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Sony WH-CH520 | Early impressions of Sony's latest budget headphones

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Sony's latest budget headphone offering based on features alone seems to be very compelling. When you add in the specs to go with the features one can help but to get excited. To have them in hand and have used them you can quickly tell Sony has something special in the mainstream budget headphone category. Lets talk about it.

Build 

The build of the headphones are very light but feel well made. Sony uses recycled plastic that seems sturdy with no creaking. I like the matte finish and the overall smooth feel of the headphones.  

Device I/O

With these being budget headphones one would think Sony would cut back in this area. They did just not completely. You get Type C for charging but no headphone jack. This may be a deal-breaker for some, however, I find this omission to be acceptable in 2023. 

Comfort

Finding headphones that are comfortable for me is hit or miss due to the size of my head. Yes, it's large. With the Sony CH 520 I found them to be light on my head and somewhat comfortable so far. I had one long listening session and found my ears to be fatigued quite a bit. These are on ear so this may not be out of the norm. The soft and thick ear cups do help a little bit. I may need to break these in as I only spent a few days and less than a few hours using them.

Sound quality

It's really hard to judge the sound of the product as the sound of music is very subjective. With that being said the Sony CH 520 are really good sounding headphones. The highs come through with the bass being pretty punchy. To my ears the details get lost in the mids and the lack of low end deep bass left me wanting more.

Feature set

In terms of features the CH 520 is packed with lots of quality of life capabilities that benefit the user. Such as Spatial audio or 360 audio in Sony's case. Of course it's compatible with each platform's voice assistants. What's really cool is that it comes with Google's Fast Pair tech and has the ability to pair with multiple devices at once with Multipoint connection built-in. There is also 50hrs of battery life and customizable sound with the Sony app.

Thoughts thus far

I plan on doing a video on the Sony CH 520 so be on the look out for that. In general, I really like these headphones. The CH 520 has a lot to offer and is priced really well at $60. In some cases I feel Sony is setting the benchmark for other budget headphones with all of the features they packed in at such a competitive price. We'll see if other manufacturers are up to the task.

Specs

30mm drivers
50hrs of battery life
Bluetooth 5.2
On-ear style
Type C for charging

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