When buying high-end earphones like the Klipsch X10i cans, the question isn’t so much whether they justify every penny of their big asking price, but whether the way you use them merits the expensive stroll into the executive lounge. We’ve spend hours listening to these earphones to see whether they belong in first class – find out whether they do in this Klipsch X10i earphone review.
Read the rest of our Klipsch X10i review
Klipsch X10i review
Klipsch X10i review: Meet the rivals
When we first got hold of the Klipsch X10i earphones, we were sceptical. Big-name audiophile rivals from Shure, Westone and Ultimate Ears back up their audio cred – and price tags – by packing-in more drivers, but the Klipsch X10i has just the one.
Thanks to this single-driver design, the Klipsch X10is are tiny compared with the opposition, but does it result in a similarly tiny sound? No, not at all.
Klipsch must have put some seriously canny engineers to work on the driver design of the X10is because the bass on these babies is staggeringly good. It’s fast, luxurious and goes down deeper than almost all of its rivals.
Earphones can’t hope to recreate the chest-vibrating sub bass of a cranked-up hi-fi subwoofer, but the Klipsch X10i earphones can go so low that it creates a similar sensation somewhere in the back of your throat. And that’s mighty impressive. At this ultra low end, the X10is outperform the Shure SE530s, even though those ‘phone use two drivers dedicated to bass.
Yet, even with all this bass power, the Klipsch X10i earphones sound as accurate and analytical as you could want. Their low-end grunt is so well balanced with the detailed high-end that it comes in just as handy when playing J. Strauss as Justice. The two sides of the frequency spectrum work as a team – these are light years away from juvenile Skullcandy “DJ” headphones.
The Klipsch X10i earphones offer a mix of power and finesse that excelled in every type of music we piped through these little copper-coloured buds. Any sonic criticisms? At this level of performance, they’re largely down to personal taste rather than objective assessment, but when the X10is aren’t laying out that throat-tickling bass we love them for, they can sound a tad cold, perhaps a little too analytical against more “fun” earphones like the Ultimate Ears Super.Fi 5 Pro.
Somehow, the Klipsch X10i manages to go head-to-head with earphones packing three times the number of drivers. Klipsch’s 64 years in the business count for a lot, it would seem.
Read the rest of our Klipsch X10i review
Klipsch X10i review
Klipsch X10i review: Meet the rivals
