Sony has announced the WF-C710N, the latest version of its most affordable set of noise-canceling wireless earbuds. The price is unchanged at $120, but Sony says it has made welcome improvements in a number of areas, and the buds feature a new selection of color choices, including pink, black, white, and a transparent version called Glass Blue. One change that might not be as welcome is the decision to swap physical buttons for touch controls. They can be preordered today on Sony’s website or Amazon, with shipping beginning at the end of March.
The basic specs remain the same as the WF-C700N, which Sony has now discounted as low as $85: the earbuds use 5mm dynamic drivers, they can optionally enable Sony’s DSEE audio upscaling system, they have ANC and transparency modes, and offer IPX4 protection from sweat and splashes of water. There’s also Bluetooth Mutlipoint for two simultaneous device connections.
Per-charge battery life has been given a small bump. It’s now 8.5 hours with ANC and 12 hours when it’s off, vs. 7.5 and 10 hours respectively. However, total battery time is up significantly, from 15 to 30 hours, suggesting that Sony has installed a bigger capacity battery in the charging case.
Sony says that ANC is more effective with dual mics, and calls will now be clearer in noisy environments thanks to voice pickup that “was developed with AI machine learning using over 500 million voice samples to suppress ambient noise and extract the users’ voice clearly.”
However, Sony has opted to make a big change on the controls. It has dropped the WF-C700N’s large, physical buttons in favor of touch controls — a shift that may make the new buds more difficult to use. Still, there’s compensation in the form of wear sensors, which the C700N lacked — the C710N can now auto-pause and resume music when you take the earbuds out or put them back in.
Instagram is making its way to yet another screen, and this time, Apple TV is getting a taste of the Reels rabbit hole. The company has launched a dedicated Instagram app for Apple TV, bringing Reels, longer videos, and live shows to the big screen. So, if watching one quick clip on a phone somehow turns into an hour of scrolling, there's now a much larger screen for that.
Instagram brings Reels and more to Apple TV
Audio-Technica, a brand well known for making some of the best studio and professional headphones on the market, has just come out with the ATH-AWX7000, which the company itself claims to be its "finest headphones ever." The new flagship closed-back headphone has debuted at an eye-watering price of $3,799. It combines hand-finished Japanese woodwork with a newly developed 58mm driver.
The earcups are made from Kiso cypress, a prized wood historically used for Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Each housing is finished by hand with traditional Echizen lacquer, which brings out the grain and is expected to darken over time. The frame and sliders are finished in a deep navy kachi-iro shade traditionally associated with samurai.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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