Hifiman HE600 & more

The Ananda Unveiled, Edition XV and HE600 are all open‑backed designs.

Hifiman’s assault on the studio market continues with no fewer than four new headphone models: the Edition XV, Audivina LE, Ananda Unveiled and HE600.

Hifiman sounds like one of Marvel’s less well known superheroes, but they are actually a headphone manufacturer with a huge portfolio of products. The fast pace of innovation and rapid turnover of models reflects the progress being made by founder Dr Fang Bian, who is constantly striving to improve his designs. Although they make other types of headphone, Hifiman specialise in planar magnetic models, and have claimed numerous breakthroughs in driver technology.

It can be a little hard to keep up with the development of the Hifiman product range, which usually includes numerous B‑stock offers, limited editions and variations on a theme. At the time of writing, the collection available in the UK comprises no fewer than 60 different headphones, including all four of the models that were sent for this review. What these all have in common is very aggressive pricing. Historically, headphones that use alternative technologies such as planar magnetic drivers have tended to occupy premium price brackets, but the Edition XV, Audivina LE, Ananda Unveiled and HE600 are all relatively affordable. The first two retail at around the £360$400 mark, with the HE600 coming in at about double that, and the Ananda Unveiled somewhere in the middle.

In The Frame

When I first tested Hifiman headphones in 2022, there was often very little in common between different models. Since then, Dr Bian seems to have been working to standardise some aspects of his designs, and the four models under review share quite a few construction features. The frames appear identical in each case, with a perforated fabric strap sitting inside a separate structural headband and cushioning the load on top of the head. The yokes from which the earcups are suspended are likewise very similar in all four models. They permit the cups to rotate freely up and down, and a little fore and aft. In practice, this means it’s relatively easy to adjust any of the four headphones to fit your personal head shape.

A final point of similarity between all of the review models is that the signal from your headphone amp enters through separate mini‑jack sockets at the base of each earcup. In all four cases, alas, it’s needlessly difficult to identify which earcup and which side of the Y‑shaped cable is left and which is right. If I were planning to pack them away on a regular basis, I’d be making coloured labels, especially for the cables....