Sony WF-C700N Review: Budget-Friendly Wireless Earphones with ANC? What's The Catch?

Spoiler alert: the answer is yes and no.

They are budget-friendly wireless earphones from Sony that are positioned below the LinkBuds S and the popular WF-1000XM4s. They're Sony's first attempt at ANC in a budget range, so bargain shoppers may get a first taste of noise cancellation for the first time.

Not only ANC, it also has adaptive sound control, a feature that is supposed to detect where you are and change your ambient sound control, it has an in-app equalizer, a 360 reality audio setup for superior music listening, and mic for calls.

The plastic pill-shaped case is light and plasticky. The hard, noisy-if-you-drop-it plastic that slides all over a smooth table.

The earphones aren't made of the same material as the case, thankfully, and offers more grip to your fingers. There's two huge tactile buttons on the side of both earphones and they both can be customised to do different things like playback, turn on noise cancelling, and volume controls.

It's a neat feature, but the buttons are huge and I find myself clicking accidentally as I put the earphones in. It doesn't happen often, but sometimes I'll accidentally stop a play as I put the earphones in. It's also difficult to adjust volume with just one button press and long press.

In terms of fit, these fit snugly and I actually feel more confident that these won't fall out compared to my AirPods. There are 2 other sizes of earbuds in the box, but the default fit great.

These are the first wireless earphones I've used outside of the AirPods that don't suck in this arena. Connecting your earphones to your phone is easy, even on iPhones, and connecting to your PC or Mac is also simple.

It actually has got the AirPods beat in terms of connecting to a PC. It's far simpler and works more reliably, which meant that the C700Ns have replaced my regular earphones as my go-to for PC.

Sony has a dedicated Headphones app that helps greatly with connectivity on phones and even helps you to disconnect your earphones from the app. It's a bit of a pain to open another app to customise my earphones but it's a good compromise given what other budget earphones are doing (which is to say, nothing).

Straight out the box, these didn't sound great, but the accompanying app has an equaliser that makes your listening experience much better. For reference, I chose the "Excited" setting that gives an overall uniform sound to music.

Bass performance is good, but brighter sounds like hi-hats and cymbals tend to sound muddied. Listen to the ultimate music test Bohemian Rphasody and trebles and mids on the track do sound sedate as compared to the bass lines and breaks at the higher frequency parts of the guitar solo.

They're the perfect all-rounders for a mix of media consumption, YouTube, movies, music, podcasts, and whatever you can think of that has sound. They won't wow you with any one aspect, but are good for every use—which is what budget earphones should do anyway.

One thing I couldn't review was the 360 Reality Audio which is supposed to offer an "immersive music experience". But for that you need to register a Sony account and listen to music on either 360 Reality Audio Live, Artist Connection, nugs.net, or TIDAL. Since I don't want to add another subscription to my life, I opted not to test this out.

There's a strange thing that people want with their ANC headphones and that's the ability to let sound in. Contrarily, we want to cancel out noise and let it in at the same time.

That said, the Headphones app actually has a setting to control the amountt of ambient sound coming in. This is useful in office settings where you're expecting someone to call on you at any time or when you're walking outside and need to be aware of your surroundings.

At maximum settings, you can actually hear sounds that you might not hear on your own as sounds are amplified and fed into your ears.

Unfortunately, its unique selling point is also its worst feature. In 2 weeks of testing, I kept turning noise cancellation off and on in various situations and I found little to no difference between these settings.

This makes the Adaptive Sound Control that actually requires you to turn on location services for the app all the time not only redundant, but battery draining. Since ambient sound is supposed to be fed to you differently based on whether you're at home or at the gym, it's effectively just a noise sending feature.

In 2 weeks of use, I haven't found the system to work and it's just another gimmick for influencer "reviewers" to talk about in their paid or sponsored reels. But I have to admit at this price range, there must be compromises made to get the C700N to this price.

The passive noise cancellation with the seal of the buds in your ears is quite good, but start chewing chips or something and you can hardly hear what you're watching or listening to.

For the price, you get extremely reliable wireless earphones that connect without fuss and stays connected. I didn't have any disconnects or refusal to connect in my weeks of using it.

For the price you also get a workhorse that delivers sounds to your ears for multiple use cases. You won't love it, but there's nothing to hate here in terms of sound quality.

As for the compromises, the almost absent ANC is a let down, but understandable. There's also the lack of ear detection, meaning music or media won't turn off automatically when you remove your earphones. This is also understandable, and in most cases, I'm removing one earphone at a time to scratch my ears anyway. I actually hate it when the aggressive ear detection turns off my media on my AirPods.

Would I still recommend the C700Ns? Yes, if you're looking for something new in the RM500 range. Given that it's only the suggested price and Sony earphones always go on discount, like these Sony WF-1000XM4s that are only RM649, the C700Ns will most likely be discounted very soon. Give it a few months and you might even be able to pick these up in the RM300 range (but don't quote me on that)

For audiophiles who want to experience the life-changing effects of noise cancellation, you might want to pay more and get the uber popular WH-1000XM5 or the older siblings the LinkBuds S I've mentioned already.