If you want active noise cancelling, a wired backup and the longest battery life for teens, choose JBL Tune 670NC; if you need the lightest, most comfortable on-ear pair with multipoint switching and the widest color choice for teens, choose Sony WH-CH520. That's the whole decision in one line. Everything below is me walking through the specs to show you why that split holds up.
• JBL Tune 670NC — biggest strength: Adaptive Noise Cancelling with Smart Ambient, plus up to 70 hours of battery life (ANC off) and a 3.5 mm jack as a wired fallback.
• JBL Tune 670NC — biggest trade-off: Heavier at 174 g, a 2-hour charge time, and ANC is app-managed, so you're relying on the JBL Headphones app for the good stuff.
• Sony WH-CH520 — biggest strength: A genuinely light on-ear build with swivel earcups, multipoint pairing for two devices at once, and up to 50 hours of playback.
• Sony WH-CH520 — biggest trade-off: No headphone jack, no real noise cancelling despite what the spec sheet's noise-control field implies, and a longer 3-hour charge time.
• For the teen who studies in noisy places or wants one pair for everything → JBL Tune 670NC.
• For the teen who wears headphones for hours and juggles a phone plus a laptop → Sony WH-CH520.
The Tune 670NC is the pair you buy when you want the headphones to do some work for you. Adaptive Noise Cancelling is the headline feature, and it's genuinely useful in the situations teens actually run into: a bus, a shared bedroom, a crowded cafeteria, a house where someone else is always watching something. When you need to hear the world again, Ambient Aware and TalkThru are a tap away in the JBL Headphones app rather than requiring you to pull the headphones off your head.
The spec that matters most for real ownership is battery. JBL rates it up to 70 hours, and even if you live with ANC on all the time, you're still looking at a long stretch between charges. A 5-minute top-up buys roughly 3 hours of playback, which is the kind of thing that saves a kid who forgot to charge overnight. Add Bluetooth 5.3 with LE Audio support and the Smart Audio/Smart Video toggle, and you get a pair that's tuned for both music and video without much fiddling.
How We Research
We compare products from their published specs and features; the verdicts below are our independent editorial opinions.
What you're giving up: 174 g is not heavy, but it's noticeably more than the Sony. The earcups are on-ear with a flat padded surface, which means pressure on the ears over long sessions — fine for a commute or a study block, less ideal if someone wears headphones from breakfast to dinner. There's no touch control either; it's buttons plus Google Assistant and Siri. And ANC is a feature that works, not a magic trick: it handles steady background noise far better than sudden sounds.
Buy it if you want noise cancelling, maximum battery, an app that lets you shape the sound, and a 3.5 mm cable for the day the battery dies or the flight requires it. Skip it if you want the lightest possible pair or you need to hop between two devices constantly.
The WH-CH520 goes the other direction. Sony built this around comfort and convenience, and the design details back that up: a lightweight body, soft ear pads, an extra head cushion, and swivel earcups with silent joints so the things fold flat and slip on and off without a fight. For a teen, that's the difference between headphones that stay on the head all afternoon and headphones that get abandoned on a desk.
Multipoint is the second thing I'd flag. Pairing with two Bluetooth devices at once means switching from a song on a laptop to a call on a phone without repairing anything. If your kid does homework on a Chromebook and takes calls on a phone, that's a genuinely daily-use feature. Calls themselves are handled by a built-in mic, and Sony's VoiceAware-style hands-free approach means the phone stays in the pocket.
Sound is adjustable through EQ Custom in the Sony Headphones Connect app, and DSEE upscales compressed files, which helps if most of the listening happens on a streaming service rather than lossless files. You also get six color options, which matters more to a teen buyer than most spec sheets admit. Bluetooth is 5.2 here, and there's no headphone jack at all — charging is USB-C only, taking about 3 hours, with quick charging covering roughly 90 minutes of playback from a 3-minute top-up.
Buy it if comfort, light weight, multipoint, color choice and app EQ are your priorities. Skip it if you need true noise cancelling or a wired option.
Side-by-Side: Which Should You Choose?
• Best for battery life → JBL Tune 670NC. Up to 70 hours versus up to 50, and a much faster 2-hour full charge.
• Best for all-day comfort → Sony WH-CH520. Lighter build, extra head cushion, swivel earcups and silent joints.
• Best for two-device juggling → Sony WH-CH520. Multipoint connection is built in; the JBL doesn't list it.
• Best for wired listening → JBL Tune 670NC. It has a 3.5 mm jack and ships with a detachable audio cable. The Sony has no jack at all.
• Best for customization → Sony WH-CH520. Six colors plus EQ Custom and DSEE for compressed audio.
• Best for studying in a loud house → JBL Tune 670NC. ANC is the whole point here.
• Best for a teen who forgets to charge → Sony WH-CH520. Three minutes of charging buys about 90 minutes of playback.
In my opinion, the JBL Tune 670NC is the better pick for most teens, and it's the one I'd buy. Noise cancelling, up to 70 hours of battery, a wired fallback and app-level control are features that change how you use headphones day to day, not just on paper. The Sony WH-CH520 is the smarter buy only if comfort and multipoint switching are what your teen actually complains about — and for someone who wears headphones for six hours straight, that's a real argument. But if you're choosing blind for a teen, I'd take the JBL.
Yes. The JBL has Adaptive Noise Cancelling plus Ambient Aware and TalkThru. The Sony's spec sheet lists a noise control field, but its feature list describes no active noise cancelling — it's a passive on-ear design that blocks some sound through fit alone.
JBL rates its battery at up to 70 hours; Sony rates up to 50. JBL also charges fully in about 2 hours versus roughly 3 for the Sony, and a 5-minute JBL top-up gives about 3 hours of playback.
Yes — multipoint connection lets it pair with two Bluetooth devices simultaneously, so you can switch between a laptop and a phone. The JBL Tune 670NC's listed features don't include multipoint.
Both have built-in mics for hands-free calling. For noisy classrooms or study sessions, the JBL's ANC and TalkThru modes are the edge. For hours of wear and switching between a school laptop and a phone, the lighter Sony WH-CH520 with multipoint is the more comfortable choice.
Match the feature to the problem: noisy environment and long battery → JBL Tune 670NC; comfort and two-device switching → Sony WH-CH520. Check the current price on Amazon for both before you commit, since that can shift the math.
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