The first pair of audiophile grade earphones I ever listened to for a short while where the Shure SE35’s. Even though I absolutely loved them, I learned that as time goes on there were other great sounding companies to be found. While I kept listening to demos of $600-$700 earphones and headphones, I found NuForce’s NE-700M in ear earphones reminded me that you do not need to pay a high end price for great sounding IEM’s. As a matter of fact, I found these earphones to be quite pleasurable, and were considerably low priced for the sound quality these earphones offer. The NE-700M’s feature a multitude of goodies. Aluminum design, titanium coated drivers, and soundstage quality audio. Read on to find out if these are the best IEM’s available without breaking a Benjamin out of your wallet.

I guess we can start off with everything that comes included with the NE-700M’s. In the package you will receive the headphones themselves, a very nice soft touch carrying pouch, three different types of ear tips, and a user manual. Taking a deeper look at the earphones you will notice how amazingly simple and elegant these monitors look the minute you tear them out of the box. The headphones feature a cone shaped design where they are held together by a rubber band that surrounds the outer portion of the headphone. If you look closely you will notice that the headphone feature the letters NU on the back that are represented as the company’s embossed logo design.

As far as durability goes, they are pretty decent. Since the outside body is made of aluminum, you may find that these headphones may pick up dings if you were to drop them on something solid. That being said, I found that after a few days of use that there were no apparent scratch marks to be found. Anyway, back to the design and look of the aluminum. In my opinion, the earphones sort of remind of a very deep and vibrant bronze like color. I got all kinds of comments from my friends about how cool these things looked.

Let’s talk a little bit about fitment and things along those lines. NuForce has realized that everybody has different ear canal sizes, and that’s why they have included multiple sets of ear tips. While there were a lot of sizes ranging from very small to very large, I found that the best ones to fit me where the smallest sets, since I have very small ears. Anyway, these were extremely comfortable from the get go and I had no problems when it came to the earphones staying in my ear or accidentally slipping out. Isolation is a must with most IEM’s, and I found that the NE-700M’s had some pretty decent ambient noise reduction. While these definitely were not the best I have personally experienced, I was still able to listen to the NE-700M’s at a comfortable listening level in my HS cafeteria without hearing voices and other loud distractions.

Now, all of the above is great, but the main question is the audio quality. For this, we will be taking a look at a bunch of different categories including low’s, midrange, and highs. I did allow a solid 72 hours of burn it time before beginning initial audio testing. Even though they sounded great fresh out of the box, their true sound came out after a few days of pumping and grinding.

Let’s first start off with the bass, which I will have to say is very good considering that these are only $75 earphones. I found that the bass was the highest point in these earphones. From a person who has listened to Dr. Dre Beats and found that the bass is overpowering and just plain hurtful (at least in my sense of the term) it was nice to know that the bass was not the only quality feature here (even though the Beats are nothing like these). I tested out the bass on a number of different songs, including the very bass heavy Smile for Me Now by 2Pac, I also had the chance to test out one of my favorite rap songs, Dr Dre’s Nuthin’ But A “G” Thang. If you have ever listened to Smile for Me Now, you will note that the bass is presented right from the get go, and I found the bass right from the start up was huge. I also found that the bass was very fast and packed a very powerful punch on specific songs depending on the different levels of use. At half volume level, they sound great, however, turn it up a few clicks, and the quality may turn a little bit tinny and overpower the vocals and the treble. At lower volume levels, the bass made out perfectly and was powerful enough when it needed to be, and decreased a bit when it needed to. In case you where wondering, I tested these out on both an iPhone 4 and a iMac. Maybe it was just me, but found that the iMac forced out more bass power than my iPhone 4.

Up next is the midrange session, which I found to be very decent, although not exactly what I was looking for. Now, I am not going to get into frequency response or anything like that, but I will tell you a little bit more about the midranges. I tested these out on a few different artists, however, I found that the best artist to test the midrange’s on were Sevendust’s own Lajon Witherspoon. Lajon has a very good voice and is just perfect for the midrange. Its low enough not to be mentioned in the high category, but also not too deep to be noticed in the low end. Now, I know vocals aren’t everything when it comes to midrange, however, for my needs, they are one of the most important. I found that the midrange was pretty warm when used at the right sound level. However, when turned up to louder volumes, the vocals become a little bit distorted and throw off the treble quite a bit. Combine this with the ever so powerful bass, and you have one ugly combination. Lajon’s voice was very clear throughout each tone and I found that even though some parts felt a little bit hazy, the majority of the vocals were very clear. After listing to many other vocals to quite some time, I also had a chance to pump my heart out to some midrange instrumentals. There aren’t too many words to describe the instrumentals due to the fact that they weren’t powerful like the treble and the bass. In fact, I found that the midrange to be one of the least powerful things about these earphones right next to vocals. These aren’t at all bad, however, I do think that the midrange needs to be increased quite a bit to be on par with the heavy bass.

Last, but not least, we have my most desired feature of music, treble. The treble was actually my favorite part of these phones. While the bass was very powerful and heavy, I found that the treble was equally as powerful and featured a very clear tune and glowed in the soundstage. High end frequency tunes were definitely the most impressive. While I am not gonna go into detail about every single song that I listened to in the high end range, I’ll at least give you the benefit of the doubt by stating that these earphones were very good in terms of audio quality no matter what tone, wether in the highs or mid-highs, sounded very good. However, I did find one small gripe about these. I found that when turning these up to higher volumes (like almost all sub $100 earphones) that the treble is very powerful although at the same time very distorted and cloudy. Although still not as big as the bass, it was still an issue nonetheless.

Now, would I recommend the NE-700M’s to the average consumer? My answer would be yes. To sum things up, the NE-700M’s shine in terms of bass and lower end frequencies, combine this with very clear and shiny high ends, and you have yourself a great pair of sub $100 earphones. However, I do feel that the midrange does need to be a bit improved for these to be amazing earphones. Wether it be upping the midrange or just equaling out the bass and the treble, It doesn’t matter, something needs to be done to make these fantastic, as these are right up there with the big $100-$150 earphones. you can pick up either the NE-700M (includes microphone, haven’t tested out yet, will update when I do) or the NE-700X (does not include a mic) in a few different colors for $65 and $75 respectively. Head on over to NuForce’s site and check them out.



NuForce NE-700X & NE-700M