Etymotic Evo Earphone review – Refined Balance
Evo
$499
Pros
- Excellent build, mastering signature
- Solid shells, Cool modern design
- Transparent neutral detail
Cons
- Cable thinness a concern for durability
- Nozzles pretty long, so care needed
- Upper region harshness with less warm sources
With Lucid Audio acquiring Etymotic recently, they have took everything back to the drawing board and have take the opportunity to do a full redesign of the shells.
Now the Etymotic has got it’s long overdue high end wardrobe design change, Richard Gere cant take the credit here for this and the Evo certainly now turns heads.
Gone are the days of the Frakenstine Bolt design inears, that abominaton has been slayed and now a slick daftpunk-helmet-esque design is now present.
These wouldn’t look out of place in Tron and certainly have a futuristic design style. I’m certain a new set of audiophile consumers will be attracted, who need the whole package – design, build and sound signature.
The new design is a long overdue decision, which I welcome and testimony to Lucid Audio (Etymotics new owners) announcing they are here now and not afraid to shake things up.
The shells sit snugly in my medium sized ears and isolation which is paramount to the auditory experience, thankfully is perfect for me. Using supplied Foam tips I cant hear any external sounds even when no source is playing.
As the T2 cables are light they don’t have enough weight to pull over my ears of on their own, meaning I need to use the lockable chin sliders to secure them in place. Not a major problem for me but the addition of memory wire would be useful in future releases.
The shells have a lot of leeway to rotate without any cut outs and the T2 connectors while not extensively used in the industry do feel better to me than MMXC and suffer zero microphonics at all.
I would suggest suppling memory wire or ear guides in future to avoid using the chin slider as the standard stock T2 cables will not stay over the ear by default with their own weight.
Another concern I have is that the stock cable is so thin that I am worried that pulling from the wrong part of the cable when disconnecting the cables that they could break. This concern may be un warranted but I feel I have to follow the user manual to the letter when handling these cables.
The Super and UltraBax may not have this feeling/concern but I am unable to test this currently as these have not been provided for the review.
In future the addition of balanced cables would be welcome as I don’t know of any easily available after market T2 balanced cables.
So for now any 2.5 and 4.4 balanced options are not available to me for currently.
One thing to note is even though the shells are fully redesigned the nozzles appear to be similar in terms of length and bore hole width.
There are changable filters that can be unscrewed using the special supplied tool and replaced with others, they are colour coded and additional types from the Etymotic site can be bought if you want to tweak the sound more. It would have been good if all types were included as I cant see them being a huge cost.
This means that they are quite deep fitting I would suggest trying a number of tips styles and only inserting gradually until you get a close fit but be careful not to just fully insert the tips without working out the appropriate depth that is suitable for you ear shape or size. As these nozzles are relatively long and you need to take care and work out the best fit for you.
As mentioned the earphonia.com team are certainly impressed with the redesign and the weight are pretty heavy, relaying a level of quality in the manufacturing. It makes you feel like you have got some bang for your buck. Also due to the fact that metal powder and mixed together for building the shells, this means the shell shapes have infinite potential for design elements for ergonomics, style and airflow dynamics. Certainly this will be interesting to see how far the Etymotic engineers can take this, maybe with the help of AI tests for optimisation.
