HiFiMAN HE400i Over Ear Full-Size Plannar Magnetic Headphone

Product Information

Disclaimer: Hifiman sent us one free unit of the HE-400i for this review only a few months after the HE-400i was released. Virtually the perfect headphone (for the sound alone) would naturally be 100/100 in my scale book (haven´t heard such one yet Because of that I decided to give HE-400i two kinds of score. The Huawei Mate 10 has a sound signature of neutral-bright, sound quality far below the M3s, cranking the volume to 80-100 the sound of 400i is just decent compared to the SUNDARA, it sounds dry and thin to the point that male vocals doesn’t have sufficient body.

HiFiMan HE-400i vs HiFiMan HE400se Side-by-Side Headphones HiFiMan HE-400i vs HiFiMan HE400se Side-by-Side Headphones

Initially I found the bass impact a bit softer on some songs but that impression was largely affected by the fact, that I used to listen music a lot of years through my vintage SonyEricsson W810i phone with the option „megabass“ happily turned on and.

The package is just okay, I just hope that there’s a carrying cloth bag at the very least just in case you don’t have any headphone hard case and you want to carry it around from home and your workplace. Here’s a question for you: Taking the treble of the Sennheiser HD800 for example, and the Beyer T90, as the brighter headphones, then the Shure SRH-1540 and Sennheiser Momentum as less bright, would you say the HD650 treble is in between, or more like the darker 2 that I mentioned?

HiFiMAN HE-400i - Reviews - Head-Fi.org HiFiMAN HE-400i - Reviews - Head-Fi.org

This was my first open-back headphones which I have actually owned (have tried some before) and the soundstage and imaging was exceptional. It's a superb-sounding headphone full-size headphone that features excellent build quality and an improved design that makes it more comfortable to wear than its predecessor.setup simply because among the setups I tried, this suits my preference well and it feels that it has better synergy with 400i than the other setups that I tried. There is a slight dip in the upper midrange /lower treble (around 1 to 3 kHz) and then a slight dip between 4-5 kHz , but this is OK for me and might be even beneficial because it helps to avoid unpleasent shrillness, wonkiness or sibilance (especially in less than stellar recordings). However, I tested both headphones with a pretty good on-board sound card and a cheap FiiO A1 portable amp, neither of which had a problem powering either headphone.