Sony WF-C500 Truly Wireless Headphones Review

The Sony WF-C500 are slightly bulky, rounded earbuds with angled silicone tips. They don't stick out from your ears as much as the Sony WF-XB700 Truly Wireless and come in more colors: 'Βlack', 'White', 'Green', and 'Coral'.

The Sony WFC500 are decently comfortable. The buds are on the bigger side, but they come with a few different options for silicone tips and don't have a deep fit. Still, depending on your ear shape, they may put a bit of pressure on your ears, and pressing the buttons on their outside surfaces can feel uncomfortable.

The controls are okay. Each bud has a big round button on its outside surface. They're easy to press, but the commands aren't very intuitive, and sometimes the buttons feel too sensitive, so you can end up double-pressing when you meant to single-press. They also aren't very clicky, but on the plus side, there are voice prompts or beeps for most functions.

On the left ear:

• Short press: Raises the volume.
• Long press: Lowers the volume.

On the right ear:

• Press: Play/pauses audio.
• Double press: Skips the track forward.
• Triple press: Skips the track backward.
• Long press: Activates voice assistant.

On either earbud:

• Press one bud: Answers or ends calls.
• Long press one bud: Rejects a call.
• Long press both buds: Enters pairing mode.

The Sony WF-C500 are very portable, like most truly wireless in-ears. You can toss them in a bag or slip them in your pocket, so it's easy to carry them around.

The Sony WF-C500 come with a good case. It's a bit smaller than the Sony WF-XB700 Truly Wireless' case and has an indicator light for the case's remaining battery life. The lid is transparent, so you can see the earbuds' own battery lights when they're inside and charging. It can be hard to open, but the lid stays closed if you drop the case. The case matches the color of the earbuds too.

The Sony WFC500 have a good build quality. They're mostly made of plastic but feel sturdy. They have an IPX4 rating for resistance against being splashed with water but don't feel as premium as the Sony WF-1000XM4 Truly Wireless.

The Sony WF-C500 are decently stable. They should stay in place during exercises like a light run in the park but may fall out of your ears during more intense workouts.

• Sony WF-C500 earbuds
• 3x silicone tip sizes
• USB-A to USB-C charging cable
• Manuals

The Sony WF-C500 have a very neutral sound profile suitable for a variety of genres and types of content. If you prefer a different sound, there's a graphic EQ and presets in the companion app that you can use to customize it. Unfortunately, the left and right earbuds of our unit are mismatched, and the right side has noticeably more thump and rumble than the left. Our unit also produces a quiet white noise when there isn't audio playing, which can be annoying over time. These issues may not affect every unit, though, meaning you may have a different experience.

Note: We repeated our tests with different ear tip sizes to make sure that the mismatch between the left and right drivers wasn't a seal or fit issue. Our results also match our subjective experience using the headphones.

There's also a slight discrepancy between the left and right driver in the raw frequency response graphs due to how the files were processed. However, all other graphs are correct, and this difference shouldn't be audible to most users.

They have incredible frequency response consistency, like most in-ear headphones. Once you have a good fit with the included ear tips, you should get consistent bass and treble delivery.

The Sony WF-C500 have fantastic bass accuracy. Most of the response is very flat and neutral, so mixes have the right amount of rumble, punch, and boom. Ηowever, the left and right driver of our unit are slightly mismatched. There's some overemphasis in the right earbud in the low-bass range, so it sounds noticeably more bass-heavy than the left earbud.

The Sony WF-C500 have superb mid accuracy. Instruments and lead vocals are present and accurate. The dip in the mid-mid nudges them slightly to the back of the mix, but overall, they sound clear and intense.

They have good treble accuracy. Instruments and lead vocals are present and detailed, but a bit of under-emphasis in the mid-treble makes sibilants like S and T sounds and cymbals sound slightly dull.

The Sony WF-C500 have good peaks and dips performance. Our unit's right driver has a peak in the low bass that brings extra thump and rumble to mixes. There's a dip in the mid-mid that nudges instruments and lead vocals to the back of the mix, although it's much more present in the right driver of our unit. There's a peak in the low-treble that can make some instruments sound harsh, and the uneven mid-treble makes sibilants, like cymbals, alternately piercing or dull.

The Sony WF-C500 have an alright imaging performance. The group delay falls below the audibility threshold for the entire range, resulting in tight bass and treble reproduction. The L/R drivers are also well-matched in terms of amplitude and frequency response. Ηowever, their phase response is mismatched, which results in an unbalanced stereo image. Sounds in the mid-range are perceived as off-center and louder in the right earbud. These issues are audible with regular content, but these results are only valid for our unit, and you may have a different experience.

The Sony WF-C500 have a bad passive soundstage, which is typical for closed-back earbuds. Their sound seems to come from inside your head rather than speakers in the room around you, and the soundstage seems closed-off and small compared to most open-back headphones.

Update 02/25/2022: These headphones are compatible with Sony's 360 Reality Audio feature, which can offer better sound quality. However, you need to subscribe to services that support this feature and use compatible files. The review has been updated to reflect these changes.

The Sony WF-C500 support 360 Reality Audio. This speaker modeling feature is meant to make music sound like it's coming from all around you, instead of from just two speakers like typical stereo music. You can turn it on with the headphones' companion app, which also includes instructions for taking pictures of your ears to send to Sony for analysis so that the feature can adapt to their shape. Ηowever, to hear content in 360 Reality Audio, you need to pay to subscribe to a compatible streaming service like Tidal, Deezer, or nugs.net.

The Sony WFC500 have a good weighted harmonic distortion performance. There's some distortion present in the treble range at normal volumes, but it shouldn't be noticeable for most listeners, and audio reproduction is mostly clean and pure.

These are the settings used to test the Sony WFC500. Our results are only valid when using these settings.

The Sony WF-C500 have an alright noise isolation performance. They don't have active noise cancelling (ANC) and don't block out very much bass-range noise like rumbling bus and plane engines. That said, they do a good job of isolating you from higher-frequency sounds like conversations and humming A/C units.

These headphones have a fantastic leakage performance. They leak very little audio, so you can listen to loud music at the office without bothering people around you.

The Sony WF-C500 have an alright recording quality. Recorded speech is clear and bright, but sounds thin and a bit distorted.

The Sony WF-C500's mic has mediocre noise handling. In moderately loud environments, background noise is audible, but your voice is still clear and understandable. With loud background noise, like a train passing in a subway station, whoever you're talking to may not be able to make out what you're saying.

The Sony WF-C500 have a satisfactory battery performance. Although we originally measured 14 hours of continuous battery life, which is more than the advertised 10 hours, we got under 12 hours upon retesting it. However, it's important to note that battery life can vary depending on use and volume. That said, like the Sony WF-XB700 Truly Wireless, their case only holds one extra charge. On the plus side, you can use one earbud at a time while the other charges in the case.

The Sony WF-C500 are compatible with the Sony Ηeadphones Connect app. There's a graphic EQ and presets that you can use to customize their sound profile, and you can set up 360 Reality Audio. You can also see the earbuds' battery life, available software updates, the codec used, and access a guide to the onboard controls. The app lacks some functions compared to other Sony models like the Sony WF-1000XM4 Truly Wireless, though, since they don't have an auto-off timer. You can't remap any controls either, unlike the Skullcandy Grind Fuel True Wireless.

The Sony WF-C500 have adequate Βluetooth connectivity. They can only connect with one device at once, but they support Swift Pair and Fast Pair for easier pairing with Windows 10 and Android devices, respectively. They're compatible with Βluetooth version 5.0 and have somewhat low latency with iOS devices, so they're suitable for streaming video or watching movies on your iPhone. Ηowever, they have high latency on PC and Android devices. Some apps seem to compensate for latency differently, though, so you may have a different experience.

The Sony WF-C500 are truly wireless headphones, and you can't use them wired. They come with a USΒ-A to USΒ-C charging cable for the case.

The Sony WF-C500 are fully compatible with Βluetooth-enabled PCs. However, they can't connect to them in any other way.

The Sony WF-C500 come with a charging case that holds about one extra charge. It has no inputs except for a USΒ-C port for the charging cable.