The Sony WF-C500 is a handy device for travelling and working out. You might miss ANC in loud places, but the great isolation and lightweight design more than make up for the lack of ANC. Sony makes a lot of high-quality headphones and earbuds, so the Sony WF-C500 is based on those products. These earbuds are advertised as having a long battery life, high-tech-sounding features, great sound, and more, but the market for in-ear headphones is full of products that are almost exactly the same.
The WF-C500 buds come in a small, capsule-shaped package that is easy to carry in your pocket. When you lift the half-translucent cover on the top half of this capsule, you can see the round earbuds inside. The small case has one flat side and a USB Type-C port for charging on the back, so it won’t move around when it’s on a table. When the WF-C500 is taken off, there are two round earbuds with angled extensions that go into the ear.
Compared to the many earbuds on the market with stems that stick out, these are a very unique design. The simple, round shape is also very comfortable and made to fit exactly in the ear. When you put on the WF-C500, you put the in-ear extensions into your ear canal and the dome-shaped earbuds into your outer ear. The total battery life of 20 hours is nothing special, but the 10 hours that can be stored in the earphones is not bad at all.
A quick 10-minute charge will give you an extra hour of listening time. This is why a small USB-C to USB-A adapter is included in the packaging, which is easy and completely recyclable. Bluetooth 5 is used to connect the WF-C500 wirelessly, and two 6mm full-range speakers play digital audio data once it has been received.
IPX4 makes them nicely resistant to dampness and splashes of water, and the fact that they come in four colours (standard black and white, plus bright green and orange) is also nice. When you add “quick pair” compatibility with Android devices and “swift pair” compatibility with Windows 10 PCs, you have a product with a long list of features. The Sony WF-C500 has Bluetooth 5.0 and works with the AAC and SBC Bluetooth codecs.
This gives people who use the Apple ecosystem a reliable high-quality codec (AAC), but Android users aren’t as lucky because AAC doesn’t work well on all Android hardware. When you take the earbuds out of their case, the Sony WF-C500 automatically goes into pairing mode. There is no multipoint support, but if you only want to use one earbud, you can use either the left or the right one.
