Now the thing we’re going to be looking at the HIFIMAN RE-400 inner ear earphones. Now if you’ve never heard of HIFIMAN they’re a company from China that originally started off by making good quality, good value for money earphones that would outperform brand name competitors that were many many times the price. My first pair of good in-ear earphones were the HIFIMAN RE-0’s and ever since then I’ve had a bit of a soft spot for the company because I think that everything they make is good value and really sensibly designed. Now since the introduction of the RE-0 they’ve branched out into making much more expensive high-end earphones and headphones so it’s really interesting to see the RE-400, which is basically HIFIMAN attempting to reset their entire lineup of earphones and trying to recapture some of the same magic they got with the RE-0 at the $99 price point. And HIFIMAN is so confident in the RE-400 that they’ve also nicknamed the RE-400 the ‘waterline’, which implies that they believe the RE-400 is the reference point for not only what they can achieve with $99, but what the entire industry should be doing for $99. So that’s a pretty big claim, so it’s worth taking a closer look. The RE-400 has a simple but really quite sensible design.
We have the really light machined aluminium body and a relatively thin nozzle so that it will fit in most ears quite well. However, I found the included tip selection didn’t quite fit my ears so I’ve been using Sony silicone Hybrid tips with my RE-400’s. We have here a strain relief that’s quite nice. We have a cable that is actually rubber all the way up to the strain relief and then fabric wrapped all the way down to the plug. So presumably, this is to, you know, improve durability while reducing cable noise. What we have here is a quite substantial plug, so, all in all, it’s not a fancy design but it is practical and well thought out. Now I’ve mentioned the RE-400’s in a number of previous videos as a good alternative but now that it’s actually time for me to describe their sound to you it’s actually a little difficult because they are just neutral, understated, good performers. In terms of signature, they’re just on the slightly warmer side of neutral with a slight emphasis on the bass, but nothing overblown. And it’s actually kind of interesting because most HIFIMAN models have been considered under-emphasised in terms of bass. In terms of sound staging, they are very clean precise earphones. You don’t get an incredibly spacious sounding soundstage but you get something that’s quite high precision. So overall they’re just really balanced earphones where nothing really jumps out at you but what you hear is really really balanced. You know there are earphones out there that I think have more interesting sounds. So perhaps say the XBA-40 which has that crazy holographic soundstage or maybe the EX1000 which has that kind of smokey, dry, romantic sound. But if you wanted something that was balanced it’s really hard to go past these especially for $99. These are really good earphones and I really love them. I think HIFIMAN has absolutely hit the mark in considering these a waterline reference for $99. So I recommend anyone at all, who’s interested in collecting in-ears, go out and buy a pair of these, these are fantastic.
