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Truly wireless headphones are a popular category in the audio world but few companies have gotten it all right with their products. It's pretty compelling, though; earbuds with no wires that offer great sound, convenient phone calls and isolate you from all the noise around you. And Sony's come so close with its Noise Cancelling Truly Wireless WF-SP700N Headphones...
Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ checked out the Sony Wireless Headphones and found that there's quite a lot to like, starting with the terrific sound. But there are some hiccups and problems you'll want to know about before you make a purchase decision too.
Check 'em out on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2GAtT8K
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Noise-canceling wireless headphones? They are perfect for the gym. Let's check them out
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Dave Taylor here and I'm checking out these. Let me open it up. These. These are the Sony
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noise-canceling truly wireless headphones known as WF-SP700N. Not a great name so we'll just call
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them noise-canceling truly wireless headphones. They are actually pretty cool. So let me take
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them out. You can see each one has the little ear hook and it comes with a variety of different
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sizes. Super easy to put in your ear. You put it in, you lean it and sort of spin forward a little
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bit and it's done. And one of the things that Sony's really gotten right, let me put the other
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one in and battery level high. Connected. So one of the things that Sony's gotten really right, let
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me take them out. It's weird to talk with these in your ears. But one of the things they've gotten
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right is they have exactly the right behavior on the Bluetooth side. So I put these in the charging
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box and they are now back and charging but that also automatically means that the phone has now
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disconnected. When I take them out they automatically reconnect. Fantastic. Another really nice thing. A
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lot of companies don't seem to get this right but these, even though they're two units, show up as
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one thing on my device. Now that might seem a little weird but I've looked at a lot of these
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wireless headphones where each unit shows up on Bluetooth and that's really confusing because
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do both need to be connected? Is one connected? In which case then every time you look at Bluetooth
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one of your earbuds says it's not connected but it's actually connected via its own internal
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circuitry. So that's very confusing. Sony got it right. Now they are IPX4 sweat resistant. As I
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said they come with four ear tip sizes and two different hook sizes so you can get them to fit
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with your ears. They are Bluetooth 4.1 and they support NFC. I've found that they're super reliable
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Haven't had any dropout issues. They have a nice range to them and the sound is actually really
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good. So they feature a quarter of an inch neodymium dome driver which sounds really tiny
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but it is kind of a tiny mechanism. That's all you need because it's 20 to 20,000 hertz. It comes with
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an extra bass option and more importantly it comes with an app and you can get this Sony app and now
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you have a lot more control over what these headphones are doing for you and of course you
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gain control over the active noise cancellation. So it has multiple modes. It has active noise
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cancellation and what they call ambient sound mode which means that you're not getting quite as much
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cancellation of the ambient noise around you so that you can hear for example here at the gym
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you can hear people say, hey dude are you done with that yet? It's good to not just ignore those
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people. Generally not a good strategy at the gym in my experience. The app also gives you access to
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an equalizer though you can't set it to your favorite. It's just a bunch of presets but you
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can hear how much they differ in terms of the audio that they're reproducing so there's a lot
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of range there and really I am very impressed with the sound quality of these. These are really really
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nice. I've tried them in a variety of noisy environments not just the gym and they sound
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really good. There's a lot of richness. There's a really nice clarity to the audio too which I
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really appreciate. In terms of the noise cancellation I would say I found that fairly middling but on
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the other hand I actually gave a couple other people the opportunity to try them and they were
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really startled by how good they thought the noise cancellation was. So you know maybe I have a little
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more experience than most people but be that as it may they work well. It's good noise cancellation
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I haven't actually tried it yet on an airplane flight. I'm going to be doing that shortly but
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you know certainly for most regular environments it's nice. It cuts out all the hums and whirs and
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all that stuff that we don't even actually think about. Now battery life. So these guys actually
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have a three hour battery life and then the bass actually gives you two more charges and I will say
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it's a little awkward to get these into the bass because of the ear tips so you have to sort of
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learn that to put it in like that but then you push it in and now both units have a little red
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light on them which means they're both charging. I can close it or not and then to charge the bass
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is a micro usb connector you can plug into anything including your computer. So super easy to work
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with that and that gives you nine hours of battery life in total with the charges. So not bad. You can
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probably do more if you don't have the active noise cancellation on because that definitely eats up some circuitry and energy but then you lose one of the great features of the device
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So let's talk about phone calls. So phone calls actually they sound good but it's a little
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disconcerting because you go from stereo to only your left ear. So it's not even your right ear
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which I find really interesting. I guess Sony engineers they take phone calls like this. I
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would imagine most people who are right-handed take a phone call like that but they chose to
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use the left ear so the right ear just goes dead and on the left ear you get your phone call and
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you can chat and when I called other people they were like wow that sounds really good very clear
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it's very good. So that actually worked out well. My biggest issue with these and I really like them
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there's a lot to really like about these Sony's is they really don't work with video. If you're
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watching something like a youtube video or Netflix or something there's so much lag on these earbuds
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sorry headphones that it's basically unwatchable. So if your intention is to be here at the gym and
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to put on your little tablet and to be watching your favorite show while you're using all these
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exercise devices or something then these probably aren't going to work very well. There's a lot of
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lag but for me I listen to audio books or music and for that that lag doesn't matter. I mean I
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don't care if I'm off by a second or two because there's nothing to be off from. It's just music
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streaming in and sounding really really good. So I think that might be something where you need to
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look at your use case because there's a lot to like about these Sony WF-SP700N's. Lots to
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like about them but they're not going to be great if you're going to do video and I actually tried
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to edit a video using these and wow that totally didn't work. That was very disconcerting. I had to
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switch over pretty quickly. So I would say that's probably its biggest limitation is that lag and
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I'm not sure what's going on with that because even without the app there's just a lot of lag. I
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guess it's just the way it's processing the noise cancellation and such. Dunno but something you
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definitely want to know. Now the only thing left to talk about I guess let me grab over here. Here's
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the Apple AirPods. I just want to point out that obviously the case is considerably bigger frankly
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for shorter battery life but better sound. I think that the Apple AirPods are really a beautiful
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piece of engineering. Apple did a really nice job but they don't sound great in my experience. They
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sound good and if you're in anything other than a super quiet environment then these are absolutely
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competing with all the other noise and ambient environment around you. These with active noise
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cancellation are a much better solution in all those sort of situations but your price is less
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battery life and obviously a considerably bigger case. So it goes maybe the next generation from
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Sony will have a smaller case and you know so we'll see how that plays out. Now all that's left to
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really talk about is the price but before we get to the price can I ask for you to go ahead and
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subscribe to my channel. I really appreciate when you do that. It lets us stay in touch and lets me know
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that you're actually paying attention and you appreciate what I'm doing. Now when you go to the
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gym do you listen to music and if you do what do you use? So leave a comment. Tell me what kind of
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device you're using to actually listen to audio books, music, I don't know watch videos when stuff
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whatever you want to do at the gym let me know how you do it. Now cool these let's put the AirPods
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back down. This is the Sony noise cancelling truly wireless headphones WF-SP700N and these
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little guys come in black or copper or yellow or gray. This is the gray color so the other colors
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are actually pretty nice. Sony does a beautiful job with all of the physical characteristics of
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their products so all those colors look really cool. This will cost you $179.99 manufacturer
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suggested retail price but don't have a heart attack keep listening because at amazon.com they
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run $128. So roughly the same price as the Apple AirPods but you know there's other reasons that
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these might be a good choice for you. Oh and they also support AAC as you saw in that screen capture
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a little earlier. So that's important no aptx but AAC does mean you're going to get really great
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sound from your iPhone or other iOS devices. So with that it's you know maybe a bit of a mixed
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bag but I'm definitely a fan and I'm definitely going to continue using my
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Sony wireless headphones which means I will catch you in my next video
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you
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