Sony WH-CH720N Noise Canceling Headphones: Your Ideal Companion for an Immersive Listening Experience

In the relentless hum of modern life, silence has become the ultimate luxury. We’ve been conditioned to believe that a true escape into our own world—a personal bubble impervious to the drone of the train, the chatter of the open office, or the roar of a jet engine—comes with a premium, three-figure price tag. It’s a belief Sony itself helped to build with its revered WH-1000X series. Then, something interesting happened. Sony released the WH-CH720N, a pair of headphones that doesn’t just challenge this notion; it rewrites the formula entirely.

This isn’t a story about a “budget” headphone. It’s a story about intelligent engineering, purposeful compromise, and the art of knowing exactly what matters. It’s an alchemist’s trick, turning the gold of flagship technology into something accessible to all, and it deserves a closer look.

The Ghost in the Machine: A Flagship Processor in Disguise

At the very heart of the WH-CH720N lies its most audacious secret: the Integrated Processor V1. This is the very same silicon brain that powers noise cancellation in some of Sony’s much more expensive models. To understand why this is such a big deal, we need to understand that Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) isn’t a brute-force wall against sound. It’s a delicate, high-speed dance of physics.

Imagine the low, persistent drone of an airplane cabin as a steady series of waves in a pond. To calm the water, you can’t just block the waves; you need to create a perfectly opposite set of waves—an “anti-wave”—that meets the incoming ones at precisely the right moment, neutralizing them into a flat, calm surface. The V1 processor is the maestro conducting this symphony of silence. Its Dual Noise Sensor technology uses microphones on the outside and inside of the earcups to constantly listen to the environment. The V1 chip then processes this information in real-time, generating that perfect anti-wave.

This is why users report the CH720N is uncannily effective against consistent, low-frequency sounds. It erases the hum of computer fans, mellows the rumble of city traffic, and transforms a noisy commute into a private listening booth. While it may not eliminate every sharp, sudden noise with the same authority as its pricier siblings, the core engine for creating that foundational silence is present and impressively capable. It’s the ghost of a flagship, haunting a mid-range machine.

Audio Forensics: Rebuilding Your Music with DSEE

If the V1 chip is the silent partner, the Digital Sound Enhancement Engine (DSEE) is the expressive one. In our world of music streaming, we’ve traded pristine quality for infinite convenience. Compressing a song into an MP3 or streaming-friendly AAC file is like saving a beautiful photograph as a low-quality JPEG; to make the file smaller, you discard data. In audio, this often means shaving off the subtle, high-frequency details—the airy decay of a cymbal, the breathy texture of a vocalist, the crisp edge of a synth.

This is where DSEE plays the role of an audio forensic investigator. It analyzes the compressed track you’re listening to and, using a sophisticated algorithm, intelligently predicts and rebuilds the harmonic details that were lost. It’s not magic—it can’t recreate something from nothing—but it’s an incredibly effective restoration. This is a critical piece of the CH720N’s puzzle. The headphones don’t support high-resolution codecs like Sony’s own LDAC, a clear, cost-saving compromise. DSEE is the brilliant workaround, ensuring that even standard-quality streams sound richer, clearer, and more alive than they have any right to at this price.

The Unbearable Lightness of Listening: An Ode to 192 Grams

A headphone’s spec sheet can tell you what it does, but it can’t tell you how it feels. And after hours of wear, the most critical specification isn’t the driver size or the Bluetooth version; it’s the weight. At a feathery 192 grams (around 6.77 ounces), the WH-CH720N is so astonishingly light that it rewrites the rules of comfort.

This is where we must address the most common criticism leveled against them: they feel “plasticky.” To call this a flaw is to miss the point entirely. This isn’t a bug; it’s the most important feature. The choice of a lightweight, reinforced plastic construction over heavier metals and denser polymers is a deliberate, user-centric decision. It’s an engineering choice that prioritizes the experience of wearing the headphones over the tactile sensation of holding them. It minimizes the clamping force on your head and eliminates the top-of-head pressure point that plagues heavier sets, making them a genuine all-day companion.

Of course, this choice has consequences. As some long-term users have noted, the lighter foam in the earcups can compress or “flatten” over time. This is the other side of the compromise—the trade-off for that initial, cloud-like comfort might be a shorter lifespan for the stock earpads. It’s an honest compromise, and one that Sony was willing to make in its pursuit of near-weightless listening.

The Anatomy of a Brilliant Trade-Off

If you understand the philosophy behind the CH720N’s weight, the rest of its design choices snap into perfect focus. Every “missing” feature is a testament to a product team that knew exactly what to prioritize.

There are no finicky touch controls, but robust, tactile physical buttons that work flawlessly with gloves and never register an accidental skip. There is no complex folding mechanism that adds weight and potential points of failure, but earcups that swivel flat for easy resting around your neck. There is no included hard case, a clear cost-saving measure for a device many will use primarily between their home and office.

Yet, amid these subtractions, Sony added a feature of immense practical value: Multipoint connection. The ability to seamlessly switch between your laptop’s video call and your phone’s incoming ring is a pro-level feature that speaks directly to the reality of modern work. It’s perhaps the clearest signal of Sony’s intention: to cut the fat, but keep the muscle.

More Than Just Value—It’s About Values

To label the Sony WH-CH720N as a “great value” is to do it a disservice. It is, but that label is incomplete. These headphones are a statement of values. They argue that the quality of an experience is defined not by the heft of the materials, but by the intelligence of the engineering. They propose that true luxury isn’t a leather-wrapped headband, but the freedom to forget you’re wearing headphones at all.

This isn’t a watered-down version of a flagship. It’s a concentrated one, boiling down the essential elements of great sound, effective silence, and profound comfort into their purest form. The Sony WH-CH720N is for the listener who has moved beyond wanting the most impressive object and is instead seeking the most seamless, enjoyable experience. It’s not a budget headphone; it’s a brilliant one.