In recent years I have often looked around for new bluetooth headphones/new bluetooth earplugs. After quite a few wanderings, I finally went for the Sony WF-SP800N at the end of 2020. Now almost three months later I will list my experiences, because I think these earplugs are worth buying!
Because I wear glasses I often had sore ears with the headphones I used, headphones push your pinna against the temple of the glasses, maybe you know the problem. But over-ear headphones often have superior sound quality and I found it very difficult to compromise. Until I came across the Sony WF-SP800N in a review. I quickly went through every YouTube video and review that was available at the time. Almost only positive reviews, I could hardly believe it, but decided to try it out for myself. After a few bad buys of other headphones, I was a bit hesitant, especially for in-ear models. They often suffered from poor pairing, or loss of signal while listening, not to mention an earbud falling out of your ear while running.
The earplugs were delivered just before the turn of the year, a quick test, a walk on the street with music in the background..
What an impressive earplugs!
Let's start with the sound quality, which is certainly above average, with well-defined bass. I heard sounds that I normally wouldn't notice, and the vocals and other instruments are not suppressed. Everything comes across clearly. Due to certain techniques in the earplugs, they can make the sound sound as if it really comes from everywhere. For example, the app adjusts the sound to the shape of your ear cup. For this, when you first use the app, they ask you to take a picture of your pinna and upload it. Very fascinating, I don't know if it really works, but I do believe that Sony has put a lot of effort into their algorithm.
Then the fit, it takes some getting used to in the beginning, the earplugs have to be placed in the ear at a certain angle to stay in place best and not to cause pain. The first month it bothered me a bit, but now I haven't even thought about it while wearing it for weeks. You should carefully 'hang' the hooks on the earplugs behind an edge in your ear cup, so you can be sure that the earplugs stay in place. The hook is, just like the earplug, made of a soft silicone material and is very comfortable, you don't feel a thing.
And the noise cancellation? Now and then I still have to take the bus to work, with the earphones in you can still hear people talking, or children making noise, but the hum of the bus is completely filtered out, as well as other sounds that are present in the background. You can set the degree of suppression in the app. The suppression takes some getting used to at first, but now I'm completely used to it. In the beginning it could make me a bit nauseous, because it gives a crazy effect to ambient noise. The only drawback I've encountered is that the noise cancellation is turned on automatically every time you take the earbuds out of the supplied box. You then have to open the app on your phone, scroll to the appropriate tab for the settings, and then turn off the suppression if you want it off. And you definitely want to take it off when you walk outside and it's windy, because then the wind is picked up by the microphones, and then 'blown' into your ears via the playthrough. With wind, the noise of the wind is thus amplified by the noise reduction, instead of attenuated.
The app works very well, you can adjust almost everything, I have set the left earpiece to pause, skip, or rewind songs, and the right earpiece is the volume control. This works very well. You can also record with links when you receive a call. The touch-sensitive patches on the ears take some getting used to, but work quite well, and in the winter it even worked through my thin running cap. Did I mention you can run in the rain with it? Make sure your phone is properly stored.
The storage box is also the charger, it contains a battery that I can use for at least a few days, but I don't listen all day, so completely fine for my use. A USB-C plug goes into the box and the box itself is charged again. The earphones and the box have built-in magnets, so the earphones are automatically pulled with the contact points on the pins of the charger, and they do not just fall out of the box. So totally great.
Finally, I would like to emphasize why the design and ease of use have been awarded 4 stars instead of 5 stars. That is because the earphones are quite large, this must have been because Sony did not want to make concessions, because there is a lot of quality crammed into a small form factor. And the box is also on the thick side. I would have preferred a flatter and longer box, because you are not going to put this in your pocket. So I always keep the box in my backpack, but that's no problem for me.
Secondly, I find it very irritating that the noise reduction is always on when the earphones have been in the box, so you always have to turn it off manually via the app. This can also be done using the adjustable touch surfaces, but that comes at the expense of functionality because, as mentioned earlier, I want to use other functions on the touch surfaces.
All in all, very satisfied, I will also give them to my father as a present, and I have also persuaded my colleague to get a set. I hope Sony will continue to produce them for a long time to come, because if they need to be replaced, I'd be happy to buy them a second time.
