Tuesday 19 January 2016

Xiaomi Hybrid In-Ear Headphones - Review and Analysis


Xiaomi has made their 4th generation earphone model in 11th November 2015, with an all new design, new packaging and the return of deep heavy bass, but...

How much the new model is better than the older one?

We haven't got the 3th generation of Xiaomi in-ear headphones, but the 2th one; so our test will be made in comparison with this model.

First, the packaging.
It had a number of lacking accessories, we thought at beginning. Because, we actually didn't notice the bag of replacement tips at the first and thought the worse. However, just before this review we noticed the small second box at the bottom of the packaging and found a small bag (non-resealable) inside there with tips in three sizes.


Another concern it was the design of in-ear, absolutely strange and cool to see at same time, but we noticed that the feeling, with form factor, is practically immediate after first touch. These headphones can remain in position with no problem, during a running also... a good point.


Then the materials, aluminum and plastic appear no compatible, but the lightness is another important goal reached from this set.


And we absolutely appreciate the cnc milling, clear in the following macro. Marvellous!


The cable is braided Kevlar which continues on through to the Y-splitter, at which point the cables continue in silicon.


The main Xiaomi Hybrid characteristic is its new model of Klippel Drivers, an 1+1 hybrid drivers (balanced armature driver and dynamic driver). We appreciate so much the sound quality that comes from these earphones, but our feeling isn't something that could be demonstrate, only described.
We don't want to forget your personal impressions, these aren't replaceable from a mathematical representation, it's only an empiric experiment.

So, we develop a new test that working pretty good with the earphones to bring back our feeling to another level of awareness, much more scientific.

We record, in three steps, three audio sources about a classic, pop and rock track. Then we cleaned and normalized the results, it was gaved away to our algorithm to generate a PSD (power spectral density) useful to evaluate such as every frequency is distribuited (on avarage) on the entire track recorded (for every gender).



The new design really sees a huge improvement in bass, but... how that behave the hybrid dual drivers on the rest of frequencies?

These are the results of our test.


As you can see, the low and high frequencies are accentuated, but the medium frequencies from 5k Hz and 10k Hz are attenuated.
This show how Xiaomi changes the frequencies mix to achieve a better result from its new device, but... are the differences so significant?

We think from point of view of frequencies, the older model have good power dinstribution, no so different from the new one; but the personal feeling of this new hybrid is so much different from a simply aluminum cilinder.

Much more comfortable is the new must for Xiaomi and this headphones getting it right!

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