Sennheiser’s newest earphones supply high-end seems to be for $150

I imply, positive, in the event you’re carrying wired in-ear headphones in 2023, you possibly can completely purchase a pair with the cables going straight down. Or you possibly can get a pair with wires that go up and swoops backward behind your ears like Sennheiser’s newest pair of earbuds, the IE 200, and fake you’re a musician onstage at Glastonbury each time you’re carrying them.

At $149.99, these in-ear headphones (or, I assume, in-ear screens) sit on the backside of Sennheiser’s IE vary, which works as much as the eye-wateringly expensive $1,499.95 IE 900. But the basics are (ostensibly) the identical. They have that premium-looking cable-up type issue and are geared up with the identical sized 7mm “extra-wide band” transducers. Sennheiser claims these supply “superbly balanced and realistic audio” and a “natural frequency response curve typically found in earphones costing significantly more.”

Other options embody a collection of each foam and silicone ear suggestions that may be mounted in considered one of two positions to search out the suitable match for you and removable cables for when the wires inevitably put on out over time. As What Hi-Fi? notes, there doesn’t look like any signal of an in-line distant on their cable, probably as a result of these have a popularity for harming sound high quality on wired headphones. 

“With balanced, true-to-life audio reproduction, users will be able to hear the details that they’ve been missing in ordinary headphones,” says Sennheiser audiophile product supervisor Jermo Koehnke.

Sennheiser’s IE 200 headphones go on sale on January thirty first.