The WF-1000XM4 was nothing short of impressive, and the XM5 builds on it with flair. ANC now completely shuts off the outside world, yet without that typical discomfort associated with pressure difference. We have used the buds extensively on a wide range of scenarios including indoors, on Mumbai local trains, busy market public roads, taxis, and onboard flights, and the experience remained the same. Voice passthrough was superb, and so was call quality.
Coming to sound, the XM5 reproduced audio with a wide soundstage. It was adept at bringing out fine details in audio with fairly good bass response once you play around with EQ settings. The device could easily be one of the best pairs of premium TWS earphones at this price, especially for Android devices.
In our experience with ANC on most of the time, we could squeeze out just over 5 hours from the buds with the case providing two additional recharges.
An interesting add-on is the announcement of time every hour, which is quite useful especially since you can easily plug yourself out from the outside world even while waiting for your flight.