Sony WF-XB700 Truly wireless headphones

The Sony WF-XB700 earbuds are the latest addition to the EXTRA bass truly wireless headphones segment from Sony and don’t break your bank account. So let’s check them out in this review.

Design

At first glance the headphones have a weird shape to them with 2 different bulges stacked on top of each other but once you put them in your ears they fit so comfortably well. It can be a bit of a challenge at first to fit them into your ears but you get used to it very rapidly.

The WF-XB700 comes in two colors, black and blue. We have the blue variant here but personally I am more of a fan of the black ones as it is more uniform.

Sound

Noise cancellation is not present on these headphones but because of the very tight fit in your ear I don’t really think this is necessary unless you want a pair of truly wireless headphones for usage on airplanes where noise cancellation is a must have. For everyday use and even some workouts outdoors, these headphones provide enough noise cancelling by themselves.

The Sony app does not seem to support this pair of headphones which is a shame because on my Samsung Galaxy S8 device, I have no way of checking the battery life remaining. There is also no option to tweak the equalizer settings so you are stuck with the default sound profile of these earbuds and the device transmitting the sound. Here I noticed a slight boost in bass volumes when I pair these earbuds with my Ipad compared to my Samsung phone.

Overall the sound quality of these earbuds is good out of the box but an equalizer would have been nice. The bass is indeed clearly present but not over the top where you only feel the thumping in your ears and can’t even hear the high or mid tones.

Controls

On both earbuds there is one button on the bottom for controlling the volume, skipping, pausing, etc. but these controls are not so clearly explained. On the left earbud you have the volume control with a single press to raise the volume and a long press to lower it in steps. When you press it once and the earbuds are at max volume already you will hear a tone indicating you hit the max volume.

On the right earbud you have multiple controls: a single press is play/pause, two short presses is skip forward and a long press starts the google assistant. Sometimes I had trouble with the play/pause and skip function as I paused my audio for a second and couldn’t get it to play again but instead it skipped a song. In general the controls can get a bit wonky but this needs practice I think.

Charging

Charging the earbuds is done through the carrying case by placing the earbuds inside where they snap into place by magnets. The snapping into place comes in very handy as the earbuds have an odd shape and it would be difficult and time consuming to try to puzzle them into the case. The small LED on both earbuds will light up red when they are charging and the LED in the middle of the case will light up when you are charging that through the USB type-C port on the back. The carrying case is small and compact so ideal for taking it with you but not very ideal to put it in your pocket as the case has a flat bottom and an angle to it which is designed to be placed on a table and not in your pocket.

The earbuds last about 18 hours, that is when the earbuds are fully charged and the carrying case also. Plenty enough battery life to enjoy a full week on one charge.

Conclusion

Overall the Sony WF-XB700 truly wireless earbuds are a very good deal. Personally I would opt for the black variant as everything is more uniformly colored. The sound quality out of the box is good with a slight boost in the lows. Noise cancellation would have been great but because of the tight fit, surrounding noise is already filtered out pretty good.

The price of these earbuds is very competitive with other earbuds in this segment like the Apple Airpods.