Best Sony earbuds 2024: top in ear options for every budget reviewed

Looking for a new pair of earbuds and heard good things about Sony’s latest batch? There is a good reason for that.

Jump over to our main best headphones guide and latest list of What Hi-Fi? Award winners and you’ll see the company's buds are a staple in both. This is great, but be warned that having Sony branding doesn't on its own guarantee that a pair of earbuds are good. 

Sony has a broad portfolio of earbuds, covering multiple prices and types of user, and they all perform very differently. That’s why we’ve created this guide detailing the best Sony earbuds we’ve reviewed. Each set has been checked to make sure it provides solid audio, lengthy battery life, reliable active noise cancelling where applicable and, most importantly, good value for money. 

Jump down to this page’s 'how we test Sony headphones' section for a more in-depth breakdown of how we review them, or if you want a wider choice, have a look at our wider best Sony headphones guide, which includes over-ear sets as well.

The quick list

Andy Madden

I’ve been reviewing Sony earbuds since the first generation 1000XMs. This gives me a holistic knowledge of the brand’s entire line and understanding how Sony earbuds have developed over time. As I also review numerous earbuds from other audio brands, I also know how they compare to the competition – which is why I also look after our general best wireless earbuds buying guide.

Best overall

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If you want the best Sony wireless earbuds possible then the WF-1000XM5 are the set we’d recommend. 

The set offers the best wireless earbud experience holistically, with the XM5 having no serious weaknesses when we reviewed them and offering a true step forward from their predecessor.

The buds have been redesigned to be as thin and light as possible. Under the hood they’ve also been given an upgrade to feature Sony’s latest Dynamic Driver X, which is significantly larger than the unit used in past Sony earbuds.

Putting them to the test we found that, while the new plastic finish can make getting them in and out with wet hands a little tricky, they deliver a comfortable fit and have enough tip options for most sizes of ears. 

What really makes them impressive is their stellar sound quality. Whether it was thumping 12-bar blues, complex classic arrangements or the latest pop bangers, the buds produced class-leading levels of detail and clarity alongside wonderful rhythmic precision.

This is a key reason they won a What Hi-Fi? Award and earned such high praise from our reviewers, who concluded: 

“If you’re looking for the clearest and most detailed sonic performance on the market right now, then the WF-1000XM5 produce it, and by quite some distance.”

This, plus the eight-hour listening time we eked out of them, reliable mic quality and reliable, albeit not best in class, ANC, makes them an easy recommendation and the best choice for most music fans.

Read our Sony WF-1000XM5 review

Best budget earbuds

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If you’re on a strict budget and don’t need active noise cancelling, then the Sony WF-C500 are a fantastic choice, and the best cheap wireless earbuds we’ve reviewed.

The buds cost surprisingly little and our reviewers were impressed quite how few compromises Sony has had to make to their audio quality while keeping costs down.

There are better sounding earbuds, but at this price the WF-C500 are best in class and proved to be a cut above every rival affordable set we ran them against during testing. 

You won’t get the same low-end heft you’ll get even one price point up, but outside of that the buds delivered a spirited, well-balanced sound across all our audio checks. 

Whether it was the surprisingly reactive dynamism they displayed playing John Grant’s Queen Of Denmark or the rhythmic control they showed with PJ Harvey’s When Under Ether, the WF-C500 impressed us more and more during testing. To quote our full C500 review: 

“Overall, we think the balance Sony has hit on here is understandable, sensible and enjoyable. Between their impressively neutral tonality, front-foot sonic attitude and fine levels of detail and insight, they’re well worth the investment.“

This is a key reason they won a What Hi-Fi? Award and a place in this guide as the best cheap Sony earbuds currently available. The only minor downside is that, despite not having ANC, our testers only managed an average of 10 hours listening from a single charge. Most rivals would last at least 12 with ANC off.

Read our Sony WF-C500 review

Best budget ANC earbuds

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The WF-C700N cost a little more than the C500, but for the extra cash you get the added perk of active noise cancellation. This is a huge boon if you plan to use them at work, or during the morning and evening commute and want to block out background noise.

Interestingly, ANC isn’t the only difference between the C700N and C500. For starters they’re much smaller, which was a key perk for many of our reviewers with tiny ears. Inside they also use a smaller, Sony-made 5mm driver. The C500 has a larger 5.8mm driver, by comparison.

This gives them a slightly different sonic character with the C700N offering more bass than their cheaper siblings. This plus their great-for-the-money dynamics and detail made everything from booming acid jazz to classical music sound great.

ANC performance is also good for the money, but a far cry from what you’ll get on more expensive options like Sony’s XM5 or Bose’s offerings – though what do you expect at this price? This is why they’re an easy recommendation, with our reviewers reporting:

“The WF-C700N offer a jump in quality compared to the WF-C500 and a taste of the performance of the WF-1000XM4 in a cheaper package. This puts them in a very strong position and makes them an easy recommendation.”

Read our Sony WF-C700N review

Best open

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Open design earbuds are rapidly becoming a vogue category. If you want that form factor, though we had some issues with their call and audio quality, the Linkbuds are a good option.

Though we gave them four stars, they’re the only option available with an open form factor. The donut shaped buds have a 12mm ring driver that sits at the bottom part of your ear, blasting out sound.

Given their open design, there’s no passive, let alone active, noise cancellation. But during testing we found they are still sonically quite capable. Throwing test tracks from a variety of genres at them, the buds produced a balanced, natural sound.

The only downside is that the five hours’ listening time we experienced is a little short, and for the same money you can get better sounding in-ear wireless earbuds. This is why our testers concluded:

“Their design is an interesting one that gets around a lot of the problems that conventional in-ears can present. They’re not perfect from a sound quality point of view, but overall there’s still a lot to like and we’re really excited to see where Sony takes the idea in the future.”

Read our Sony LinkBuds review

Also consider

• Sony WF-1000XM4: They may be the previous generation, but with some stock available at heavily discounted prices, Sony’s previous generation flagship earbuds are a great alternative if you can’t quite afford the newer XM5.

Recent updates

• 18/06/24: We completely rewrote this best buy to reflect our latest reviews and how Sony's earbuds compare to newer rivals.

How we choose

When recommending Sony earbuds we want to make sure they deliver the goods in a few key areas.

First, they need to be made by Sony if they’re going to make it onto this list. Second, we look at value for money. This is a key metric we always consider in our reviews – if something is radically overpriced we won’t recommend it, even if it performs well. Equally, if a product is outright terrible we won’t recommend it no matter how cheap it is.

We also factor in the Sony earbuds’ features and connectivity. Does the model have ANC? If so, how good is it compared to rivals? On average how long does its battery last with regular listening? For more expensive sets we also factor in what wireless codecs it supports, and whether it’s capable of hi-res streaming. 

Then there’s fit and comfort. With earbuds we expect the set to come with enough earbud tip sizes to provide a secure fit for multiple ear sizes. We also expect them to be comfortable enough to wear without issue for multiple hours.

Finally, and most importantly, we make sure to only recommend Sony earbuds that can deliver good audio quality. The What Hi-Fi? team are all massive music fans and do what we do because we believe good music deserves to be played on hardware that does it justice. As a result, we’ll never recommend any product, Sony earbuds included, unless it sounds good. 

How we test

We test Sony headphones the same way we do any other brand’s. This sees our team of testers run a series of checks both in our listening rooms and in the wild, to gauge their performance in the above areas. Key parts of the process include the steps detailed below.

Comparative testing: Whenever we test headphones we have multiple members of the team use them. During the checks they will listen to a variety of tracks in our listening rooms paired with reference systems/sources we feel are appropriate to their price. We will also directly compare them to rival products we think the buyer would also be considering. Any performance comparison we make will be based on our direct experience testing both, and we will never compare products based on memory. 

Test tracks at varying quality from multiple genres: We use a variety of test tracks, varying in quality from hi-res to vinyl, CD and bottom-tier Spotfiy when testing Sony headphones. The test tracks we use cover multiple genres and aim to gauge everything from their rhythmic precision, detail and accuracy to their dynamism and general ability to deliver a “fun” listening experience.

Multiple testers: We never base our reviews on one person’s experience using the product. When we test Sony headphones at least two members of the team will have listened to the set and compared them to rivals. The reviewers will then compare their experience and if needed, more testers will be called in to help.

Real-world checks: On top of the above we will also use real-world tests to check key metrics, like battery life, ANC performance, connection stability and mic quality. For example, to test ANC performance we will use the headphones in environments with varying levels of background noise, ranging from office environments to rumbling commuter trains. For battery life, we’ll track how many hours of listening we got with ANC on and off on average throughout testing.

You can get a more in-depth look at our methodology and listening room set-up in our main “how we test” page.

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