audio when connected to a Pixel phone

May 15, 2025 - 18:48
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Sony’s new flagship headphones automatically use your Pixel’s Bluetooth LE Audio
  • Sony’s new WH-1000XM6 headphones will use Bluetooth LE Audio by default on Pixel phones with Android 16, no manual activation needed.
  • This is because Google added them to an LE Audio “allowlist” after testing, unlike most devices where the feature is experimental.
  • Other devices like Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2 Pro & Sony’s WF-1000XM5 are also on this list, ensuring automatic LE Audio use.

Sony makes some of the best headphones you can buy right now, regardless of whether you’re an Android or an Apple user. This week, Sony unveiled the WH-1000XM6, its latest flagship headphones with a significantly faster QN3 processor, improved ANC, superior voice call quality, and other upgrades over its predecessor. Similar to last year’s model, the WH-1000XM6 supports LE Audio. However, a small difference is that Pixel phone users will find LE Audio enabled by default, eliminating the need for manual activation.

With the release of Android 13 in 2022, Google introduced support for Bluetooth LE Audio, a new standard enabling audio streaming over a Bluetooth Low Energy connection. Despite a growing number of LE Audio-compatible products on the market, Android still doesn’t utilize this standard by default. Instead, users must manually enable LE Audio for each device by navigating to its Bluetooth details page and toggling the “LE Audio” option.