Sony is no stranger to the wireless earbud category, and its flagship WF-1000XM line has topped our favorite earbuds roundups for years. Suffice it to say, Sony knows how to make fantastic earbuds. While the WF-C700N earbuds aren’t quite entry-level at $120, the cost-cutting calculus involved in designing great earbuds in this price range is nothing like it is with flagship ones.
You won’t find niceties like in-ear detection, or Qi charging in the case, and the physical buttons are sure to be divisive. What they do have is Sony’s famously excellent ANC, crystal clear sound quality, and a laundry list of software features. While some people are sure to pass on these for what they don’t have, people buying the WF-C700N for what is there won’t be disappointed.
Source: Sony
Sony WF-C700N
The Sony WF-C700N earbuds bring the same top-tier sound Sony has become famous for down to a more accessible price. While they’re missing some of the features of its pricier counterpart, they’re probably the best ANC earbuds in this price range.
- Noise Cancellation
- Yes
- Mono Listening
- Yes
- IP rating
- IPX4
- Supported codecs
- AAC, SBC
- Weight (earbuds)
- 4.6g each
- Charging
- USB-C
- Driver size
- 5mm
- Color
- Black, Green
- Earbuds battery life
- 7.5 hours (ANC on); 10 hours (ANC off)
- Charging case battery life
- 1 additional full charge
- Crystal clear sound that still has thumpy bass
- An hour of playback after 10 minutes of charging
- Google Fast Pair support
- Only 15 hours of total battery life with the charging case
- No support for higher bitrate AptX or LDAC codecs, just SBC and AAC
- Controls are bud-specific, so you lose half of them while single-bud listening
- No LC3 codec support
Price and availability
At just $120, the WF-C700N earbuds are significantly more affordable than both Sony’s outgoing flagship earbuds, the $280 WF-1000XM4, and the new $300 WF-1000XM5. That lower price doesn’t mean it doesn’t get its own special considerations, however. While its flagship earbuds of course outshine the WF-C700N in hardware, Sony has at least given it more color options than its costlier counterparts with the customary white and black, as well as a downright striking pastel violet, and sage green.
No retailer has all the colors, so you may need to look around if you have a specific color in mind. If that’s not enough to make you cough up six Jacksons, they were briefly lowered to $100 during Prime Day, so it’s not unlikely to see similar prices around Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Hardware and design
The design of the buds themselves is nothing groundbreaking, with the most visible features being the impossible-to-miss buttons and the mesh grille of the vent hole, ala AirPods Pro. The charging case is more visually interesting, with its dimpled texture and small pill-shaped design, as opposed to the plain matte exterior of the buds.
The only other features of note are the Type-C port and pairing button on the rear. While the shape and size of the case make it easy to pocket the WF-C700Ns, that comes at the expense of battery life. With just a single full charge in the case, it’s fairly common to hear the low battery warning if you aren’t topping them up daily.
Another nicety the case omits is wireless charging. While it would be a decent plus at this price point, the lack of it isn’t really a negative. Nixing some luxuries in favor of utility isn’t a bad way to make a budget-friendly product.
An oft-underappreciated example of this is the magnets in the earbuds themselves. They’re impressively strong, to the point that it’s unreasonably hard to shake them out of the case, so they’re that much more likely to stay in place in the event of a drop, but still easy to take out of the case.
Audio and ANC
Getting right into it, the sound quality isn’t just good for the price — it’s just plain good. Some of the hallmarks of cheaper earbuds are bass that muddies up vocals, or snares and cymbals that sound piercing and washy respectively, and there’s absolutely none of that here. It’s pretty easy to make out even marble-mouthed vocals through punchy kick-drum impacts, or basslines running under crash cymbals and lead guitar. They’re no substitute for flagship earbuds with higher bitrate codec support, but they’re a standout in this price range.
While the WF-C700N only supports the SBC and AAC codecs (even though Sony is behind the LDAC codec), it also comes with an audio processing silver bullet that Sony calls DSEE (Digital Sound Enhancement Engine). It’s a toggle switch in Sony’s Headphones Connect app that’s off by default, and one of the things it’s good for is adding some separation to your audio. This gives it a nice wide soundstage, which makes it even easier to hear individual instruments in the mix.
Another way Sony shows off its chops as a premium earbud maker is with passive noise isolation and active noise cancellation. Even without the ANC on, they do a great job cutting out room noise. Sony’s ANC is some of the best on the premium market, and it’s just as impressive here.
While listening to music, it’s difficult to hear the hum of the AC or even my own claps, let alone those of anyone trying to get my attention. Thankfully ambient sound mode makes it much easier to hear the world around you, with similar clarity to talking to someone while music is playing on nearby speakers.
While Sony definitely had to pick and choose what hardware to include to hit this price, it’s clearly no-holds-barred when it comes to software. If Sony decided it’s important, and already developed it, it’s been crammed in. Between things like Google Fast Pair, multipoint Bluetooth, and Sony’s aforementioned DSEE and excellent ANC, it’s hard to think of another way to elevate the WF-C700Ns just in software.
Battery and charging
Sony claims right at seven and a half hours of listening time in the buds with another charge in the case for up to 15 hours of music between charges, and I consistently maxed out within just a few minutes of that with or without ANC enabled. Ten minutes in the case will net you about an hour of listening time, with a full charge taking a bit over an hour, and the case tops up even faster. This puts the WF-C700N into all-day battery territory, so long as you put them in the case during your lunch break, but anything more is pushing it if you aren’t charging the case every night.
App and features
Out of the box, a single button press on the left earbud cycles between ambient and ANC modes with a single press, and the right bud is play/pause. Skip forward and backward are two and three presses on the right bud respectively, and summoning your assistant is a long press on that same bud. Volume up and down is done with four or more presses of the right and left buds respectively.
If that’s not to your liking, you can’t change or add individual button commands, but you can at least swap between control schemes in Sony’s Headphone Control app.
There are other benefits to using that app, too. It also lets you enable 360 Reality Audio, turn DSEE on and off, change your EQ settings, and update your earbuds.
While it would be nice to have more granular control of the button commands, the app will also let you use location settings to control ambient/ANC settings, if you want playback controls on both earbuds without having to use the app to swap between the two modes.
Sony’s 360 Reality Audio is pretty similar in feel and execution to Apple’s Spacial Audio, but has a limited selection of compatible services, with Tidal being the most mainstream, and even then just for Hi-Fi Plus subscribers. While I’m personally not a fan of head tracking, I do enjoy the way it can open up and widen the soundstage. With the relatively limited ways to enjoy it, though, it’s far from a must-have feature.
Competition
In the premium space, Sony’s biggest competitors are Sennheiser and Bose, but Bose has nothing close to this price point, and Sennheiser’s closest-priced option, the $150 CX True Wireless, is devoid of ANC altogether. While the CX True Wireless outlasts the WF-C700N with an extra hour and a half of playtime in the buds, and a total of 27 hours with the case, ANC is a huge advantage for the Sonys.
A better comparison in the same ballpark is the Jabra Elite 4, with its $100 price tag, and very similar feature list. The extra $20 for the WF-C700N will get you some niceties like EQ control, two extra hours of playback at a time, and better sound quality, along with all the secret sauce software Sony is slinging.
Should you buy them?
If your earbud budget is under $150, and you want ANC, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better option. The WF-C700N makes plenty of compromises to hit its $120 price, to be sure, but if the relatively small battery life and lack of wireless charging or in-ear detection don’t scare you away, the premium sound and budget-friendly price is a killer combo that makes them hard to pass up.
Source: Sony
Sony WF-C700N
The Sony WF-C700N earbuds bring the same top-tier sound Sony has become famous for down to a more accessible price. While they’re missing some of the features of its pricier counterpart, they’re probably the best ANC earbuds in this price range.
