Alright, I have reviewed the one I called poor-man's HiFi earphone. I recently has the privilege to own a air of Ultimate Ears 700 (UE700). Man, this earphone, although not the best of the best, is brilliant. I think UE has given us the superb earphone that usually will cost us US$ 300 or more at only fractions of the price at US$ 130 - 150.
The Unit :
Build like tiny single driver but once you touch it, you will know that they ain't cheap.
Cable is more than suitable for years of use, plus it doesn't make a lot annoying noise when you wear it.
At first, you need to get use to the color coding, red ring for right ear and black ring for left. It has letters in awkward places for the designation that I failed to find them the first week I wore them.
The speaker driver holes are covered in tiny mess built into the body to protect the drivers from dirt or ear wax, so that is a good choice but cleaning the mess requires soft materials and delicate touch.
The Wear :
The sealing of the outside noise is quite effective, though not as effective as Shure or others.
And the most important is you can wear it for hours without discomfort, no more explanation needed. Of course you need to find the right fitting of silicons/foams first.
It is also plugging nicely tight without discomfort so you can dance lightly, no professional dancing please, or jogs and it won't come off.
The Sound :
Let see if I can describe the UE700 and its sound to you coz it is a challenge for me. This is a warm earphone. I hope I didn't disappoint.
The first thing I noticed is the details of the sound that the drivers produce. I knew UE700 is a pair of high end HiFi unit, enough to WOW HeadFi contributors.
The Low End is deep enough, though not as deep deep as others in 2x pricing range of UE700. The impact however is excellent to my taste. It has strong impact without damaging your eardrums. The bass has a natural tone characteristic to make listening to music uplifting in the style that the musician intended. It is suitable for nearly all type of music that requires bass impact, but to me it is more enjoyable for Rock, Techno, and Pop (note I don't listen to Jazz). The bass extension is very controllable that you can hear the drummers hitting the skins with their sticks.
Mid End is satisfactory, even when compared to my trusted "poor man's HiFi" Superlux HF381. It plays truer to the voice of singers, though some female singers lost some of its character and leaning towards sharper tonality. However, raspy and male voices are a joy to listen to.
High End is pronounced smoothly. You can immediately hears cymbals extension and high pitch sound in smooth characteristic, meaning that they don't overdo it. But when you listen to classical music, you immediately can detect that high high end is somewhat missing. I think my Ultra some HFI450 is superior in this frequency range.
Sound separation that usually produced by tuning mid and high end is expertly tuned. You can hear low basses strings playing, which usually lost in translation. That means bullseye on details.
Sound Staging is excellent for a small, itsy bitsy units. Not as pronounced as Sennheiser MX760 or Ultra some HFI450. However, you can tell where the players located during recording of live performances.
Overall, this UE700 is the earphone that you will wear and dancing foolishly to the music without realizing you are acting like a lunatic because it produces tons of fun sounds in your ears. I did, unfortunately.
So there, UE 700. At US$130-150, it's not cheap, but the cheapest in its class. I call it the cheap HiFi. Try it first, buy it if this is what you are looking for. Coz I find this units are very friendly to the small music players since it is easy to drive.
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