Sony WF-C700N Review: Budget Airpods Alternative with ANC

Price When Reviewed

$119.99

Best Prices Today: Sony WF-C700N truly wireless noise-cancelling earbuds

With the Sony WF-C700N, Sony launched new wireless in-ear headphones in mid-2023, bridging the gap between the even cheaper entry-level model, the Sony WF-C500, and the high-end Sony WF-1000XM4.

If you search the internet for alternatives to the Airpods and dig through best-of lists, you’ll notice that if Sony isn’t in first place, it’s in second. You haven’t come across a conspiracy – it’s just that Sony produces good all-round headphones.

Especially where its top models are concerned, Sony has had immense success: the manufacturer’s wireless over-ears have occupied top positions at least since the Sony WH-1000XM3 – since then, we’ve reached the WH-1000XM5 – the true wireless in-ears have been excellent since at least the WF-1000XM3.

The more affordable models are also impressive. Besides several sports headphones and the admittedly somewhat strange Linkbuds series, Sony also has wireless in-ear headphones in its range: the WF-C500 without ANC, and the newer WF-C700N with ANC. And it’s the WF-C700N that we’re reviewing here.

In the box

• ANC for $/£/€100
• Environmentally-friendly packaging

For around $/£/€100, the Sony WF-C700N leave little to be desired. For the first time in this price segment, Sony is offering good active noise cancellation (ANC), after an established headphone brand, Sennheiser, entered this market in 2021 with the Sennheiser CX Plus True Wireless.

In addition to the headphones themselves and the charging cradle, there is also a USB-A to USB-C cable for charging, two additional silicone attachments and a manual in the box. The packaging is exemplary and made of paper or cardboard and thus a renewable raw material: the outer box, the cardboard – even the cable is bound with a piece of paper.

Design

• Attractive colours
• Button instead of touch field
• Light

Visually, the Sony WF-C700N are practically identical to the cheaper WF-C500 from 2021. The most obvious differences are the colours – the WF-C700N are available in black, white (reviewed here), sage green and lavender, the WF-C500 in black, white, green and orange – and the metallic grilles for the additional ANC microphones.

Unlike the Airpods, the Sony WF-C700N come without a stem, but have a button design and therefore sit completely in the ear cup without any parts hanging from the ear. The biggest disadvantage is for people with small ears: if your ears are particularly small, headphones like the Sony WF-C700N may simply not have room – the heads of the Airpods are much smaller.

As with the cheaper model, Sony relies on a button rather than a touch surface for control. While cheap true-wireless headphones with a button often have a very hard pressure point and the headphones are pushed into the ear with every press of the button, the buttons of the Sony WF-C700N are pleasantly soft, but do not lose the haptic feedback of the clearly noticeable click.

Probably the biggest disadvantage of this is that now and then you’ll accidentally press the buttons when inserting or locking the in-ears.

Another feature the mid-range in-ears have to do without are sensors that can automatically pause or play music when you take the headphones out and put them back in. We hope it’s only a matter of time before this feature moves into this price range, just like ANC.

Construction-wise, Sony has somehow managed to maintain a battery life of up to 10 hours without ANC and up to 7.5 hours with ANC, while still reducing the weight of the individual earbuds by 15 per cent, from 5.4 to 4.6g. In the true-wireless headphone market, the WF-C700N are lightweight and therefore sit comfortably in the ears for hours. When the batteries have been completely drained, a full charge cycle takes about an hour and a half, while 10 minutes is enough for a full hour of listening pleasure.

The case looks like an oversized pill, is pleasantly light and feels wonderful in the hand. Almost too well, because it invites you to play around with it in your trouser or jacket pocket. The battery inside provides a full charge for the earphones, giving a total runtime of up to 15 hours with ANC and 20 hours without.

On the back is the USB-C port for charging, plus a button to put the headphones into pairing mode or reset them to factory settings.

Sound

• Balanced sound from the factory
• Very high bass potential
• 5-band equaliser plus clear bass

Although the Sony WF-C700N are a kind of link between the cheaper WF-C500 and the more expensive WF-1000XM4, in terms of sound they are much closer to the former. That’s not a bad thing, though, because even Sony’s cheapest headphones sound pretty darn good, even if they are typically a bit bass-heavy.

While the mids and highs sound very clear and balanced, the greatest potential of the Sony WF-C700N lies in the bass. Even with Clear Boost set to level 4, bass tracks in traditionally less bass-heavy genres such as rock and metal become clearly audible, although they are far from being overbearing. Rather, they move from the background a little to the front and do not impose themselves because of their surprisingly warm sound.

While there is too much of a good thing in these genres beyond level 4, the fun is just beginning with modern hip-hop and electronic music. The dirty synth bass in practically all songs of “Run the Jewels” gets even dirtier, crunchy bass drums in drum’n’bass tracks get a bit richer and warmer – although the sound is of course a matter of taste.

In this respect, the Sony WF-C700N are more suitable for the latter genres than the former, but this should be understood more as an assessment than as a criterion for exclusion, as the sound can also be adjusted with a 5-band equaliser. On the one hand, there are the typical presets for pop, rock, speech, etc., on the other hand, you can also make and save your own settings.

Five frequency bands are quite sufficient in our opinion, after all, the Sony WF-C700N is not a hi-fi product anyway; however, we would have objected to three bands.

Software

• Good, but not best-in-class ANC
• Strange gesture control
• 3D audio only with Sony account

ANC

One of the biggest technical differences between the cheaper WF-C500 and the WF-C700N is the active noise cancellation. This was previously reserved for more expensive models, but now it’s also available for a comparatively small price.

In the app, you can set which modes to switch between at the touch of a button: between all three or only between two of three. On/Transparency is configured by default, which is probably the most common use case for most people. Including the deactivation of noise cancellation in the rotation helps at best to extend the battery life when needed.

While the ANC does a good job on the whole, it doesn’t come close to the performance of the Sony WF-1000XM4: when switched on, not all frequencies are filtered to the same extent, and in transparency mode there are also problems with some frequencies. While monotonous machine noises (engines, compressors, etc.) can be heard well – a definite advantage in road traffic – some frequencies are sometimes swallowed up so much, especially with voices, that you sometimes have to take the headphones out of your ears at the cash register in order to understand the person opposite properly.

The difference in quality is probably due to the fact that the Sony WF-C700N have fewer microphones than the high-end model and therefore pick up ambient noise less effectively.

If you want to partially automate the switching on and off, you can give the Sony app permissions so that the headphones automatically switch noise cancellation or transparency mode on and off based on location and actions.

However, this did not work well enough in our test phase for us to want to use it permanently in everyday life. Perhaps we would also have needed more time to train the underlying algorithm. The only advantage the function had for us in this context was to free up one of the two buttons for other functions – a strange design decision by Sony.

Gesture control

Different approaches to gesture control have emerged for true-wireless headphones: There are manufacturers, such as Sennheiser, who leave the entire button assignment open: if you want, you can put play/pause on the other side, double assign it, even put it on all inputs if you absolutely have to; single, long, double, triple button press – any function can be put on any gesture. In this way, owners can perfectly adapt the control to their preferences.

Then again, there are manufacturers who allow practically no adjustments. Play/Pause is on the left side by default when you simply tap, ANC is on the other earpiece, and so on. This has the advantage that you don’t have to get used to a new input scheme and all headphones (of this manufacturer or type) are operated in the same way.

And then there is Sony: Here they have opted for a strange middle way, where you can assign individual input groups to the left and the right earpiece. For example, if you put playback functions (play/pause, previous/next track) on the left earpiece and ANC control on the right, you can only change the volume on your smartphone. This is because ANC not only occupies this single gesture with its single input, but in a sense also blocks the long key press and multiple presses – these then simply have no further function.

Why this is, we may never know. However, the cheaper WF-C500 and the more expensive WF-1000XM4 also have the problem, though it’s not as severe in the former as ANC is omitted anyway.

Other app features

Besides the basic features – ANC, equaliser and button mapping – there are a few other interesting, if not essential, functions. For example, you can set whether or not to use DSEE in the app. Sony’s proprietary technology can intelligently scale low-resolution audio upwards and thus reproduce an almost high-resolution sound. It is generally recommended to switch on this setting.

Furthermore, there is a switch in the app with which you can prioritise sound quality or connection stability. During our test time, this setting was permanently set to “Quality” and in combination with an iPhone 14 (usually in the pocket), there was not a single connection interruption.

If this happens regularly, it is recommended to prioritise stability. In the background, this setting forces the AAC codec to quality mode, while a more stable connection is achieved by the less demanding SBC codec.

Like many other manufacturers, Sony also has its own solution for virtual surround sound; in Apple jargon this is called “3D audio”, at Sony it is called “360 Reality Audio”. As with the Airpods, you have to photograph your ears for this, which is a strange undertaking, because without outside help you don’t know whether you have photographed your ear correctly, because you can’t photograph your ear and look at the smartphone display at the same time.

Anyway, this function is very, very limited with Sony: 360 Reality Audio is only compatible with four streaming services: Amazon Music Unlimited,…