If you have a budget of Rs 30,000-35,000 for a pair of headphones, you can take a pick from a very wide range of products. For instance, you can buy the Sennheiser HD 650, MM-450X Travel, or even Beats by D. Dre Monster. But those are the on-ear and over-the-ear headphones. But if you prefer in-ear type headphones, you can take a pick from Bose’s QuietComfort series, and those also have noise cancellation. But what if you don’t even want noise cancellation, and want pure sound? Where do you spend that money?
The option that you have, then, is to check out the Ultimate Ears 900 from Logitech. Although Ultimate Ears hasn’t quite made a mark in the Indian market yet and isn’t exactly on the list of top three when it comes to picking out a pair of premium headphones. But then again, the UE900 is a professional product and priced as such, kso we needed to try them out.
Now the manufacturers state that the UE900s are crafted and tuned by the same engineers who build the Ultimate Ears pro earphones for recording artists and sound engineers. That gets our expectations high – we love studio quality sound. Which brings us to the technology behind these earphones, rather, in-ear monitors – the UE 900s feature a quad-armature design. What this design essentially does is categorise the armatures, two for the low end, one for the mid-range, and one for high frequencies. It has what the company calls a dual-bore technology that boosts the sound, even with a driver tiny enough to fit in an in-ear headphone.
And this translates into sound quality that is absolutely balanced, clear and amazing. It is quite remarkable that a pair of in-ear monitors can pack in such a brilliant soundstage. And the word that best describes the UE900 is precision. Fact is that the soundstage is not just wide, it is also deep. For instance, when you listen to the Radio Edit of Mark Knopfler’s ‘What It Is’, you get every single sound at the very precise level as it should be. The snares crack accurately, the fluidic guitars are very well balanced, and Knopfler’s deep voice gets the tight bass that it deserves.
That said, it could’ve packed a bit more punch with the bass. While it handles the likes of White Stripes, Pink Floyd and even Iron Maiden pretty well, it just lacks the thump when you’re listening to stuff like Tiesto or Skrillex. But the wide, front-row-centre soundstage makes the experience brilliant nonetheless.
Agreed, that the price is a bit steep for in-ear headphones, but the makers have been quite generous with the packaging. In the box, you get a sweet travel box and a string pouch, and two braided cables (braided is always better as they don’t tend to get tangled as normal ones). One cable is a standard one, while the other comes with an on-cable remote. What’s more, you get a standard monitor jack as well, in case you decide to plug it in to your amps or visit a studio. Also, there are ear buds of all sizes within the box itself.
So should you buy these in-ear monitors? We’d say yes, if you’re looking for well balanced and studio quality sound, and a pair of earphones that are versatile enough for a lot of genres. But if you want something very heavy on bass, we’d suggest you look at Bose or Sennheiser products.
Rs 34,995
Love – Deep and wide sound stage, precise and clear sound
Hate – Pricing is steep, lacks thumping bass