After trying to ride transit with WH-1000XM2s for a couple days, I concluded they were best reserved for airplanes and longer journeys. The noise cancelling can be too good for safety and catching the loudspeaker announcements. Simply not enough situational awareness. However, recent versions of Sony’s software let you bleed in exterior sound so you can work around it.
A more difficult issue is wearing winter clothes or hats with headphones, or surviving hot/sweaty days with them on. In ear Bluetooth is by far the easiest solution, and I like noise isolation rather than cancelling. I switched to gym/sport in-ears several years back [and just got $25 Anker Soundcore Spirits for this use case…see cheap IEM thread.]
Regarding tone profile/sound signature, all noise cancelling products are processed in my experience. The default 1000XM2 tone is warm, but the software allows for EQ “Bright” or “Bass Reduce” as needed. The software has a 1,000 options and is pretty decent in a ‘processing’ sense. But, the audio quality never rises above medium.