Some of the nicest craftsmanship on headphones at the Gadget Show Live 2016 has to go to Meze Headphones. They have a strap-line of “Perfect natural sound” and we can attest that this set of cans are really something.
Meze had quite a sparse selection of products, but you know the old adage; it’s quality not quantity – in this case it’s spot on!
Firstly we looked at the 99 Classics. Originally given birth via an IndieGoGo campaign where they raised more than $50,000 towards manufacturing these headphones, the 99 Classics are beautiful to look, hold and wear. There are a couple of variants in terms of colour here. Available in Walnut or Maple wood, with Gold or Silver (metal zinc alloy) finishing, they sport fully detachable cables, and screw fixings which allow a large element of replacement should any section of the unit break or need replacing.
In terms of tech specs, we’re looking at a 40mm driver here rated at 32 Ohm impedance with a sensitivity of 103 Db. Now I’m no audiophile (right Mark?) but even I can tell how wonderful these sounded. Warm and full-scale and whilst the base was punchy, it wasn’t overpowering and for the price I thought these were excellent. The 99 Classics retail at €309 (£245 converted) and are available now from the website.
We saw some new IEMs at the booth that. The 11 Classics are a high quality hand finished wood build which are available from the Meze website right now and will run you €65 (£51 converted). Lightweight but with a nice finish, we didn’t actually try these but they looked nice enough, although the buds themselves didn’t look anything too special. Then there were the newest buds to the line up. The fully aluminium bodied IEMs that were shown to us were launching soon and deliver a high quality Kevlar cabling and will sell for just €49 (£39 converted).
Finally we checked out a product still in the prototyping stage. The Meze 99 Neo are essentially a more affordable version of the 99 Classics, with a plastic ear cup finish rather than the wood. There are no other changes however and all the same technology still applies. These will be launched shortly and will retail for €250 (£198 converted).
We’re looking forward to getting our hands on a review unit to see if on a repeat listen, the sound is as good as remember.
Check out Meze over at their website and a huge thanks to Mircea Fanatan (Managing Director) of Meze for walking us through the products.
