TechAudioHeadphonesMark Levinson No. 5909 review: Worth the premium price tag?Premium wireless active noise-cancelling over-ear headphones that cost a pretty pennyWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.(Image credit: Mark Levinson)T3 VerdictNo, the No. 5909 can’t justify the asking price – but they get a lot closer to doing so than you might expect.Reasons to buy+Positive, confident and eloquent sound+Premium materials, impressively assembled+ComfortableReasons to avoid-Wantonly expensive-Truncated control app-Many realistically priced alternativesWhy you can trust T3Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you.Find out more about how we test.
TechAudioHeadphonesMark Levinson No. 5909 review: Worth the premium price tag?Premium wireless active noise-cancelling over-ear headphones that cost a pretty pennyWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.(Image credit: Mark Levinson)T3 VerdictNo, the No. 5909 can’t justify the asking price – but they get a lot closer to doing so than you might expect.Reasons to buy+Positive, confident and eloquent sound+Premium materials, impressively assembled+ComfortableReasons to avoid-Wantonly expensive-Truncated control app-Many realistically priced alternativesWhy you can trust T3Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you.Find out more about how we test.
Premium wireless active noise-cancelling over-ear headphones that cost a pretty penny
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Mark Levinson)T3 VerdictNo, the No. 5909 can’t justify the asking price – but they get a lot closer to doing so than you might expect.Reasons to buy+Positive, confident and eloquent sound+Premium materials, impressively assembled+ComfortableReasons to avoid-Wantonly expensive-Truncated control app-Many realistically priced alternatives
(Image credit: Mark Levinson)
(Image credit: Mark Levinson)
T3 VerdictNo, the No. 5909 can’t justify the asking price – but they get a lot closer to doing so than you might expect.Reasons to buy+Positive, confident and eloquent sound+Premium materials, impressively assembled+ComfortableReasons to avoid-Wantonly expensive-Truncated control app-Many realistically priced alternatives
T3 VerdictNo, the No. 5909 can’t justify the asking price – but they get a lot closer to doing so than you might expect.
T3 Verdict
No, the No. 5909 can’t justify the asking price – but they get a lot closer to doing so than you might expect.
Reasons to buy+Positive, confident and eloquent sound+Premium materials, impressively assembled+ComfortableReasons to avoid-Wantonly expensive-Truncated control app-Many realistically priced alternatives
Reasons to buy+Positive, confident and eloquent sound+Premium materials, impressively assembled+Comfortable
Positive, confident and eloquent sound
Premium materials, impressively assembled
Comfortable
Reasons to avoid-Wantonly expensive-Truncated control app-Many realistically priced alternatives
Wantonly expensive
Truncated control app
Many realistically priced alternatives
Why you can trust T3Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you.Find out more about how we test.
Why you can trust T3Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you.Find out more about how we test.
In this review, we’re looking at the most affordable way to get into Mark Levinson ownership. This is a brand that’s well-known to audiophiles, quite well-known to owners of more expensive Lexus vehicles (where its cost-option in-car audio systems are very well-regarded) and completely off the radar of those of us who might be considering a new pair ofSonyorBosewireless headphones.
‘Affordable’ is a relative term, of course, and even if the No. 5909 headphones are the least expensive product in the Mark Levinson catalogue, a quid shy of £1K doesn’t shout ‘bargain’ in too many people’s language.
(Image credit: Mark Levinson)
(Image credit: Mark Levinson)
Mark Levinson No. 5909: Price and release date
The Mark Levinson No. 5909 are on sale now, and in the United Kingdom they cost a hefty £999. They’re an only-slightly-less eye-watering $999 in the United States, while in Australia the asking price is AU$1899.
At the risk of stating the obvious, that’s a lot of money. Some of the planet’s biggest and most accomplished brands will sell you some headphones that look and feel similar, do similar things and offer similar levels of satisfaction for a third of this price. A quarter, in some cases.
Today’s best Mark Levinson No. 5909 deals$799View$999ViewNo price informationCheck AmazonWe check over 250 million products every day for the best prices
Today’s best Mark Levinson No. 5909 deals$799View$999ViewNo price informationCheck AmazonWe check over 250 million products every day for the best prices
Today’s best Mark Levinson No. 5909 deals
$799View$999ViewNo price informationCheck Amazon
$799View
$799View
$799View
$799
$799
$999View
$999View
$999View
$999
$999
No price informationCheck Amazon
No price informationCheck Amazon
No price informationCheck Amazon
No price information
No price information
We check over 250 million products every day for the best prices
We check over 250 million products every day for the best prices
Mark Levinson No. 5909: What’s new?
How, then, do these Mark Levinson over-ears attempt to justify themselves?
That means wireless connectivity via Bluetooth 5.1 with support for SBC, AAC, aptX Adaptive and LDAC codecs. It means a pair of 40mm beryllium-coated full-range dynamic drivers. It means adaptive active noise-cancellation (ANC) and a battery life of 30 hours or so if you leave ANC switched on, which rises to 35 hours if you switch it off. It means six hours of power after just 15 minutes of charging.
As a member of the Harman group of companies, Mark Levinson has access to the labours of the Harman acoustic engineers responsible for the ‘Harman curve’. In simple terms, the Harman curve is a graphic representation of the sound that most people find most agreeable most of the time. On paper, it reads like the sort of marketing non-science that ends up satisfying nobody, but in actual fact it’s an ideal. And Mark Levinson claims the No. 5909 adheres to the Harman curve more closely than any rival.
(Image credit: Mark Levinson)
(Image credit: Mark Levinson)
Mark Levinson No. 5909: Features and performance
In actual fact, though, that’s going to have to wait for another day and another product. Because although the Mark Levinson No. 5909 don’t perform like every penny’s-worth of their asking price, they are a profoundly impressive pair of headphones.
Yes, they’re up against some very tough (and considerably more affordable) opposition from the likes ofBose,Bowers & Wilkins, Sennheiser andSony. Heck, there are even Bang & Olufsen alternatives that are made to look a bit of a bargain when lined up against the No. 5909. But in every meaningful respect bar one, the Mark Levinson have nothing to learn from any of them - and in some ways they lead the pack.
Take soundstaging, for example. The No. 5909 create a big, three-dimensional and utterly believable soundstage, and they organise specific strands of a recording on it with complete authority. Expansive or complicated recordings present no problems – these headphones make every element distinct and easy to follow. And they do this without undermining the sense of unity and togetherness that’s essential to creating a sense of performance. Music, no matter how many musicians were involved in its creation, sounds like the product of a single entity.
Where transient response and detail retrieval are concerned, too, the Mark Levinson could offer lessons. They identify the most minor, most fleeting occurrences in a recording, and put them into proper context – and, again, this is not at the expense of the overall presentation. But if there’s information to be revealed in a performance, the No. 5909 will reveal it in the most balanced and naturalistic way.
Control is of the martial variety, from the deep and straight-edged attack of bass information to the crisp-yet-solid top end. And in between, the Mark Levinson do thrillingly eloquent work in the midrange – they communicate in torrents, allowing a vocalist complete freedom to express themselves. ‘Hair-raising’ can be a trite, fall-back description sometimes, but here it’s entirely justified.
Dynamic headroom is considerable, rhythmic certainty is absolute, and momentum can be taken as a given. If a recording is supposed to soothe, it will do so; if it’s meant to startle and unsettle, then it will. The No. 5909 paint a complete picture, and they use all the colours.
But having laid the praise on with a trowel where sound quality is concerned, we have to row back a bit when it comes to noise-cancellation. There’s no doubt the Mark Levinson can deal with a fair amount of external sound, and they leave no suggestion of counter-signal in its wake – but you can spend considerably less and buy better noise-cancellation, no two ways about it. Especially if you spend your money on headphones wearing a ‘Bose’ badge.
(Image credit: Mark Levinson)
(Image credit: Mark Levinson)
Mark Levinson No. 5909: Design and usability
So these headphones are made from a combination of memory-foam covered in leather (which looks, feels and even smells expensive), anodised aluminium and quite the priciest-feeling plastics ever deployed on a pair of wireless over-ear headphones costing less than a thousand pounds.
As well as the headphones themselves, the frankly colossal box in which they’re supplied includes a suitably expensive-feeling hard travel-case and a few pleasantly tactile cables. There’s USB-C to USB-C for charging, and two USB-C to 3.5mm cables for hard-wired operation – one is 1.25m long, the other 4m.
There are some physical controls arranged around the outer edge of each earcup too. On the right you’ll find the common three-button strip – here it deals with ‘volume up/down’, ‘answer/end/reject call’, ‘skip forwards/backwards’ and ‘activate voice assistant’. Over on the left, meanwhile, there’s a control covering ‘power on/off/Bluetooth pairing’ and another handling your choice of ‘ANC’ and ‘awareness’.
You’ll make your ANC choices in the clean, good-looking and rather truncated Mark Levinson Headphones control app (foriOSandAndroid). Select ‘on’, ‘off’ or ‘awareness’, and if you select ‘on’ you get to decide between ‘high’, ‘low’ and ‘adaptive’.
The app also features three EQ presets (or ‘bass contours’ as Mark Levinson insists upon): ‘neutral’, ‘attenuated’ or ‘enhanced’. There’s an adjustable auto-off timer to power down the headphones if no incoming signal is detected (30min, 60min, 180min or ‘never’), an indication of battery level, an ‘on/off’ switch for on-head detection, and, well, that’s your lot. It’s a decent app as far as it goes - it just doesn’t go all that far. Certainly the development team at Sony will be sleeping easily…
(Image credit: Mark Levinson)
(Image credit: Mark Levinson)
Mark Levinson No. 5909 review: Verdict
The Mark Levinson No. 5909 are not the pragmatic choice. Pragmatists will buy a pair of similarly specified headphones from one of the very prestigious brands mentioned below, and save themselves a lot of cash in the process.
But for those who have the wherewithal, who value exclusivity and (let’s not be coy) one-upmanship, you can rest assured all that money isn’t just going on a high-end logo.
The Mark Levinson No. 5909 headphones are, for those who can afford them, the real deal.
Mark Levinson No. 5909: Also consider
Apart from where price is concerned, there are quite a few alternatives to the Mark Levinson worthy of consideration. Sony’s all-conqueringWH-1000XM4are the first that spring to mind, given that they do everything they do really, really well – but you can also consider theBose Noise-Cancelling Headphones 700(for class-leading ANC) or theBowers & Wilkins PX7(for superb sound quality) at a fraction of the price of the No. 5909. To a lesser or greater extent they all do what the Mark Levinson do -– they just don’t have that aura of exclusivity about them as they do it.
T3 tests a wide range of products, from kayaks to kick scooters, mattresses to laptops, but the one thing that links them all is our approach to testing. Here’sT3’s How We Test page, so you know you’re getting the real deal – actual time spent with testing products in the real world, not make-believe reviews based on spec sheets and assumption.
Sign up to the T3 newsletter for smarter living straight to your inbox
Get all the latest news, reviews, deals and buying guides on gorgeous tech, home and active products from the T3 experts
The new Aston Martin Vantage Roadster is drop-top perfectionHave we already found the most beautiful car of 2025?
Have we already found the most beautiful car of 2025?
Amazon surprisingly removing one of the best ever sci-fi shows of all time from Prime VideoNot only was the show cancelled, it’s now being ditched from the streaming service
Not only was the show cancelled, it’s now being ditched from the streaming service
Campfire’s new premium buds put Nine Inch Nails into your earsCampfire’s cutting-edge IEMs are not something you can never have
Campfire’s cutting-edge IEMs are not something you can never have
