HiFiMAN RE-400 Waterline are wired in-ear monitors (IEMs) that are interesting because of a few quite particular reasons. In the first place, they have been around for quite a while now. I believe that HiFiMAN introduced them as far back as in 2012. And the fact that they are made today, manufactured and offered by Dr. Fang Bian’s company can speak for itself. The other thing is, well, the price. When introduced, they cost 99 USD. And later on, HiFiMAN dropped the price to 29 USD. Now, the official retail for those is 19 USD. Let me re-iterate this: nineteen American dollars. What you get for this is a pair of phones, a set of accessory tips (quite a few of them in fact) and a carrying case. While I don’t want to get into how does the bill of materials looks here, what I can say here is that their current market price could be a good real-world definition of the word “disruptive”. The other thing that will undoubtedly strike is that they are actually really well made, the casings are made from a machined metal with having, as described by the manufacturer, “a silver matte body”. What’s even more interesting, there’s some information on the packaging about “titanium coated diaphraghms” and so on, simply confirmed what I’ve just wrote about their price.
There’s also a flip-side to them that I would like to mention there that would be another interesting point of view as well. You see, the RE-400 reming me somehow of the old days, where we had first “serious” portable players (usually based on SoC “system-on-a-chip” designs) and the first more audiophile, dedicated earphones. In comparison to what’s available today, these first players and phones were not that cheap neither reachable for everyone like they are now. My point here is that many may simply disregard the RE-400 today, while back ten years ago they would really spark some more interest at those 99 bucks. Obviously, whether my point is true or not will depend on how they sound. And also on their design and ergonomics, since the latter is really important in the case of IEMs and especially a wired ones.
HiFiMAN RE-400 – design and ergonomics
Let’s start with the packaging here. It’s neat and somehow interesting. And funny at the same time. You get them in a zipper bag, where the headphones are in their packaging and the case is added outside of it. It looks like the case was added extra, but that’s just a detail. What’s important is that everything here looks just neat and nice. Nothing’s out of line and there’s also nothing that would scream “cheap”. Even more, we actually get a fair selection of tips that vary in size. Some of them come with the case, some are in the main packaging, which is also a bit peculiar. Anyway, the phones themselves are actually surprisingly well made. They don’t look expensive or rich by any means, yet the whole design is just tidy. On a side not I must say that I like it, it was exactly the case with the HE-400SE, where you had a feeling that all that the cost and effort went into the actual design of the phones and not into any fancy stuff that’s more prevalent in the higher-priced headphones. I fully understand that in the case of more expensive phones you will want more bling, but here – I like the clever approach.