The WH-1000XM5 can automatically turn off by itself depending on certain situations. If you don’t want your wireless headphones to seemingly power off at random, then you can take a look at this tutorial from Seeking Tech.
1. The first step we recommend taking is to turn the headphones back on and then check its status indicator located on the left ear cup.
If the indicator is slowly flashing an orange light for around 15 seconds, then it indicates that that there is no more than 10% battery life remaining.
If the indicator isn’t displaying any lights, then it means that the device is currently not turned on.
In both of these cases, we recommend that you recharge the WH-1000XM5 before you use it again to ensure that it doesn’t shut down by itself due to the lack of battery charge.
If you are having issues trying to recharge this device, then we recommend that you check out this troubleshooting article.
2. It is also important to note that the Sony WH-1000XM5 will turn off on its own after 15 minutes of inactivity. In order to prevent this from happening, you need to take the following steps:
- If you haven’t done so already, download and install the “Sony | Headphones Connect” app on a compatible smartphone or mobile device.
- Make sure you also pair and connect the headphones to the same smartphone or mobile device.
- Open the “Sony | Headphones Connect” app.
- Go to the System tab.
- Set the automatic power off setting to “Do not turn off.”
3. The Sony WH-1000XM5 also features wearing detection as it is able to detect whether or not the headphones are being worn.
If you put the headset over a beanie, cap, cloth, hat, scarf or other accessories then the device may not be able to identify that it is currently in use. If you have hair covering your ears while wearing the WH-1000XM5, then it may also cause problems.
To fix this issue, make sure that only your ears are inside the ear cups. If you have any head accessories, then you can either remove them or put them over the headphones. If your hair was previously blocking your ears, then try to move your hair so that it won’t interfere with the detection.
Alternatively, you can simply set the automatic power off setting to “Do not turn off” to make sure that the headphones won’t shut down due to any erroneous wearing detection.
4. The Sony WH-1000XM5 may also turn off if you are using it during extremely cold or extremely hot temperature.
For the uninformed, the device has a recommended temperature range of 0 °C to 40 °C (or 32 °F to 104 °F). If you try to use it outside of this range, then the WH-1000XM5 may shut down on its own.
5. We also recommend that you keep the headset updated to the latest firmware as a new software version may fix issues with it randomly shutting off.
6. A factory reset may also help with this issue. To find out how you can do this action, you can check out this article.