The WF-C510 are the most recent entry-level earbuds from Sony. These are the no-frills possibility for somebody who simply desires a easy pair of earbuds for the on a regular basis commute or exercise with out having to shell out a fortune on options they do not want.
The C510 are the successor to the C500, which had been moderately common regardless of not being the most cost effective or feature-rich possibility in the marketplace. Most individuals simply appear to need a fundamental pair of earbuds from a model they know and belief and the C500 match the invoice.
The C510 are taking a shot at primarily the identical market once more. With the up to date mannequin, Sony is introducing a brand new design that’s even smaller and lighter than earlier than together with an up to date battery lifetime of 11 hours, and multipoint connection. There’s additionally a transparency mode regardless that there’s nonetheless no lively noise cancellation. All of the whereas nonetheless coming in on the identical $100 price ticket. Is that sufficient to justify an improve? And what in regards to the equally priced competitors? Let’s discover out.
Design and luxury
The design of the C510 sees a serious rework over their predecessor with Sony doubling down on the small and lightweight facet. The brand new case is tiny, definitely the smallest I’ve ever seen, and barely takes up any room in any respect in your pocket or bag. There’s a draw back to this, after all, however we’ll get to that within the battery part.
The C510 is available in 4 new colours, white, black, blue, and the yellow featured right here. The blue and white are comfortable, pastel hues with the yellow being simply a few shades away from being off-white. Each the case and the earbuds characteristic matte-finished plastics all through, which accentuates the muted colours.
The brand new earbuds are each smaller and lighter than the earlier technology mannequin. In truth, Sony claims the C510 are its smallest in-ear earbuds but. They honestly are tiny and barely take up any house in any respect in your ears nor stick out an excessive amount of.
A big portion of the outside of those earbuds are the bodily buttons for controlling varied capabilities. Like with the earlier technology mannequin, these are maybe a contact too giant, which leads to inadvertently urgent them each time you’re inserting the earbuds in your ears. Additionally, since they’re bodily buttons that must be pushed in, you find yourself urgent the whole earbud deeper into your ear each time you press them, which might really feel uncomfortable.
On the subject of consolation, the C510 are usually snug to put on, even for prolonged durations. Nonetheless, the ear ideas do not fairly appear to have the strain launch design of contemporary in-ear fashions, which relieves strain whereas inserting or eradicating by way of a facet vent. As such, there’s a truthful quantity of suction felt whereas inserting or eradicating these and it’s essential to take it sluggish so you do not put an excessive amount of strain in your ears. I discovered it finest to barely twist and corkscrew whereas inserting or eradicating them as this felt probably the most snug. Nonetheless, as soon as in, I did not really feel any discomfort.
When it comes to construct high quality, the C510 really feel very well-built regardless of being an entry-level mannequin. Additionally they characteristic an IPX4 ranking, which makes them splash-resistant.
Software program and options
The C510 are suitable with Sony’s Sound Join app, which is a refreshed model of the app that has been round for some time. At first it appears much less cluttered however that is solely as a result of Sony has achieved the equal of shoving the whole lot underneath the carpet by putting all of the choices inside a menu, the place it appears identical to it did earlier than. So it is the identical app however now with one additional step. It additionally nonetheless takes far too many steps to arrange.
Sony Sound Join app
Since that is an entry-level mannequin, there aren’t numerous options to regulate within the app. Proper on the prime is the Ambient Sound Management, which is what Sony calls its transparency mode. You may both merely toggle it on or off or alter its depth. There’s additionally a voice passthrough mode that prioritizes voices over different sounds.
The app additionally includes a handbook EQ with 5 frequency bands and a separate Clear Bass slider. There are additionally a bunch of presets obtainable and you may have three customized presets. If an EQ appears too sophisticated, then Sony has a brand new characteristic that allows you to choose from one in all 5 choices that sounds the perfect to you when you play your music within the background. After you choose one, one other 5 seem that allow you to additional fine-tune your choice. The app then generates an EQ profile primarily based in your choice and saves it to one of many customized profiles.
EQ settings
The app additionally provides 360 Actuality Audio, which is Sony’s 3D encompass sound characteristic for headphones that by no means actually caught on. It is advisable to calibrate the characteristic to your particular head and ear form by taking footage of your ears and the app then generates an HRTF profile for you. That is then utilized by apps that supply audio on this format. The issue is, there actually aren’t that many apps that try this in the mean time and they’re more likely to get even fewer as time goes on. Additionally, exterior of these apps, you’ll be able to’t use the profile you generate and it could’t be used for different codecs similar to Atmos, so it is largely an train in futility.
Lastly, there’s Sony’s DSEE or Digital Sound Enhancement Engine, which claims to revive a few of the misplaced element in compressed media. This characteristic is de facto meant for use with extremely compressed audio and turns into functionally placebo at larger bitrates. Toggling it even with Spotify audio made no audible distinction.
The app additionally helps you to customise the perform of the buttons on the earbuds. The performance is quite restrictive as you’ll be able to both assign ambient sound or playback controls to the buttons however you’ll be able to change, for instance, the precise playback management gestures. I personally would have preferred to disable the one press gesture for play/pause because it at all times triggers unintentionally however that is not potential. Both it’s essential to allow all capabilities as they’re or disable them totally.
Transferring on to the options, as famous earlier, the C510 lacks lively noise cancellation. Again within the day, this may have been fantastic as nobody would have anticipated an entry-level pair of earbuds to have ANC. Nonetheless, that is not the present panorama and lots of, if not all, of the competing choices now have correct lively noise cancellation built-in. This contains stuff just like the OnePlus Buds 3, which has fairly nice noise cancellation for the value.
Nonetheless, Sony takes the cost-cutting to a different stage by additionally omitting fundamental options similar to in-ear detection for computerized play/pause performance. I complained about its absence within the current OnePlus Nord Buds 3 evaluate, which value half as a lot because the C510, so there’s actually no purpose for the C510 to get a go right here.
Lastly, Sony has as soon as once more gone with solely probably the most fundamental codecs. Contemplating it actually created LDAC, it is awfully stingy with how typically it implements it in its personal merchandise.
Efficiency
Audio high quality
The C510 characteristic a single 6mm dynamic driver with 20-20,000Hz frequency response. The earbuds assist SBC and AAC codecs over Bluetooth 5.3.
The C-series fashions have traditionally had probably the most balanced tuning amongst Sony’s shopper line of audio merchandise, and Sony even describes them as such. Nonetheless, “balanced” for Sony normally quantities to not having numerous bass. Exterior of that, the C510 comply with the everyday blueprint for Sony audio, which is mellow and considerably darkish with added heat within the low-end.
Beginning with the bass, the C510 tuning is vastly extra conservative in comparison with its different fashions and in addition a lot of the competitors. The low-end doesn’t blow you away with a ton of low-bass and even mid-bass vitality. There’s a slight bump within the mid-bass but it surely by no means will get overwhelming and even distracting. Low-bass can be missing considerably so the deeper registers do not fairly have the identical thump and rumble that you just’d count on.
The mids begin off a bit weak with barely subdued low-mid however then choose up properly with a completely fleshed-out mid and higher mid-range response. The treble is the place the sound loses fairly a little bit of its vitality, with a reasonably retracted and subdued response throughout the vary. There is not even the everyday higher treble sparkle right here; the treble is simply boring throughout the board.
So how does all this sound? At first impression, the sound is undeniably blunt and muted within the higher frequencies. Nonetheless, after spending a couple of hours, it didn’t trouble me as a lot because it did initially. The sound is mellow however the general tonality is kind of pleasing. I shortly realized that the sound is at its finest with older, typically poorly recorded music, which tended to be fairly vivid. My 70s and 80s playlist performed fantastically on these earbuds with glorious vocals and an adequately fleshed-out high-end. The slight bump within the bass additionally helped make up for the dearth of low-end on these older tracks.
This was additionally true for different genres which are inherently vivid, similar to digital music in addition to common music from Japanese, Latin, and Indian languages. The upside of the subdued tuning is that the sound is not fatiguing and you may hear for hours with out discomfort.
What the C510 would not do properly with is complicated preparations and instrumentals. Soundtracks with a number of devices layered are dealt with clumsily with an unfocused, muddy sound. The pipe organ in Hans Zimmer’s Cornfield Chase from the Interstellar soundtrack simply would not have the identical presence or influence because it simply melds with the opposite sounds and the crescendo in Mountains from the identical album is anti-climatic. The second you give the earbuds something even barely technical, the sound simply falls aside, exposing the inherently entry-level nature of the setup.
I’ll say, nevertheless, that I used to be actually impressed with the imaging and, to some extent, the soundstaging efficiency of the earbuds. Objects are positioned very properly within the sound subject, which makes some stereo results very convincing.
General, the C510 handle to sound pleasing regardless of not being technically spectacular. Nonetheless, how a lot you discover that true will rely significantly on what you wish to hearken to.
Microphone
The C510 have respectable microphone efficiency. Voices had been a bit quiet however largely clear and pure with out an excessive amount of synthetic garbling by the noise cancellation. The noise cancellation additionally does an amazing job of blocking out ambient noise and the voice high quality doesn’t change a lot even in noisy environments. General, a succesful efficiency for many who require good name high quality.
Noise cancellation
The C510 lack lively noise cancellation. Nonetheless, the design of the earbuds and particularly the ear ideas create a implausible seal that may be very able to blocking numerous ambient noise passively. More often than not I wasn’t conscious of issues like followers, air conditioners, keyboards, and even folks talking close by. Positive, it could’t fairly eliminate the low-frequency hum like lively noise cancellation can, which makes them worse on airplanes however for all over the place else, the passive isolation is loads good.
So good, in reality, that the included transparency or the Ambient Sound mode turns into a necessity. This characteristic works rather well and the standard of sound is fairly pure. The choice to give attention to vocals is very helpful when all you need is to listen to folks round you and never essentially the whole lot else.
Latency
The C510 have mediocre latency efficiency. When paired to a PC, there’s a delay within the area of 200-250ms when watching video content material. Not everyone seems to be delicate sufficient to note that however in case you are then it is likely to be a deal breaker relying upon the content material you watch. For some issues, I wasn’t too bothered by the delay, particularly if the video was animated or had a low sufficient body price. However you would not catch me gaming with these, particularly since Sony nonetheless doesn’t embrace any type of recreation mode on its Bluetooth merchandise.
Connectivity
The C510 had respectable connectivity efficiency. Generally, the connection was secure with none interruptions or disconnections.
One minor annoyance with the connectivity was the slight delay between the 2 earbuds when adjusting the amount. This delay exists on most earbuds as just one earbud is definitely linked to the telephone and the opposite earbud connects to the primary earbud, so all alerts must be relayed from one earbud to the opposite.
Nonetheless, on the C510, this delay was particularly noticeable so all quantity changes had one earbud altering earlier than the opposite with a greater than ordinary little bit of delay. It isn’t too dangerous but it surely was exhausting for me to not discover it each single time the amount was adjusted.
The C510 do assist multi-device pairing, which has change into a helpful characteristic for many who like to hook up with their telephone and both a pc or pill on the identical time. It really works properly and you may handle each units by way of the app.
Battery Life
The C510 has a claimed battery lifetime of 11 hours with the case holding one other 11 hours. Sony additionally claims 1 hour of playback after a five-minute fast cost.
Prior to now, I’ve seen Sony Bluetooth merchandise blowing previous their claimed battery life figures so I wasn’t in the slightest degree stunned when the C510 managed to return 14 hours and 14 minutes of steady playback. That is over 14 hours of steady playback from a pair of wi-fi earbuds with none charging in between, which is a loopy good outcome.
I additionally know that the DSEE characteristic is understood to scale back the battery life to some extent and positive sufficient, with it enabled, the earbuds lasted for just below 13 hours. That is nonetheless a implausible outcome however contemplating the characteristic did not do a lot in my testing I’d simply depart it off.
As for the 1-hour declare, I did handle to get simply over an hour with DSEE disabled and just below an hour with it enabled, in order that checks out.
Pretty much as good because the battery life outcomes are, it must be talked about that the case solely holds one additional full cost for the earbuds. And whereas a mixed battery lifetime of over 25 hours is not dangerous, it is not as excessive as many of the competitors, which can not final as lengthy in steady playback however do maintain extra cost within the case for an extended complete playback. In follow, that issues extra than simply 14 straight hours of playback that nobody would want on earbuds.
Conclusion
Sony’s newest entry-level earbuds are a blended bag. On one hand, the compact design of the earbuds and the case is pleasant and the battery life for steady playback is excellent. There’s additionally good microphone efficiency together with strong connectivity that helps pairing to 2 units. And whereas there isn’t a lively noise cancellation, the passive sound isolation works fairly properly and the Ambient Sound mode is de facto efficient.
Then again, the robust suction of the earbuds that allows that passive noise isolation could be uncomfortable. The buttons on the facet are additionally fairly straightforward to press by accident and provide restricted customizability within the app. There isn’t a in-ear detection for computerized play/pause, which is unbecoming for an audio product in 2024, even when it is entry-level. The passive noise isolation, whereas spectacular, cannot compete with precise ANC that the competitors now provides. The latency can be a bit excessive for gaming. And eventually, the case holds a really restricted quantity of cost that impacts complete battery life.
The sound high quality embodies the blended nature of the general product; whereas it may be genuinely pleasing and fulfilling in some genres, it’s fairly unremarkable in others.
Relying upon the place you reside, the WF-C510 value the identical or much more than a few of the competing choices in the marketplace, such because the OnePlus Buds 3. The OnePlus possibility is superior on virtually each rely, which makes the C510 exhausting to advocate on pure worth. However you probably have your coronary heart set on a Sony product then you do not actually have numerous choices on this value vary.
