Sony WF-C700N Truly Wireless Headphones Review

These earbuds have a similar design to the Sony WF-C500 Truly Wireless. They're round buds with a sleek design and minimalist profile that doesn't protrude much from your ear. They come in four color variants: 'Black', 'White', 'Sage Green', and 'Lavender'.

The Sony C700N are decently comfortable. While they're lightweight and fit deep in-ear, using the control scheme can put extra pressure on the buds and create a suction feeling in your ear canal. Fortunately, they come with three ear tip sizes to help you get the best fit possible.

The control scheme is easy to learn and intuitive. The buttons have good clicky feedback; you can use them to switch between tracks, play and pause audio, and answer, reject, and end calls. Control remapping is done in their companion app but is limited to exchanging current inputs for ambient sound and volume controls. Additionally, the buds only give input chimes when using ambient sound controls.

On the left earbud:

• Single press: Toggles between ANC/transparency modes. You can turn ANC off as well, but you have to enable that function via the companion app.
• Double press: Answers and ends calls.
• Press and hold: Rejects incoming calls.

On the right earbud:

• Single press: Plays and pauses audio.
• Double press: Plays the next track. Also answers and ends calls.
• Triple press: Plays the previous track.
• Press and hold: Activates the voice assistant. It also rejects incoming calls.

The buds are very portable. Like most truly wireless earbuds, their small profile won't take up much space in your pocket or bag.

They have a good carrying case. It's small and, unlike the Sony Linkbuds S Truly Wireless' case, the plastic feels premium and durable. There's one LED on the front of the case to indicate battery level and a Bluetooth pairing button on the back. While the lid is a little hard to open, this can be advantageous as the buds aren't as likely to fall out during an accidental drop.

These earbuds are well-built. They're made from good-quality plastic and can survive a few accidental drops without significant damage. The ear tips, however, feel very thin and prone to tearing over repeated use. Fortunately, the buds are rated IPX4 for protection against water splashes, so they'll hold up if you get them a little wet.

Stability is good. Their deep in-ear fit and lightweight build won't move during moderate exercise. However, they can get dislodged from your ear canal during more intense movement, requiring readjustment to get a comfortable fit.

• Sony WF-C700N earbuds
• 3x tip sizes
• Charging case
• USB-C to USB-A charging cable
• Manuals

The Sony C700N have a slightly warm sound profile. The bass range has plenty of thump and punch, while vocals and instruments sound clear, present, and detailed, though a little veiled due to an underemphasized treble range. It also makes sibilants, like cymbals, sound dull and lispy. Fortunately, you can fine-tune their sound using their companion app's graphic EQ and presets.

These earbuds have fantastic frequency response. Once you get a good fit and seal, you'll receive consistent bass and treble delivery each time you use them.

These earbuds have incredible bass accuracy. The range is very flat and well-balanced, so the mix has ample thump, punch, and boom without overpowering the rest of the mix.

The Sony WF-C700N have superb mid-accuracy. A dip in the mid-mid pushes vocals and instruments into the back of the mix, but only very slightly. They still sound clear, present, and detailed.

These earbuds have good treble accuracy. In songs like Dynamite by Taio Cruz, the vocals and synths sound a bit veiled and lose some of their detail, while sibilants, like cymbals, sound dull and lispy.

The Sony C700N's peaks and dips performance is decent. A small peak in the bass range adds extra thump and rumble to the mix. A mismatch in the L/R drivers following a dip in the mid-mid affects the left driver more than the right, and a peak in the high-mid is slightly more prominent in the right driver, though both are overemphasized. These issues in the mid-range push voices and instruments to the back of the mix and make them sound harsh. Most noticeable, though, is the peak in the mid-treble, which makes sibilants, like cymbals, sound piercing. There's also a dip in the high-treble. It's extremely severe compared to the rest of the response. However, it's very difficult to hear, and we lose sensitivity to this range over time.

Imaging performance is decent. Sony tends to have good quality control and ergonomics. While our unit's L/R drivers have phase and group delay mismatch in the high-treble, it's not noticeable with real-life content since this range isn't audible for most people. The small bump in the phase response's mid-mid isn't audible in real-life listening. Overall, they're well-matched in amplitude and frequency, which helps ensure a balanced and stable stereo image. For the most part, group delay is well-matched, too, ensuring tight bass, although the peak in the treble still has a small impact on imaging transparency. Keep in mind, however, that imaging varies between units.

These closed-back earbuds have a bad passive soundstage, which is expected with their design, as audio needs to engage with the outer ear to create a more immersive and open sound. It feels like audio comes from inside your head rather than all around the room.

These earbuds are compatible with Sony's 360 Reality Audio feature via their companion app. However, you must be subscribed to a compatible streaming service to use them, like Tidal or 360 by Deezer. When you use it, the app analyzes your ear shape and creates a virtual soundstage to create a more immersive listening experience.

These earbuds have reasonable weighted harmonic distortion performance. Distortion is present across the whole range, but it's only slight and not audible with real-life content. This is especially the case with the high amount of distortion between 10 and 20kHz. Fortunately, this range is difficult to hear, especially as you age and lose sensitivity to certain high frequencies, so you'll likely experience clean and pure audio reproduction in daily listening.

These are the settings used to test the Sony WF-C700N. Our results are only valid when used with these settings.

The noise isolation performance is decent. We measured a very similar amount of noise isolation between ANC on and off between 120 and 160Hz, meaning no noise was blocked. We tried to confirm this by playing isolated tones at 120 and 160Hz and recording the sound pressure level (SPL) on our testing rig. While our testing shows little difference between ANC on and off in this range, it's only during subjective listening that we can hear a difference between both modes, but only by about 2-3dB. As such, they can't isolate you from bass-ranger background noise, like rumbly bus or plane engines during a commute or trip. Fortunately, these headphones do a good job of cutting out background chit-chat, but they do a better job at passively cutting out treble-range noise, like a whiny PC fan, than they do with the ANC on.

The leakage performance is excellent. Escaping audio is mainly concentrated in the bass and treble ranges but is hard to hear unless you're in a very quiet environment. If you like to crank your tunes, you won't need to worry about disturbing coworkers or commuters.

The integrated mic performance is satisfactory. Your voice sounds clean and understandable but somewhat dark and thin.

Noise handling performance is unremarkable. In moderate and loud environments, background noise is still very audible and distorts your voice, which is annoying. Louder noise, like a passing train, drowns most of your voice out and distorts what's left even more.

The Sony WF-C700N's battery performance is reasonable. Sony advertises 7.5 hours of continuous playback time with the ANC on, and we measured around that. Their carrying case only holds one extra charge, less than the Sony LinkBuds S Truly Wireless. Thankfully, they feature an auto-off timer to save power. Keep in mind that battery life varies depending on use.

The Sony | Headphones Connect app is great. There are a ton of extra features available in this app. You can monitor the battery life of each bud and the case, adjust the mix via graphic EQ and presets, customize button functions and playback controls, and much more. You can see how some features work here.

The Bluetooth performance is great. Although these headphones have quite high latency on PCs, it's slightly lower on iOS and Android devices. However, you may still experience lip sync issues while watching a video on mobile. Keep in mind that some devices and apps compensate for latency, though. With firmware update 2.0.0, these in-ears now have Bluetooth multipoint compatibility, so you can pair up to two devices simultaneously. You can enable this feature in the app, under system settings.

These earbuds come with a USB-C to USB-A cable for charging their carrying case. You can't use them wired.

These earbuds have full voice and audio compatibility with PCs via Bluetooth.

Their carrying case holds one extra charge. You can't charge it wirelessly, so you'll need a USB-C cable to top it up.