Westone WX MMCX Bluetooth Cable
Review Impressions:
I mostly wear my earphones over the ears and these Westone audio shell style warrant that approach. So with the preferred tips selected and earphones in place, you can slide the plastic separator down the cable to place the cable on the back of your neck for your own preferences.
You can feel the cable at all times as it does carry a small amount of weight and the cables are a little thick compared to wired earphone cables, however the weight is not enough to displace the earphones or cause too much distraction. Due to the excellent design and small low profile compact shell style the Westone Wx earphones fit closely and snug in the ear.
Overall ergonomics are okay but I would suggest a couple of improvements, if ear guides were supplied I feel the over ear experience would be a little more secure especially for those that use these for running actvities or fast sports. Also if the right earpiece controls could do with being a tiny bit lower down on the cable as rubs on the side of my neck a little. Both points are minor but thought worth mentioning.
The Westone Wx earphones have extremely low power consumption resulting in a louder and fuller signature than other earphones at similar volume dial settings, also these are very easy to drive meaning your smartphone can drive these competently will little effort.
The Westone Wx is a single driver balanced armature earphone supporting up to 8 hours battery life which should be enough to support most peoples listening duration requirments.
As these are Bluetooth 4.0 compatible and support aptX® technology they require pairing with supported sources.
Bluetooth pairing is easy just hold the middle control button down for a few seconds while searching for new Bluetooth devices on your phone, tablet, PC or DAP and select Westone Wx.
The sources I used was the IBasso DX200, Sony Z5 Phone and Android Nexus Tablet. All paired with ease and audio streams had no glitches or source stream cut outs.
As the buttons are raised a little, they are easy to identify via their tactile nature without looking and work well first time not requiring multiple button presses.
I did get the occasional minor cut out depending on the pressure placed on the controls when navigating the buttons, as if too much pressure is applied this could happen but this occurred maybe 5 percent of the time due to too much weight pulling on the cable from the press, so not significant and with practice can be overcome easily.
Using these for phone calls resulted in clear signal to and from the caller, at times some background sounds was present due to the sensitive nature of these earphones.
So how do these sound for hands free audio listening, now we have our source successfully paired.
The Westone Wx signature is a little thick sounding at first but you get used to it after a few minutes. Bass is strong with a slight weighted impact, at times it over extends it’s range resulting in slight veiling in the mids, nothing major but something to be aware of. Mids are full and vocals well balanced with strong presence. Again this earphone seems tuned for versatility and has an accessible fun character to it. Working well with dance music, pop, dub, electronic, rock and dub.
Treble detail is a little quick on decay and takes a bit of a back seat to the mids, however it does suite the fun signature style. Having a fairly coherent signature, the tuning has a well balanced representation. I would have preferred a bit of a brighter more articulate style with greater focus on upper end tuning, however considering that the cable can be used with many other earphones you have many other options available along with the Wx supplied earphones.
Staging is an impressive area for these in this price bracket and time and time again your find yourself feeling the space and depth for the more immersive listening sessions.
I also used these with the Campfire Andromeda and Polaris earphones – the connections were tight and the respective earphones signatures had accurate signature representations, now un-tethered and free from direct connection I found myself listening much longer than I ordinarily would.
Recognising that these are priced in quite a low bracket and taking into account the tips selection and versatility of the MMCX connection, I feel these would be a welcome addition to audio fans out there. Especially the ones who already have some MMCX earphones in their collection to make them blue tooth enabled.
Westone again have come up with a budget system giving a taster of their expert signature tuning and hopefully fans will try some of their other earphones models to connect with the bluetooth cable for an enjoyable aptX streaming experience.
Thanks again to Westone for supplying this earphone for the team at earphonia.com to review.
