This is Review of MEEaudio Pinnacle 1 premium in-ear monitors. http://www.meeaudio.com/pinnacle, also available on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01A60I4P6/
The flagship headphones are not born overnight. It takes a lot of hard work, genuine passion, and accumulated experience to reach that level. Armed with these skills, MEEaudio spent nearly 2 years crafting their next big release. I actually had a number of discussions with Mike of MEEaudio (PR face of the company) over the course of last year about the progress of Pinnacle development and manufacturing, and know with certainty how much effort went into these headphones. As a matter of fact, they could have been released half a year ago, but MEEaudio continued tweaking minor details until everything was done to perfection.
MEEaudio, formerly MEElec, is well known and respected in audiophile community, even though some of their headphones fall into a general consumer oriented budget category. If you focus on sound quality, “budget” doesn’t always mean a bad thing, where just recently I reviewed their RX18 IEMs (on Amazon for under $8 shipped) and found it to be worthy of “Giant Killer” level. Now, I got my hands on their new flagship model which again pushes the Giant Killer envelope, even at $199. MEEaudio named their new model “Pinnacle 1”, so let’s take a closer look to find out if they were able to reach the pinnacle level with their new P1 release.
Unboxing.
Starting with an outside sleeve, you are greeted with a glossy high def image of P1 that visually pops out of the cover. While taking a tour around the box to read the back and the sides, you can find a lot of interesting details about the design, the spec, and the included accessories. I personally enjoy analyzing the packaging while reminiscing a good old brick’n’mortar days when we were able to walk down the isle of a local electronics store, pick up a box, and indulge ourselves in reading about the product. But words are just words, so off goes the sleeve to reveal a gift-box quality storage box.
After a brief moment while looking at the split in the middle of the top cover, I opened the box by flipping both sides up – quite an original cover design which I haven’t seen before. With the cover sides up, you’re greeted with a view of a beautiful leather case, a pair of P1 shells above it in a foam cutout, and two neatly stacked boxes below it with a proper labeling of the content. Even before starting to analyze the ergonomics of the shell design, I was still analyzing the ergonomics of the box by itself with a small pocket for 1/4” adapter underneath of the main foam insert and another indented opening for user manual under the leather case, and both accessory boxes. I often mention about the rewarding nature of unboxing experience, and here it was definitely worthy of the flagship status.
Accessories.
Starting with eartips, you get a neat plastic tray with every tip in its own individual storage pocket. A total of 6 silicone eartip pairs were included: 3 pairs of S/M/L with a traditional single flange semi-springy cap, 2 pairs of M/L double flange, and a pair of M triple-flange tips. Also, included were 3 pairs of S/M/L genuine Comply foam tips, as well as 1/4” adapter and a smart shirt clip where one of the handles had a cleverly designed spring-loaded hook to attach to the cable. Not that you have to worry about microphonics, but considering you are dealing with a premium multi-conductor twisted cable – this was a nice custom accessory like I haven’t seen before.
But my favorite accessory has to be a leather case with a magnetic flip cover. Everything about this case screams premium, from a quality of the leather to a neat stitching, from a polished metal tab with Pinnacle name and engraved serial number to a soft felt roomy interior to accommodate P1 with its thick cable. The size of the case was just perfect, not too big or too small, and the shape was slick and comfortable to slide in your pocket.
Cables.
It's very rare to see a premium cable included with stock accessories. The reason is very simple – it adds to the cost. P1 was designed with a removable cable using industry standard mmcx connector, and it would have been enough to include just a basic audio cable and maybe a smart cable with in-line remote, leaving it up to a user to upgrade later. I have no idea how they managed to pull this off with $199 price tag, but they did include a nice 4-conductor copper headset cable with in-line remote and mic AND a premium silver plated pure copper audio cable.
Headset cable is soft with a black shielding, a solid L-shaped molded headphone jack, a molded durable y-splitter, even a cable cinch despite in-line remote on the right side, and a durable universal in-line remote with mic and a single multi-function button for Play/Pause/Call and multi-press for track skip (I confirmed double click to skip next with my Note 4). Each wire connected to mmcx connector housing is twisted (two separate isolated conductors), and the connector housing itself has a nice rubbery grip and a proper “hard to see” labeling with ID bump on the right side. Y-splitter doesn’t combine L/R ground wires and continuous twisted with 4 separate isolated conductors down to a headphone jack.
The silver-plated wire looks pure class. Featuring the same L-shaped 90deg jack, which btw in both cases has a slimmed down collar to work with heavy duty smartphone cases, and the same rubbery molded y-splitter which just passes a pair of conductors from each side and continuous twisted with all 4 isolated conductors down to headphone jack. You get a nice easy to slide cable cinch, and a solid rubbery grip mmcx connector housing with a proper L/R side labeling and ID bump on the right side. I did say “proper” labeling, but it wasn’t easy to read, thus I do appreciate the bump to feel the right cable connector, on both audio and headset cables.
Labeling of the cable connector is very important here. The ergonomics of the design was crafted to accommodate either wire-up or wire down fitment of these IEMs. While in so many cases we try to adapt to wearing non-symmetric IEMs with wire down where shells are angled and sticking out of your ears, here MEEaudio intentionally designed the shape to work both ways. Since cable is detachable, you just unplug and swap the shells while keeping the same L/R orientation of the cable. That is also a reason why the shells don’t have any L/R marking on them, to eliminate confusion if you are going to swap them.
The design of the cables, both the shielding material and the way how cables are twisted, yielded a microphonics free experience. But if you want to, you can always use the included smart clip which fits the cable snuggly. I also really like how the color of the audio cable had a matching color tone to go along with P1 shells. Furthermore, I took advantage of mmcx connector removable functionality to test P1 with my other pure silver and silver-plated cables – none of which yielded any significant improvement over the stock silver-plated cable. I’m a cable believer for sure, but in this case I found myself a little bit biased because I really liked the feel, the look, and the sound improvement of this cable - noticeable when you compare it to the other included headset copper cable.
The flagship headphones are not born overnight. It takes a lot of hard work, genuine passion, and accumulated experience to reach that level. Armed with these skills, MEEaudio spent nearly 2 years crafting their next big release. I actually had a number of discussions with Mike of MEEaudio (PR face of the company) over the course of last year about the progress of Pinnacle development and manufacturing, and know with certainty how much effort went into these headphones. As a matter of fact, they could have been released half a year ago, but MEEaudio continued tweaking minor details until everything was done to perfection.
MEEaudio, formerly MEElec, is well known and respected in audiophile community, even though some of their headphones fall into a general consumer oriented budget category. If you focus on sound quality, “budget” doesn’t always mean a bad thing, where just recently I reviewed their RX18 IEMs (on Amazon for under $8 shipped) and found it to be worthy of “Giant Killer” level. Now, I got my hands on their new flagship model which again pushes the Giant Killer envelope, even at $199. MEEaudio named their new model “Pinnacle 1”, so let’s take a closer look to find out if they were able to reach the pinnacle level with their new P1 release.
Unboxing.
Starting with an outside sleeve, you are greeted with a glossy high def image of P1 that visually pops out of the cover. While taking a tour around the box to read the back and the sides, you can find a lot of interesting details about the design, the spec, and the included accessories. I personally enjoy analyzing the packaging while reminiscing a good old brick’n’mortar days when we were able to walk down the isle of a local electronics store, pick up a box, and indulge ourselves in reading about the product. But words are just words, so off goes the sleeve to reveal a gift-box quality storage box.
After a brief moment while looking at the split in the middle of the top cover, I opened the box by flipping both sides up – quite an original cover design which I haven’t seen before. With the cover sides up, you’re greeted with a view of a beautiful leather case, a pair of P1 shells above it in a foam cutout, and two neatly stacked boxes below it with a proper labeling of the content. Even before starting to analyze the ergonomics of the shell design, I was still analyzing the ergonomics of the box by itself with a small pocket for 1/4” adapter underneath of the main foam insert and another indented opening for user manual under the leather case, and both accessory boxes. I often mention about the rewarding nature of unboxing experience, and here it was definitely worthy of the flagship status.
Accessories.
Starting with eartips, you get a neat plastic tray with every tip in its own individual storage pocket. A total of 6 silicone eartip pairs were included: 3 pairs of S/M/L with a traditional single flange semi-springy cap, 2 pairs of M/L double flange, and a pair of M triple-flange tips. Also, included were 3 pairs of S/M/L genuine Comply foam tips, as well as 1/4” adapter and a smart shirt clip where one of the handles had a cleverly designed spring-loaded hook to attach to the cable. Not that you have to worry about microphonics, but considering you are dealing with a premium multi-conductor twisted cable – this was a nice custom accessory like I haven’t seen before.
But my favorite accessory has to be a leather case with a magnetic flip cover. Everything about this case screams premium, from a quality of the leather to a neat stitching, from a polished metal tab with Pinnacle name and engraved serial number to a soft felt roomy interior to accommodate P1 with its thick cable. The size of the case was just perfect, not too big or too small, and the shape was slick and comfortable to slide in your pocket.
Cables.
It's very rare to see a premium cable included with stock accessories. The reason is very simple – it adds to the cost. P1 was designed with a removable cable using industry standard mmcx connector, and it would have been enough to include just a basic audio cable and maybe a smart cable with in-line remote, leaving it up to a user to upgrade later. I have no idea how they managed to pull this off with $199 price tag, but they did include a nice 4-conductor copper headset cable with in-line remote and mic AND a premium silver plated pure copper audio cable.
Headset cable is soft with a black shielding, a solid L-shaped molded headphone jack, a molded durable y-splitter, even a cable cinch despite in-line remote on the right side, and a durable universal in-line remote with mic and a single multi-function button for Play/Pause/Call and multi-press for track skip (I confirmed double click to skip next with my Note 4). Each wire connected to mmcx connector housing is twisted (two separate isolated conductors), and the connector housing itself has a nice rubbery grip and a proper “hard to see” labeling with ID bump on the right side. Y-splitter doesn’t combine L/R ground wires and continuous twisted with 4 separate isolated conductors down to a headphone jack.
The silver-plated wire looks pure class. Featuring the same L-shaped 90deg jack, which btw in both cases has a slimmed down collar to work with heavy duty smartphone cases, and the same rubbery molded y-splitter which just passes a pair of conductors from each side and continuous twisted with all 4 isolated conductors down to headphone jack. You get a nice easy to slide cable cinch, and a solid rubbery grip mmcx connector housing with a proper L/R side labeling and ID bump on the right side. I did say “proper” labeling, but it wasn’t easy to read, thus I do appreciate the bump to feel the right cable connector, on both audio and headset cables.
Labeling of the cable connector is very important here. The ergonomics of the design was crafted to accommodate either wire-up or wire down fitment of these IEMs. While in so many cases we try to adapt to wearing non-symmetric IEMs with wire down where shells are angled and sticking out of your ears, here MEEaudio intentionally designed the shape to work both ways. Since cable is detachable, you just unplug and swap the shells while keeping the same L/R orientation of the cable. That is also a reason why the shells don’t have any L/R marking on them, to eliminate confusion if you are going to swap them.
The design of the cables, both the shielding material and the way how cables are twisted, yielded a microphonics free experience. But if you want to, you can always use the included smart clip which fits the cable snuggly. I also really like how the color of the audio cable had a matching color tone to go along with P1 shells. Furthermore, I took advantage of mmcx connector removable functionality to test P1 with my other pure silver and silver-plated cables – none of which yielded any significant improvement over the stock silver-plated cable. I’m a cable believer for sure, but in this case I found myself a little bit biased because I really liked the feel, the look, and the sound improvement of this cable - noticeable when you compare it to the other included headset copper cable.
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