Not content with its WF-C500 being the best budget wireless earbuds on the market, Sony is today introducing a successor that delivers even more bang for your buck.
The new WF-C510 wireless earbuds refine the familiar design with smaller and lighter (4.6g vs 5.4g) earpieces that sport a wider flat button for easier on-bud control, plus a thinner, more compact charging case. In our WF-C500 review, our in-house experts noted that the earbuds "aren’t any kind of burden to wear... and will stay comfortable for hours", so we can thankfully expect more of the same where wearability is concerned.
Sony has managed to squeeze an extra hour out of both the earbuds and charging case's battery lives; each holds up to 11 hours on a single charge, for a combined 22 hours, while a five-minute 'quick charge' provides an hour of listening time. Bluetooth 5.0 support has been bolstered to the newer 5.3 specification, too. The earbuds' IPX4 water resistance rating returns, as does 360 Reality Audio support for spatial audio listening, Sony's Multipoint Bluetooth connection and the choice of blue, yellow, black and white finishes.
You can set up Spotify Tap in Sony's companion app, too, allowing you to simply tap an earbud once to resume Spotify playback, or tap twice to cue up an algorithm-led recommendation. While those wanting budget earbuds with active noise cancellation (ANC) need to look one model higher in Sony's lineup to the WF-C700 (which will presumably soon be replaced by a WF-C710), the WF-C510 do offer one common feature of ANC earbuds: Ambient Sound Mode. This temporarily lets external noise into the earbuds so that you can hear, say, a train announcement without having to remove them from your ears. It is a unique inclusion at this price point.
Whether or not Sony has also raised the bar in the sound department remains to be heard, but the WF-C510 does benefit from the company's proven DSEE (Digital Sound Enhancement Engine) processor. It is unclear whether they stick to their predecessor's neodymium full-range dynamic driver, although website specifications point to a slightly larger unit this time – 6mm vs 5.8mm.
The good news continues where pricing is concerned. While the WF-C500 arrived three years ago with a price tag of £89 in the UK, $99 in the US, and AU$149 in Australia, their successors will land in September at the more modest asking price of £55 / $60 / AU$109.95. Indeed, this is closer to the price the WF-C500 have been available at for some time now.
On paper, the new Sony WF-C510 improve on their Award-winning predecessors' class-leading specs while offering a feature rarely seen at this price. If they can prove themselves in the sound department, they should be yet another success from the Sony headphone stable. Now all that is left for our reviews team to do is test them out. Watch this space.
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