Sony has announced the WF-C710N, the latest version of its most affordable set of noise-canceling wireless earbuds. The price is unchanged at $120, but Sony says it has made welcome improvements in a number of areas, and the buds feature a new selection of color choices, including pink, black, white, and a transparent version called Glass Blue. One change that might not be as welcome is the decision to swap physical buttons for touch controls. They can be preordered today on Sony’s website or Amazon, with shipping beginning at the end of March.
The basic specs remain the same as the WF-C700N, which Sony has now discounted as low as $85: the earbuds use 5mm dynamic drivers, they can optionally enable Sony’s DSEE audio upscaling system, they have ANC and transparency modes, and offer IPX4 protection from sweat and splashes of water. There’s also Bluetooth Mutlipoint for two simultaneous device connections.
Per-charge battery life has been given a small bump. It’s now 8.5 hours with ANC and 12 hours when it’s off, vs. 7.5 and 10 hours respectively. However, total battery time is up significantly, from 20 to 30 hours, suggesting that Sony has installed a bigger capacity battery in the charging case.
Sony says that ANC is more effective with dual mics, and calls will now be clearer in noisy environments thanks to voice pickup that “was developed with AI machine learning using over 500 million voice samples to suppress ambient noise and extract the users’ voice clearly.”
However, Sony has opted to make a big change on the controls. It has dropped the WF-C700N’s large, physical buttons in favor of touch controls — a shift that may make the new buds more difficult to use. Still, there’s compensation in the form of wear sensors, which the C700N lacked — the C710N can now auto-pause and resume music when you take the earbuds out or put them back in.
