Do you bear in mind the primary time you tried one thing apart from the crappy plastic earbuds that got here along with your cellular gadget? I recall studying a discussion board put up on-line, shopping for a then spendy $100 pair of Shure headphones, and blowing my very own thoughts after I plugged them into my iPod Nano.
That’s the feeling you get if you leap from entry-level wi-fi earbuds like AirPods to a premium pair like the brand new Astell & Kern UW100. With glorious digital-to-analog conversion, bespoke drivers, and a modern design, I can see these being a straightforward entry level
for aspiring audiophiles.
It’s taken a while for high-end wi-fi earbuds to do something particular, in addition to look higher than the variations from Apple, Samsung, and others. The UW100 show that we’re lastly getting higher sound for our additional {dollars}, and so they may make a number of audiophiles lower the twine when out and about.
Form and Function
Photograph: Astell & Kern
If you’re not into hoarding FLAC recordsdata and dropping hundreds of {dollars} on attractive digital gamers, it’s very doubtless you’ve by no means heard of Astell & Kern. The small audio model has made acclaimed digital-to-analog converters, headphone amps, and transportable gamers for the Rolex class for years, however solely just lately has it taken the deep dive into higher-end mainstream audio merchandise.
When it involves each design and audio efficiency, the technological trickle-down is obvious. Astell & Kern is prepared to promote merchandise for underneath $500 now, however the engineers are nonetheless unwilling to promote bad-sounding ones.
The jagged, gem-like exterior of every earbud instantly stands out amidst a bunch of wi-fi buds that appear like golf tees. They’re like one thing you may spot in a Star Trek spinoff, doubling as fancy space-age communicators. That’s to not say the buds don’t feel and appear elegant, however except your private model may be very trendy, you may discover them a bit flashy.
Such visible cues are par for the course from Astell & Kern, which makes use of jagged edges as a centerpiece of its design language. However, the case is a bit massive and really plasticky, which I wouldn’t anticipate from buds that price almost twice as a lot as AirPods. I’ll dislike Apple’s fundamental buds, however the case is twice as modern and half the scale.
Despite having no ear fins, the UW100 match extraordinarily nicely in my medium-sized ears. I’ve been in a position to take them on lengthy runs, do yard work, and customarily putter about with out ever dropping a bud. Of course, that is partly a fluke: Unless your ears are an identical to mine, your mileage could fluctuate. But so long as you don’t have small ears (these are on the medium-large aspect of the spectrum, however not loopy enormous), they need to fit your needs simply tremendous.
Well Sorted
Sound high quality is the actual showstopper with the UW100, although. A 32-bit digital-to-analog converter and customized balanced armature drivers pair with assist for the aptX Adaptive Bluetooth codec to ship the cleanest, most detailed audio I’ve ever heard from wi-fi earbuds.
A large soundstage and assertive (however not overly boomy) bass are aided by the headphones’ glorious passive noise isolation. At instances, I swore these earbuds had energetic noise canceling, since they blocked out the skin world so nicely. This is a incontrovertible fact that Astell & Kern’s engineers clearly acknowledged too; you possibly can activate Ambient mode with a faucet of an exterior contact sensor, and you will find your self utilizing it should you purchase these buds.
