Sony WF-C500 Wireless Bluetooth Earbud Headphones, Black

I’ve had these for a year or more now. The sound quality is loud and crisp with good bass. The quality is amazing I dropped these in my camping chair that got rained on not knowing they would get soaked it water for 2 hours. I put them in rice and 2 hours later ta da! Still working! They’re light weight, comfortable, and can full charge within 2 hours like they say. The connectivity goes from my bedroom to my patio 3 walls away. The only downside is these do not connect to my PC, I’ve only tried them on my phone. Would highly recommend.

I purchased these on daily deal from Amazon for $59 or so, and for the money I’ve been extremely pleased so far.

Comfort: they fit well and are snug, they come with three sizes of tips so getting a good fit shouldn’t be hard. They stay in place very well during intensive workouts

Sound quality: For the money, I’ve pretty impressed with the sound quality. I own an amp and DAC, planar magnetic headphones, and a pair of wired balanced armature earbuds. So I love good headphones. These give my balanced armature earbuds a good run for their money. These don’t have huge bass, but the bass is punchy and well controlled. Highs and mids are good, and there’s decent separation and a nice airiness about these. Overall, these have a very well controlled sound profile and work well with most any music genre. These also isolate pretty well, so good that I see no need for wireless buds with noise cancellation, which I personally think is a gimmick that only causes increased drain on the batteries.

Battery life: pretty decent, these don’t have noise cancelling tech, so battery life is much better than buds that have that tech. One important note, I’ve found the right earbud will drain faster than the left if I use it frequently to advance or replay tracks.

Sony headphone app: I’d recommend downloading the Sony headphone app as this allows you some equalizer features and let’s you turn off the buds using the app. Also, the app has some other bells and whistles like an ear analyzer that takes a picture of your ear and optimizes sound to fit your ears. However, you’ll need to download one of several 3rd party apps to take advantage of this feature.

Overall, these are a fantastic deal for the money, with typical Sony quality and functionality. They work great with my Iphone and integrate with Siri, so you’ll have that functionality as well.

This product is awesome. I am using this product for listing to music, talk, meeting discussion. It’s working fantastic for all purpose of listening.

I ordered these earbuds because I wanted a quality set of earbuds that weren’t a cheap throwaway pair after a year but didn’t want to drop the coin on a set of Apple or Bose earbuds. Sony has a good rep in the consumer electronics space and after doing a little research outside of Shamazon, I decided I would give the WF-C500’s a shot. A few things I like about these specific buds.
1. Fitment – they fit in my ears well and they stay in my ears without causing hot spots or pain points.
2. Battery life – I can’t give you a precise number, but I can use these earbuds throughout the day and even into the night and still have some battery life in the morning.
3. Sound – These specific earbuds I use primarily for listening to Audible audiobooks, so I don’t need an eardrum ticking base or eye-watering treble highs, that said I did test these out with a few of my favorite artists – Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Armin Van Buuren, Tiesto, AC/DC, old Van Halen, Vivaldi, the usual stuff we all listen to and in each style of music, I was very pleased, it was accurately represented within the context of having a half thimble-sized device stuck in my ear. Win. I also use these for phone calls, when someone calls and interrupts my audiobook, and I’ve always gotten good feedback from the other person on the call, in terms of clarity, volume of voice, and even outdoors, the wind management seemed to not negatively impact my call.
4. Earbud controls – There is a pro/con to the way you control these earbuds. I’ll flat-out tell you I am not a fan of the touch-sensitive earbuds. I have big hand and rarely do I touch it in the way it wants to be touched and I end up hanging up on someone while I’m trying to turn up the volume or whatever the case is. The WF-C500’s are more of a button-press kind of thing. It’s tactile – you know exactly what your finger is doing when it’s doing it because of that tactile feedback. I freaking love that. Super-duper simple!! So what’s the con Shawshank? Glad you asked. It’s probably a horrible habit but I use one of the earbuds when I go to sleep. Usually an audiobook, might be some Ludovico Einaudi, or that soothing ocean or thunderstorm sound with some good ol’ scripture in the background. The problem is I’m a side-sleeper and SOMETIMES when I roll over to the side that has the earbud in it, the pillow will act like my finger and hit that little tactile button and pause whatever I’m listening to. I can hit it again and be a little more careful when I put my head back on the pillow, but that does happen. It’s probably a bad habit anyway, but that’s the con of the controls on these earbuds, from my POV anyway.
5. Overall quality – I really can’t complain about these earbuds. I’ve dropped them in the sink while washing my face, and forgotten to take them out when taking a shower (I realized after the water hit my head that I was still listening to whatever it was I was listening to, but they got a good dose of water sprayed on them, and there were times where one did fall out of my ear, primarily because I didn’t seat it well.
I have been so pleased with these earbuds, that I bought my 17 yr old son a pair and he is also very happy with them. He listens to music primarily, 70-80-90’s music (yeah he has good taste in music for a teenager.) 🙂
An update after I had written this. I ran into a problem with the left earbud not connecting to BT. I contacted Sony support because they have a 1 yr limited warranty, and I bought these back in May of last year. We tried doing a full reset, which didn’t correct the problem. The CSR provided me the info to send them back, I received an email with a FedEx shipping label, dropped them off at the Fedex in a Dollar General nearby, 2 days later they arrived at the Sony repair facility, 1 day after that, Sony notified they had ordered a brand new pair of WF-C500’s for me and I should get them next week.
I’m not usually the kind of guy that gets massively butt-hurt when something breaks. Stuff happens. What I don’t enjoy is when I am trying to correct a problem, be it a defect or whatever, with the manufacturer or the store and it becomes a battle of will and plain old integrity of service. My experience with Sony was outstanding. They asked me to try and correct the issue by doing a hard reset and when that didn’t work, they moved right into replacement mode. I dig and respect that. So I wholeheartedly recommend this product. Unlike the growing number of Shamazonians who get free stuff to test and write reviews even though in all honestly sometimes they don’t know crap about the product, I am a guy who buys his own stuff and in this case, I was 110% daily user of these Sony WF-C500 earbuds – at home, in my truck, at the gym, in the kitchen, in the bathroom (oops), outside mowing my grass and running my airplane sounding weedeater, in all cases this audio was good, and most importantly, I didn’t lose one out of my ear and run my mower over it. As far as “noise cancellation”, I will just refer to the numerous times my bride yelled at me because I didn’t hear her when she was talking to me. I suppose in some regards that counts as “noise cancellation”. (my beautiful Brazilian bride, if you happen to read this, you know your man loves ya.)

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front): They feel good in the ear. They sound good in the ear. You don’t look like you have a Chernobyl growth sticking out of your ears like some of the other earbuds. Perhaps best of all – Sony sticks behind their products and they understand what excellent customer service should be. These are the factors that drive my review and are the reason I bought a pair for my son, to whom I don’t give him a rock when he asks for bread if you know what I mean. But he never asked for these, I knew the pair he had for 3+ years was having issues and wanted to surprise him. He was surprised on top of being happy. That’s probably the highest recommendation I can provide, for what I give to the absolute pride and joy of my life – well I can’t see these not being good enough for the King of England if they’re good enough for my son.

I’ll TRY to remember and update my review with some pics when I get the new earbuds. Chances are however, that I will forget and probably remember when I’m in a situation that precludes me from executing the review update in that moment I’m thinking about it. But I’ll try. BTW the price dropped on these. I paid $90 bucks for my pair and my sons pair, and I think I saw them for $70ish or $79 and they are worth every buck of that even at $90.