HIFIMAN HE1000 WiFi Headphone Review: When Streaming Feels Serious

Maybe that’s faint praise on paper. In practice it’s surprisingly rare. There is one caveat, though.

The bass carries a bit more substance than some long-time Hifiman listeners might expect. On most recordings I liked the change. Bass guitars have greater presence. Kick drums feel more grounded. Electronic music benefits from the extra weight underneath everything else. Occasionally, however, that added mid-bass energy can make dense mixes sound slightly thicker than ideal. I noticed it now and then with layered vocal arrangements where the lower mids became a touch richer than I would have preferred. Not a major issue. Just something I kept noticing.

The bass itself remains extremely well controlled.

There’s a persistent assumption that planar headphones are all texture and not much impact. Like a lot of audiophile folklore, there’s usually a grain of truth buried somewhere underneath years of repetition.

The HE1000 WiFi Headphone handles both better than expected. Extension is strong, but more importantly the low end stays organized. Modern electronic recordings can get messy in a hurry when multiple bass layers start stacking on top of each other. Here they remain distinct. You can follow individual elements without the presentation turning clinical. The headphone seems more interested in shape than sheer force.

Acoustic bass recordings illustrate that nicely. You’re hearing the note develop, resonate, and fade rather than simply receiving a dose of low-frequency energy.

The spatial presentation is probably the feature that keeps pulling me back. Not because it’s the biggest stage I’ve heard. If anything, I’ve heard wider. Not because it’s enormous. Plenty of large planar headphones sound enormous. What matters is that the space feels coherent. I’ve heard headphones that generate impressive width by stretching everything outward until the image feels disconnected.

Almost as if somebody grabbed the recording with both hands and pulled it apart. Others create depth but lose positional certainty. The HE1000 WiFi Headphone lands somewhere in the middle and generally sounds more believable because of it. Imaging is particularly good. With orchestral recordings, sections remain stable as arrangements become more complex. Woodwinds, strings, brass—everything occupies its own place without feeling artificially separated.

You hear little things because the driver keeps the picture still, not because the treble has been jacked up to fake insight.

The same thing happens with dense progressive rock recordings where dozens of elements compete for attention. Nothing collapses. Nothing gets spotlighted unnecessarily, either. I don’t really listen to music to admire separation as a standalone achievement. Separation is useful because it preserves relationships between instruments. That’s a different thing. I don’t find myself listening to it and thinking about imaging. Which is probably the strongest compliment I can give its imaging.