Sony, a prominent presence in the audio industry, has adeptly etched its identity across the diverse spectrum of pricing tiers and audio excellence. The most recent addition to Sony’s repertoire is the WF-C700N True Wireless Stereo (TWS) earbuds, which promises to deliver top-tier audio quality at a compelling price point. Here is my take on whether it lives up to its promise.
Design
A pill-shaped case houses the earbuds, and features a button to manually pair devices to the Sony WF-C700N. The carry case features a textured matte-black finish. Out of the box, the buds fit quite comfortably in my ears with the default medium size ear-tips. They fit snuggly and did not move much even as I moved around.
The surface of both earbuds has one button each on the outward surface to activate active noise cancellation (ANC) or pause and play.
Using the Sony Headphone Connect app, I could assign single-press and multi-press functions, control the sound signature, tweak noise cancellation, transparency and equaliser settings, besides enabling multipoint pairing and more.
Audio quality
For its size and the price, the Sony WF-C700N delivers a great soundstage with a nice mix of bass and vocals. While Sony’s devices are primarily tuned to bass heavy profiles, I have recently found that Sony has consistently delivered on giving listeners the best sound experience with good bass, vocal and instrument separation. This holds true for the WF-C700N as well.
Multi-point is another strong feature with Sony WF-C700N which allows switching between phone to laptop and other devices seamlessly. Definitely a pleasant surprise at this price point.
On listening to songs like Railin Oligal by Pradeep Kumar and Shakthisree Gopalan, there was a clear separation of vocals and instruments, resulting in a balanced signature that I much enjoyed. In bass heavy trance like When Tomorrow Comes by Daxon, the depth one can experience between bass and treble helps give the Sony an edge in this category.
The active noise cancellation is good, but not great. It is able to cancel the ambient sound of the nearest water cooler and the conversations around it, as I sit about 5-6 metres away, but if I’m any closer, it doesn’t drown the chatter out well. One can use the button on the surface of the earpiece to switch between noise cancellation-on, ambient mode and noise cancellation-off. The call quality was clear while moving through noisy environments. People could make my voice out clearly without any background noise. This itself would make it my go-to headset mic in a pinch. There are slight latency issues when editing audio and video using these TWS earbuds, but works great if you are just streaming music or videos or handling calls.
Battery
The battery lasted close to 6.5 hours with ANC on a single charge and can deliver additional charge via the battery in the TWS case. The earbuds are able to handle 3-4 hours of audio editing, 1-2 hours of Zoom calls and an additional 1-2 hours of regular call time. Charging via USB-C, the device takes about 3 hours to charge. However, thanks to the quick charge feature, a 10-min charge can give about an hour’s music playback.
Verdict
The Sony WF-C700N TWS earbuds offer good fit, balanced sound signature and decent battery life. But with average noise cancellation and transparency mode, this might work as your go-to TWS during leisure time, rather than a daily driver for work use.