Sony CH-WH720N Review | Trusted Reviews

Introduction

Sony offers headphones at a range of prices and for a variety of tastes. The WH-CH720N sits within the affordable realm of its headphones range.

Its sub-£100 price point makes it the cheapest noise-cancelling over-ear in Sony’s stable, promising everyday comfort, long lasting battery, with the ANC clearing out background noise.

It is up against plenty of competition as Sony is not the only company eyeing up the cheap headphone part of the market. It’s been a couple of years since the CH720N launched, are they still one of the best cheap headphones you can buy?

Design

• Lightweight design
• No case
• Physical buttons

Sony has pushed sustainability to the forefront of its design, and the WH-CH720N use recycled plastic for its frame and earcups. Those materials haven’t had had an adverse knock on the overall build quality, so while these headphones don’t feel anywhere close to the premium nature of the WH-1000XM5, for the money they’re solid.

At 192g they’re lightweight and while the plastic nature of the frame can’t be hidden, they don’t feel cheap, nor does the frame creak or groan if stressed.

The earcups swivel but don’t fold up, and there’s no carry case either. Despite that, in my use over several weeks for review, the plastic frame was resilient enough to avoid scrapes and scratches in my bag unlike the Panasonic RB-M600B.

Comfort levels are fine, the clamping force is lightly applied but with enough pressure to keep the headphones glued to the head, and the large earcups allow plenty of space for (bigger) ears to sit in. There’s a good level of padding on the earcups and the underside of the headband to ensure there are no pain points.

On the left earcup is the power button, USB-C port and a 3.5mm jack for wired listening (a cable is included). On the right earcup are playback/volume buttons and the noise-cancelling/ambient sound button. I’d have liked it if Sony had raised the middle button to make it more obvious and easier to find.

When the CH720N first launched, colours were blue, white, and black; but in March 2025 Sony added a muted pink for the Gen Z headphone lovers out there. The previous colour selection didn’t stand out so much, but the pink, while still muted in tone, is at the very least a different option to the standard white and black options.

Features

• Long battery life
• Stable wireless connection

The feature list isn’t as exhaustive as the WH-1000XM5 or ULT headphones, but there is built-in Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa (you can choose which one in the Sound Connect app).

There’s Bluetooth multipoint to connect to two devices at once, and you can choose to prioritize sound quality or the Bluetooth connection.

Bluetooth 5.2 offers support for SBC and AAC audio streams, and I’ve found the connection to be consistently strong with only a couple of blips walking through a busy Waterloo station and even fewer at London Victoria.

Sony rates battery life at 35 hours with noise-cancellation and 50 without. Judging from the battery drains I carried out that seems about right. Four hours of streaming a Spotify playlist at 50% volume saw the WH-CH720N drop 10%, so even 40 hours is possible.

There’s also support for Sony’s 360 Reality Audio format. This allows for spatial playback of songs, and you can find these tracks on Amazon Music. For the best performance the format requires analysing the shape of ears so it can adapt music to them.

For calls, the WH-CH720 uses Sony’s Precise Voice Pickup, Wind Reduction Structure, and beamforming mics to hone in on the caller’s voice. I found the performance to be average though, and while I could be heard by the other person fine in quiet areas, they complained that in noisier areas it was harder to hear what was said.

Noise Cancellation

• Decent noise-cancelling
• Ambient mode

The WH-CH720 uses hybrid noise-cancelling technology, with the focus is on culling low frequency noises. In real world terms, the rumbling engine of a bus is dismissed, the headphones put the squeeze on large groups of people, although when faced with individuals, switching to noise-cancelling can make voices more audible.

The noise-cancelling offers its best performance against general/ambient noise and traffic, so while I wouldn’t say these headphones provide a bliss-free experience in a busy city, they’ll make the commute and day-to-day less disruptive.

Furthermore, you don’t have to raise the volume up by much to isolate yourself from what’s around you. It’s a similar performance you get from the Soundcore Space One and Panasonic RB-M600B, although the Monoprice BT-600ANC (available in the US) puts in a stronger performance for similar money.

The Ambient mode performance is fine. It offers greater awareness but not especially high levels of clarity and detail. Within the app, the noise-cancelling can be dialled in through 20 levels of adjustment.

Sound Quality

• Boost to the low frequencies
• Spacious sound
• Energetic, lively sound

Since the WH-CH720N went on sale in 2023, they’ve been joined by an army of budget noise-cancelling options. In the past I’ve said that they were the best-sounding option, but with the Panasonic RB-M600B entering the fray, that’s no longer the case.

While bass is punchily described in Metronomy’s Everything Goes My Way, giving the low frequencies assertiveness and heft; there are limits.

There isn’t as much extension and depth to Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ Unholy – and with Billie Eillish’s Bad Guy the Sony can’t dig into the depth and rumble of the track. The US-available Monoprice BT-600ANC offers more of a bigger pulse to the low frequencies.

There’s more of a bassy boost to the Sony than I hear on similarly priced Final UX2000 and Earfun Wave Pro, which makes the CH720N a lively, engaging and confident listen across a range of music genres.

The mids lack the richness of the WH-1000XM5 but the WH-CH720N describes voices with decent clarity and detail, like for example James Bay’s vocals in Everybody Needs Someone or Anderson Paak’s in Fire In The Sky, giving them an ample amount of space and focus within the soundstage.

That soundstage is spacious in terms of width and height, providing room for instruments alongside voices without sounding crowded. I could make the argument for more detail and definition, which is an area where the Panasonic is better than the Sony.

Nevertheless, there’s naturalism to the Sony’s performance that beats the more clinical and thin performance provided by the Earfun Wave Pro, as well as offering some heft to its dynamics when it shifts gears from quiet to loud and vice versa.

Highs aren’t the crispest or the clearest – the smooth tone of the Sony obscures some of the brightness and definition the Edifier WH830NB can bring, but there’s decent brightness, clarity, and variation to the treble notes in Strawberry Letter 23 and GoGo Penguin’s Erased by Sunlight. For more top end brightness it’s worth playing with EQ settings in the app (Treble Boost) for a little more performance.

Should you buy it?