The WH-CH720N are the latest from Sony alphabet soup wireless noise canceling headphones. The CH series is Sony’s mid-range offering with a balanced feature set that sits below the more premium 1000X series and alongside more specialized models like the extra bass XB series.
The CH720N sits at the top of that range with a fairly broad feature set that essentially makes it a lite version of the 1000XM5. You get Sony’s active noise cancellation along with supposedly “balanced” tuning for sound, all powered by the dedicated Sony V1 processor, also featured on the 1000XM5. Let’s see how they behave.
Design and comfort
The CH720N has a discreet and sober design, typical of Sony products. They draw very little attention to themselves and if it weren’t for the fact that very few people now wear full-sized headphones outdoors, no one would even give you a second glance. For many people, this is good if all you want to do is listen to your music or podcasts in peace without drawing constant attention to yourself.
The headphones have fairly large earcups with a flattened outer surface. The yokes are large and designed to fit flush with the cutouts on the cups. The flat headband connects with a hidden hinge although the extension mechanism is exposed.
The left earcup houses the power and pairing switch, charging port, and analog input. The right earcup has volume and play buttons along with the switch for ANC modes.
The body is made entirely of plastic with a matte finish. It doesn’t feel premium but at the same time it is of perfectly acceptable quality. Sony claims the CH720N are the lightest aerial ANC headphones at up to 192g. Lightest does not necessarily mean lightest; you can still feel their weight pretty easily and there was never a moment where I forgot I was still wearing them.
The earpads are reasonably soft and plush. There is about an inch of space before your ears make contact with the foam padding that covers the driver enclosure. I found adequate space for my ears, which wasn’t the case with the shallower 1000XM5 earcups.
Like the pricier 1000XM5, the CH720N doesn’t fold inward, instead the earcups simply rotate until they lie flat against your chest. This also means that they take up more space inside your bag and there isn’t a pouch that comes with these. Considering the price difference, this isn’t a big deal, but it would be nice if Sony went back to properly folding designs considering how many people buy these headphones specifically for travel use.
Overall, the CH720N is reasonably well built with an understated design and good comfort, but the lack of bending is a pain.
Software and features
The CH720N supports the Sony Headphones Connect app on iOS and Android. This app has been a staple of Sony wireless products for several years now and has gotten a bit bloated as of late.
To begin with, it takes at least 17 clicks before you can reach the app’s main page after installing it due to the sheer number of configuration options the app downloads to yours as soon as you launch it. Some on-screen prompts won’t disappear either unless you dig into the tutorial section to get rid of them. It’s getting more and more frustrating and it’s baffling how no one at Sony sees it that way. Instead, they keep throwing more things into the app with more prompts when you first launch the app.
System status and settings
Once you’ve completed the setup work, you’re greeted with the same familiar user interface we’ve had for quite some time. The Status page will show the currently playing track with playback controls and the Adaptive Audio Control menu, which adjusts ANC by tracking movement and position.
The audio page has all the interesting options. The Ambient Sound Control menu lets you configure the ANC options, although this has now been limited to switching between ANC, Ambient Sound (transparency mode), and Off. Sony used to let you manually dial in the level of ANC you like, but now that’s been set to automatically adjust based on ambient noise levels. The company probably figured out that it can extend battery life a few more hours by automatically adjusting it instead of letting the user keep it to full all the time.
Sound settings
The equalizer option has a five band equalizer with a clear bass sixth dial and several presets with blank ones for you to save your custom values. The CH720N also supports the 360 Reality Audio feature, which creates an HRTF map of your head and ears using the camera to create a personalized profile. This data is then used in apps that offer 360 Reality Audio content, which are admittedly few and far between.
Finally, you also get DSEE or Digital Sound Enhancement Engine. This feature aims to recover detail lost during compression, although I’ve never actually felt any difference with it enabled. The CH720N only gets DSEE and not DSEE Extreme found on the 1000X series headphones. The difference is ostensibly the use of AI on Extreme, but even that never made an audible difference.
Other features of the CH720N include the ability to connect to two devices simultaneously (both can be managed via the app), the ability to use a voice assistant with Amazon Alexa integration in the app, the customization of options that are activated via the pulsating ANC, an automatic shutdown mode when the headphones have been inactive for a certain amount of time (15/30/60/180 minutes), and the ability to update the firmware.
One useful feature that’s missing from the CH720N is automatic pause when the headphones are removed. While full-size wireless headphones have historically shipped without this feature, Sony recently began adding it to its 1000X-series headphones with the 1000XM4. You don’t realize how much you miss him until he’s gone. There were times I removed the headphones forgetting they wouldn’t pause and just kept playing in the background for hours. At this point, it’s fair to expect this feature even on full-sized headphones, since it’s far from obvious on TWS earphones.
All processing on the CH720N is handled by Sony’s V1 onboard processor. It’s the same chip also found on the pricier 1000XM5, although that model also features a second QN1 processor dedicated to ANC. This, along with the two fewer mics per earcup (2 versus 4 on the 1000XM5), is why the CH720N has lower advertised ANC performance than the 1000XM5.
The CH720N has a single 30mm dynamic driver per ear. These are the same size as the 1000XM5 drivers but are not the same drivers, with the 1000XM5 drivers having a wider frequency response and lower impedance. The CH720N also only supports SBC and AAC codecs, while the 1000XM5 also adds LDAC. Both support Bluetooth 5.2.
Overall, the CH720N has a good number of useful features, but there are also many that don’t add much value, and the companion app badly needs polishing and streamlining to improve the setup experience.
Performance
Audio quality
The CH720N has decent audio quality. Sony describes them as having balanced tuning, which will likely set them apart from its other offerings, especially the XB series.
Despite this, the CH720N still has a warm, bass-heavy sound. Like most Sony headphones, there’s ample bass shelf, particularly in the low-mid and upper bass regions. Since most of the bass in music falls in this region, you get a pretty robust boost in low-frequency energy that adds considerable thump and rumble to your tracks. It’s not as extended as on the XB-series headphones, and it also doesn’t extend particularly low, so it feels less overwhelming and boomy in comparison. However, the somewhat lumpy and dense quality of the bass adds some congestion to the low frequencies.
The midrange gets some of this excess energy from the low end and the lower mids sound thicker than they should. There’s a slight peak in the mids, adding some honkiness to them and awkwardly projecting them further into the mix for some vocals. This alters the timbre slightly, but in general most voices and instruments sound natural.
Unfortunately, there’s a definite problem with the upper mids leading into the highs. It seems Sony either forgot or chose to ignore factoring in the fin gain in tuning, as the upper mids sound rather deflated and lacking. Our head shape and external ear affect how we hear the world around us, and headphones effectively circumvent this, which is why they need to be adjusted to take into account the impact of our head and ear shape. Without this, the headphones simply won’t sound as natural as they do with the CH720N.
Without the 2-5kHz bump, vocals sound congested and dry, and lower treble is dull and raspy, as most of the treble energy arrives higher up the frequency range. This adds to the sound’s somewhat dark tonality as most of the energy comes from the low end without enough support from the high end.
That said, the tuning isn’t terrible and depending on your choice of music it can still be perfectly enjoyable, especially when you’re outdoors and don’t particularly care about sound quality. I also found it relatively easy to fix the EQ in the Sony app, even though it has a fairly limited frequency range available.
As a side note, there is a noticeable difference in tonality with ANC disabled. Bass frequencies, in particular, are less exaggerated with ANC turned off, resulting in a slightly cleaner and tighter low-end presentation.
In terms of technical performance, the CH720Ns are nothing special. Resolution and detail are mediocre, although this depends more on the drivers than the codecs used as connecting the supplied cable does not result in an appreciable improvement. Without the audio processing, the drivers sound particularly bad in wired mode, revealing once again how little effort is required to design and tune the drivers on Bluetooth headphones, and how much work the onboard audio processing has to do to make them palatable. Picture and soundstage are also rather lackluster in wireless mode, and in passive wired mode the headphones may as well be mono.
Microphone
The CH720N has respectable microphone performance. Vocals sound clean and intelligible with enough breadth that they don’t require you to scream to be heard. You still get that telltale Bluetooth compression, and the tonality isn’t as natural as a good wired mic, but for phone-calling purposes the quality here is perfectly acceptable.
Noise cancellation
The CH720N has strong active noise cancellation performance and significantly improves on its predecessors. The attenuation works well over a wide range of frequencies, meaning you get good coverage across the spectrum for all types of ambient sounds. Low-frequency attenuation is especially good, but Sony also excelled at mid and high frequencies, something you often find lacking in other brands’ products. I’m sure there is a measurable difference between the CH720N and the 1000XM5 cancellation but without a side-by-side comparison, even the cheapest model sounds good enough that you won’t miss out on the flagship.
The Ambient Sound or transparency mode also works well, although Sony prioritizes sound intelligibility over accuracy. As a result, the sound isn’t exactly natural but you hear everything around you well, which in most cases is what you’re after. Also, unlike noise cancellation, you can adjust the level of transparency and also enable voice passthrough, which focuses voices while suppressing other frequencies.
Latency
The CH720N has good latency performance. For non-video activities, the latency is low enough not to be an issue and many users probably won’t even notice. Video hasn’t been an issue for some time as mobile operating systems will automatically sync video to compensate for the delay.
Connectivity
The CH720N had excellent connectivity performance during testing. There were no issues with connection drops or snags and stuttering of any kind during testing. Under normal operating conditions, the headset should function reliably.
Battery life
The CH720N has a rated continuous music playtime of 35 hours with ANC enabled and a whopping 50 hours with ANC disabled.
In my testing, the CH720N played for 47 hours and 9 minutes with ANC enabled, which was quite an astounding result. I’m used to Sony headphones regularly exceeding their rated battery figures, but this is perhaps the biggest discrepancy on record. And yes, ANC was double-checked to be enabled during testing.
I also tested battery life after a 10-minute charge from 0%, and the headphones played for 5 hours 51 minutes with ANC, which is also a very good result.
While I haven’t tested it, DSEE is known to consume more battery power and significantly drain battery life data. Also, all of the testing here was done using AAC, but should also apply to SBC since they often have similar power consumption.
Conclusion
The WH-CH720N is priced at $150 but can be had for around $128 at the time of writing. Compared to the $400 1000XM5, I didn’t feel like I was missing out on much. The 1000XM5s are better tuned and have better ANC, but you can offset the tuning with the EQ and it would be hard to tell the ANC difference under most conditions. The 1000XM5 comes with a carrying case but neither headset is foldable. The CH720N also has better battery life and I found them more comfortable.
The prospect of getting the 1000XM5 for less than half the price is tempting. The price difference is even greater here in India where the CH720N (INR 9,990) is one-third the price of the 1000XM5 (INR 29,990). Sony may have just made the CH720N a little too good for its own good, and I can’t think of too many reasons to pick the 1000XM5 over these, especially if all you care about are travel headphones. Considering both price and performance, the CH720N are the new benchmark for travel headphones.
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