Sony WF-C710N review

The first time I sat down to test out the Sony WF-C710N, I was disappointed. Though they connected to my rig easily, what followed was hours worth of fiddling around, disconnecting audio, and crackling sounds. I figured this wasn't what was supposed to happen, took it to another rig and had the same problem. After waiting for Sony to supply me with a replacement pair, then connecting them to the same devices, I now feel very confident saying I would never use these buds for gaming.

This is a shame, as there's actually lots to love here outside of the nightmare connection issues. The translucent blue of my set looks great—harkening back to the days of seethrough hardware. They're also nice and sturdy, not only feeling firm but also coming with an IPX4 durability rating. This rating means the buds are water and dust-resistant. If they get caught in the rain (or like piña coladas), it should be able to brush that off with little problem, though dunking it in water is naturally a no-go.

The buds also pair with devices that aren't PCs very easily. Simply hold down the connect button on the back of the case, go to the Bluetooth settings on the device you want to use, and select WF-C710N. You can even connect them to two different devices at once, and it can switch between the two by pausing your sound and playing on your secondary device.

The box comes with six rubber tips for the buds (totalling three different sizes), so there's room for some customisation. They did manage to come off the bud at one point while taking it out of my ear, and my life flashed before my eyes (no, I'm not being dramatic), but this hasn't happened since.

They are a comfortable set of buds too, thanks in part to a light weight, and in part to the way they just sit into a groove in your ears. They never feel like they are sticking out at an uncomfortable angle, and are easy to just pop in and go for a walk. When pointed out in a call, my colleague Jess noticed they are surprisingly discreet.

The Sony WF-C710N are designed with mobile phones front and centre, and Sony has flagged them as such. There's no dedicated game mode, no 2.4 GHz connector, and you absolutely need to use the Sound Control app. This app allows you to customise sound, get updates, and there isn't an equivalent on PC. This means that, if you are gaming on a laptop and want to change the settings, you have to reconnect them to your phone in order to change anything.

Dual connectivity does make this easier, but even it is a bit inconsistent. These buds work perfectly fine on Steam Deck without any sound consistency issues, but dual connectivity only kind of works. When connected to a mobile phone, if I pause that music and play from a laptop, the buds will smartly detect which device is being used and switch over. This is not the case with the Steam Deck; I'm not going to say it's a Linux problem, but...

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I have to disconnect the buds from the Deck, or turn the Deck off entirely, to play music on my phone, regardless of whether sound is playing on the handheld machine. They do stay connected to both devices, though, so I can still use the app and customise sound, but I can't take a quick call on them, without entirely turning off the Steam Deck. The same is true of the Nintendo Switch 2, which connects fine but falters in dual connectivity. On two different laptops, connectivity was solid and dual connectivity worked as intended.

The buds offer dynamic sound and great active noise cancelling (ANC). They manage to do a particularly good job in the clashes of steel and violin in Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, due to textured mids and highs. Where those sounds could come across as shrill or sharp in a worse set of buds, they feel quite balanced in the mix. Bass, naturally enough for a pair of buds, is not quite as strong or thunderous as a headset, but playing around with the EQ settings can give them a real oomph.

The Bluetooth connectivity works just fine in regards to latency. There's a slight delay not present in gaming-specific buds and headphones, but it's not a large enough disaparity to irritate me. Hooked up to a gaming laptop, you likely won't notice it.

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On Mother Falcon's 'You Knew', a demonstrably orchestral pop/indie album, the buds manage to capture the nuance of pounding cellos under the vocal line, without stepping over the intricacy of a clarinet or tuba. This same quality allows dialogue to come through in games. For its price range, this level of sound quality is pretty great. However, the Soundcore Liberty 5 buds have a better battery life and also offer great sound.

The Liberty 5 also come with LDAC, and the Sony buds don't. LDAC—actually Sony's own tech—allows devices to stream lossy audio at high rates over Bluetooth, which means LDAC devices get higher quality audio. Though you don't get quite as full a soundstage, the Earfun Air Pro 4 earbuds also offer a better battery life, more consistent connectivity, and both ANC and Ambient Sound for $30 less.

Ambient Sound filters in some of the sounds around you, and for me, the major difference was being able to better hear what I was saying, as well as now picking up a fan on my desk. This is a decent middle ground between no filtering and ANC, and meant I could hear my partner talking when they wandered into the room. ANC is very natural in this set of buds. Weaker ANC I've used has added an almost artifacting effect to the bottom of the sound (presumably to drown out your surroundings), and these buds noticeably don't do that.

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Though the app is quite good, I don't have much freedom to change the touch controls. You can swap them around in settings, but you choose from sets of presets, instead of swapping individual ones. The touch controls themselves are pretty solid, as they rarely pick up misclicks. I normally feel a level of trepidation when a control requires four taps, but I managed to do this with little problem. The biggest problem I found with touch controls was just remembering which setting was which, which isn't a bad problem to have.

Listen to the Sony WF-C710N microphone below:

Battery life on these buds is about average, offering around 30 hours from the buds and case combined with ANC on. This equates to 8.5/12 hours from the buds themselves and 21.5 from the case.

For calls or going for a walk, these are a solid set of buds. The mic quality is good for the price, and moving from my laptop to my phone has been super simple every time I've needed to do so. Despite this, I do wonder why someone might pick a pair of buds like these, even if they don't plan on playing too many games with them.

Okay, I get they're not meant to be specifically for gaming, but it's not like a potential buyer doesn't have a broad swathe of buds to choose from, and you can get a set that does everything these do at a similar price, but can also actually work on a gaming PC.

I've felt very conflicted in my testing process with these buds, as I've enjoyed them quite a bit in day-to-day use, but they're let down by the PC-shaped elephant in the room. I can't look past the fact that two different sets of WF-C710N buds failed to work on multiple gaming rigs, despite other Bluetooth headsets and buds working fine. Maybe this is why Sony's actual gaming set, the InZone Buds, ship with a 2.4 GHz receiver, but I'd still pick many other buds over those, too.

If you want an all-rounder for your phone, handheld, and gaming PC, these buds aren't nearly as good as they sound.

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