Sony has been one of the well-known audio brands in the country for a very long time and they have also had quite a few wireless personal audio offerings for a while, but nothing launched under Rs. 5,000 before. Now, officially priced at Rs 4,999, the Sony WF-C510 go directly against the likes of OnePlus and Oppo for the budget TWS. Let’s see what they really have in store.
The WF-C510 are quite lightweight, with each bud weighing around 4.6 grams. They follow the narrow canal-type design with their pill-shaped charging case. They are made of plastic with rubber silicon eartips, but they don’t necessarily feel cheap. While the earbuds are IPX4 splash-resistant, the case isn’t. Each earbud has clearly marked left or right on the inner half and mic on the outside for calls and noise cancellation. The buds come in white, black, yellow and blue, which is what I tried, and it has a slightly textured and matte-y finish case. The case has a USB type C port and physical pairing button at the back, and the charging LED at the front; plus subtle Sony branding at the top.
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The earbuds are comfortable to wear for the most part, and their canal design helped them keep them in without any weird issues or uncomfortable feeling. While commuting, I didn’t need them to be adjusted in-ear frequently. The outside has physical buttons, which require a bit of pressure to be pressed, which isn’t very comfortable to do when the earbuds are, well, in your ear. Taking out your phone and doing it from the Sony Sound Connect app itself seemed like a better option to adjust volume or playback.
The WF-C510 come with Bluetooth 5.3 (no Bluetooth LE) with support for SBC and AAC audio codecs. You don’t get active noise cancellation but there are ambient modes. The earbuds sound nice and clear for most of the times that I tried them, especially given the price tag. You get clear dialogues and voiceovers for watching movies and TV shows, though there can be a slight lag when watching connected to Windows 11. Treble and mids are something handled well by the pair while also having refined beats and background instruments when in play at the same time.
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There’s rich and sufficient bass for most people such that balance is maintained for mid-highs. Ambient mode works well for keeping up with sounds and alerts around you while it does make a little effect on the sound quality. There's also multipoint support to connect two devices at once and it works fine.
You can expect to get a battery life of somewhere around 10-11 hours with no ambient mode and with no custom EQ set. The earbuds take about 90 minutes to charge in the case and a further three hours when the case is out of battery itself to charge both.
In brief, confusing naming aside, Sony’s WF-C510 are a comfortable pair of TWS that don’t sacrifice sound quality for the price tag. These can be considered if you have also used a Sony audio product before to give you a familiar experience at this budget.