Sony WH-CH720N Wireless Headphones Review

The Sony WH-CH720N have a somewhat similar design to the Sony WH-CH710N Wireless, with a space cut out in the ear cup for the yoke to fit. You can choose between three color variants: 'Black,' 'Blue,' and 'White.' Whichever color you pick, the design is monochrome, except for the subtle contrasting brand name on the headband. They share visible similarities with their on-ear-fitting sibling, Sony WH-CH520 Wireless.

These over-ears have a comfortable fit. They're quite lightweight even compared to other reasonably light headphones like the Sony WH-1000XM5. The headband feels good, and the ear pads are well-padded and don't clamp tightly, although the foam isn't especially dense, and the faux leather can get sticky. That said, if you have large ears or wear the headphones further back, you may find that the cups touch your ears.

The Sony WH-CH720N have good controls. There are five buttons, with playback and listening mode controls on the right ear cup and power and pairing on the left. Their physical buttons are intuitive to operate and provide clicky feedback. The multi-function button has a raised bump to differentiate it from the volume controls by touch, but it can be too subtle for some people. A voice prompt alerts you when you've connected to a device, and chimes will indicate you've reached the min and max volume. You can even press the power button to hear battery life.

On the left ear cup:

• Power button
  • Single press: Turns on and off the headphones.
  • Press and hold: Enters Bluetooth pairing mode.

On the right ear cup:

• ANC/AMB button
  • Single press: Cycles between ANC on and transparency mode. You can add ANC off or adjust this mode to your preference via the app.
• Volume controls
  • Single press the '+' button: Raises the volume.
  • Single press the '-' button: Lowers the volume.
• Multi-function button
  • Single press: Plays and pauses audio. Also answers and ends calls.
  • Double press: Skips to the next track.
  • Triple press: Skips to the previous track.
  • Press and hold: Launches voice assistant. Also rejects calls.

These headphones aren't very portable. While the ear cups can swivel to lay flat, they can't fold to help conserve space. They also lack a carrying case to protect them from damage on the go. On the upside, they don't weigh much, so you can rest them around your neck with the ear cups flat and out of the way.

The Sony WH-CH720N's build quality is satisfactory. They're mostly made of cheap feeling plastic, which creaks a lot. The faux leather on the padding is thin. That said, there's a metal band inside the headband to help reinforce it, the ports are smartly receded into the ear cups to protect them, and the buttons don't wiggle. Overall, they don't feel as sturdy as the Sony WH-1000XM4 Wireless.

These headphones have decent stability. While they'll fall off your head if you're wearing them during a dynamic exercise routine, they'll easily stay put if you're listening to audio at your desk or out walking.

• Sony WH-CH720N headphones
• USB-A to USB-C charging cable
• 1/8" TRS audio cable
• Manuals

Out of the box, these headphones have a warm and bass-heavy sound profile. They deliver extra thump, punch, and boom, which is great for genres like EDM and hip-hop but can get muddy with busy mixes. Vocals and lead instruments sound a bit veiled and lacking in detail, while sibilants like cymbals are piercing at the top end. Luckily, if you want to adjust their sound, their companion app offers a graphic EQ and presets. You can also see a comparison of all the EQ presets here.

Although we tested the headphones with the ANC on, you can see a comparison with the ANC on, off, and wired here. The largest difference is in the bass to mid-range, as the ANC off has more thump and rumble but also sounds a bit muddier than when the ANC is on. There isn't a difference between ANC on and wired analog, though. That said, if you want a more neutral tuning out-of-the-box, the JBL Tune 770NC Wireless provide a more balanced sound profile with less bloat in the bass and mids.

The Sony WH-CH720N have mediocre frequency response consistency. They're prone to inconsistencies in bass delivery, and if you have thick hair or wear glasses, they can break the headphones' seal over your ears and against your head. A broken seal causes a drop in bass delivery. In addition, the headphones are sensitive to placement and position, causing deviations in treble delivery. It's important to take the time to ensure a proper fit each time you use these headphones.

The Sony WH-CH720N have satisfactory compliance with our bass range target. If you're a basshead, you'll appreciate the extra thump, rumble, and boom to their sound. However, there's a lot of extra high-bass, which muddies the rest of the mix. In songs like Just Wanna Rock by Lil Uzi Vert, the bassline at the beginning of the track is very present and full-bodied. However, it clutters the vocals.

The mid-range compliance is good. The response is fairly flat in the mid-mids for present vocals. However, the exaggeration in the bass range carries into the low-mid, cluttering your audio by adding bloat to rhythm guitars. Meanwhile, a dip in the high-mid nudges vocals down somewhat in the mix.

The Sony WH-CH720N's treble accuracy is great. The headphones are prone to inconsistencies (as noted in Frequency Response Consistency) in treble delivery due to fit and positioning. Overall, the treble suffers from uneven tuning that makes vocals a touch honky with somewhat diminished detail and clarity of vocal harmonics. Meanwhile, exaggerations of the mid-treble cause sibilants (like S and T sounds) in vocals and cymbals to come across as piercing. In concert with the bass emphasis, this results in warm and slightly dull vocals, and piercing cymbals and tambourines.

The peaks and dips performance is disappointing. There aren't a lot of major peaks and dips, but the peak in the treble range demonstrates that they struggle to control their own sound in that range. The high-bass range sees a peak that builds up a boomy low end in the right driver. A series of narrow peaks and dips in the mids alternately push vocals down in the mix somewhat while making them sound a bit honky and dull. The large peak in the mid-treble makes sibilants like S and T sound piercing and can prematurely fatigue your ears. There are some bigger deviations in the high-treble range, but we lose sensitivity to this range over time. 

The imaging performance is sub-par. Sony usually has good quality control and ergonomics, but imaging varies between units. Our unit's L/R drivers are well-matched in group delay, which ensures tight bass. Although there's a peak in the upper register threshold of human hearing, most people won't notice issues with treble transparency. Our unit's L/R drivers are also well-matched in amplitude and frequency response, which helps to balance the stereo image.

However, there's a high phase mismatch response present that's above the audibility threshold where the high-mid meets the low-treble, but with real-world content, it's not noticeable. In the uppermost frequencies, there are peaks of significant phase response mismatch, too, but that frequency range doesn't have much musical content, and not everyone can hear those frequencies well anyhow.

The passive soundstage performance is poor, which is normal for closed-back headphones. They struggle to create a natural, spacious, and out-of-head soundstage. Sound seems to come from inside your head rather than from outside the room. It also doesn't feel very wide or immersive.

These headphones support 360 Reality Audio Setup, available through the Sony | Headphones Connect app. This feature is designed to create a more immersive and speaker-like listening experience. The 'Analyze Ear Shape' feature allows the companion app to optimize audio for your unique ear shape. However, you need to be subscribed to a supported service like TIDAL to use 360 Reality Audio Setup. If you're more interested in the virtual surround effect without investing in more streaming services, the digital signal processor used on the JBL Live 770NC Wireless can turn any audio source into spatial audio. However, it's not necessarily as well-conceived as the work of a sound engineer specifically mixing a track for the Sony 360 Reality Audio.

Their weighted harmonic distortion performance is good. Although there's a peak in the high treble at normal listening volumes, it's very difficult to hear it with real-life content. As a result, most frequencies fall within good levels, which results in clean and pure audio reproduction.

These are the settings used to test the Sony WH-CH720N. Our results are only valid when used in this configuration.

The Sony WH-CH720N's full-range noise isolation performance is decent. Like their predecessor, the Sony WH-CH710N Wireless, these have an active noise cancelling (ANC) system. The ANC is better across the range at blocking out background noise on the Sony WH-CH720 than the previous gen, even if it falls short compared to flagships like the Sony WH-1000XM5 Wireless. The passive isolation is effective with high-pitched clatter, while ANC helps to reduce the bass and midrange noises like rumbling and chatter somewhat.

Note: The slight peaks visible in the bass region appear to be due to the interaction of our testing rig with the headphones, and importantly, aren't noticeable when the headphones are worn by people.

Their noise isolation in common scenarios is disappointing. Passive isolation does the heavy lifting to block out high-pitched noises, while the ANC struggles particularly with lower-pitched sounds, like the resonant din of airplane cabins. Street and office noise are somewhat filtered out, but plenty of the bass frequencies will still reach your ears. As mentioned earlier, the peaks visible in the graph's bass region appear to result from the testing rig's interaction with the headphones. However, you won't experience this when you wear them.

These over-ears don't have a wind reduction mode. If noise cancelling mode is on, you'll hear annoying popping sounds fed back into the headphones' drivers in windy conditions. This occurs when gusts of air hit the active microphones used for ANC, and the ANC system feeds the resulting 'anti-noise' back to you.

The leakage performance is good. Leakage is mostly present across the range and sounds somewhat full-bodied. That said, the overall amount of leakage is fairly low, so if you're listening to audio in a noisy environment and at high volumes, it's unlikely that others around you will be bothered by it.

Their integrated mic has a decent recording quality. Your voice sounds fairly natural, if a little distorted. However, speech is still clear enough to be understood well.

The Sony WH-CH720N's integrated mic has okay noise handling. The mic separates your voice from moderate background noise, but speech quality takes a dip, and noise is still sporadically present. With loud and sudden noise, your voice can get drowned out as the mic doesn't effectively reject the noise.

The Sony WH-CH720N's battery performance is excellent. They're advertised to last 35 hours with their ANC on, and in testing, they reached over 38 hours. According to the manufacturer, with ANC off, you can reach up to 50 hours of continuous playback. That said, battery life can vary depending on usage. Luckily, these cans are equipped with a standby mode to help conserve battery life if you forget to turn them off. They charge via USB-C, and the brand states that three minutes of fast charging yields about an hour of audio.

The Sony | Headphones Connect app is great. You can check out a video of how it works here. The robust app gives you access to features like Adaptive Sound Control, which automatically adjusts ambient modes based on your environment and activities and bears some functional resemblance to the Sound Zones feature found on the Sennheiser ACCENTUM Wireless. Essentially, it detects what you're doing and where you're doing it, and you can choose to automate the mode based on the algorithm's determination, or you can set specific modes using maps. Of course, this requires you to give permission for location tracking.

Ambient Sound Control handles the manual selection of listening modes between noise cancelling, transparency, and normal mode. Plus, there are virtual soundstage features. You get a 5-band graphic EQ and presets available if you want to customize their sound. The manufacturer's digital signal processor (DSP), called DSEE, upscales lossy audio as well. You can adjust your Bluetooth connection quality, enable or disable multi-device pairing, perform updates, and adjust the power-off timer.

These headphones come with a 1/8" TRS cable. Our results reflect wired latency when the headphones are on. While it's somewhat high for an analog connection, you won't notice meaningful lag with video content. If you use the headphones passively, the latency is much lower and is negligible. A USB-A to USB-C cable is also included for recharging the headphones, but you can't use it for audio.

The Sony WH-CH720N have great Bluetooth connectivity. They support multi-device pairing, which is handy if you want to connect to your PC and smartphone simultaneously. Your Bluetooth codec options are AAC and SBC. They don't support the manufacturer's own LDAC codec for adaptive, higher-quality audio support, otherwise found on models like the Sony WH-1000XM4 Wireless and Sony WH-1000XM5 Wireless. Their latency is quite high when connected to a PC using the SBC codec, which causes your audio and visuals to fall out of sync. However, it's worth mentioning that some apps compensate for latency, so your mileage may vary depending on your device, codec selection, internet connection, apps, and more.

These headphones can connect to Bluetooth-enabled PCs with full audio and mic compatibility. If you want to connect them via analog, they have a 1/8" TRS, which only supports audio.

You can use these over-ears via analog with PlayStation consoles by plugging their cable into the controller. However, you can only receive audio.

These headphones are compatible with Xbox consoles when you plug their 1/8" TRS cable into your controller's AUX port. However, they only support audio.