Is Planar Magnetic the Future? 🤔 Edifier STAX Spirit S5 Review

Introducing Edifier’s best headphones for audiophiles: the STAX Spirit S5 Planar Magnetic headphones. These are not noise cancelling headphones. The focus of this product is purely on audio quality. Some believe that active noise cancelling tech can negatively impact sound, so by eliminating it, there’s no need to use a filter to compensate for noise canceling’s impact on sound. This also extends the battery life which is a pretty fat and juicy 80 hours.

This back to basics approach for wireless headphones usually applies to the budget range. However, these are pretty expensive at $499. For this price, you could get top headphones from Sony, Bose, Sennheiser. It’s not cheap, so it must really be good at something to justify the cost. The price may drop eventually, so check the link at the bottom of this article for the latest price.

Interestingly, Edifier also provides an additional set of cushions made of fabric instead of faux leather, offering a more breathable and absorbent option that can easily swap out. This dual-option feature is uncommon, it’s usually either one, but here you get both.

The headphones do have to compensate for which can be done using the Edifier ConneX app. It allows you to tackle control options, audio-related features and sound customisation with a few EQ presets and a 4-band parametric EQ. More on the sound settings later.

The Feature Experience

I want to share my experience using the S5. While its build quality isn’t the most premium at this price, but it feels pretty durable, especially with the flexible headband. The plush earcups reduce the clamping force from the headband, making them comfortable to wear overall. All controls are on the right earcup, but the button controls are a little weird. The pause and play button doubles as the power button, and used to switch between sound presets instead of it being for skipping tracks, which is done by pressing and holding the volume buttons. It needs a bit getting used to.

It’s Snapdragon Sound and Hi-Res wireless certified, meaning they support high bandwidth streams up to 24-bit/96kHz. They offer a wide selection of audio codecs for hi-res listening, including aptX Adaptive, LDAC and LHDC V5. In my opinion, assuming your device supports these codecs, they do have impact sound quality, but the driver tech and tuning are more important.

Sound Quality Comparison

The Planar Magnetic drivers in these headphones are faster and more responsive, producing a wide frequency band and a very tight sound. The focus is more on accuracy and clarity rather than a heavy sound signature.

Compared to top wireless headphones in the market, you’ll notice that the frequency response of the S5 is flatter in the lower mids and bass regions. When compared side by side with popular headphones, the S5 do sound very good in terms of clarity and crispness without sounding thin. There’s lot of dynamic range to go around.

👉 Have a listen to the sound quality samples.

Sound Settings

It’s got several sounds settings. I like it on Original sound settings, but Dynamic setting’s so much better. It lifts the lows and mids so it sounds even more exciting and crisp. Monitor setting’s meant to give you a studio monitor sound which isn’t so bass focused, but still retains dynamics of the mids and highs.

As I said, there’s also a parametric EQ. The difference between this and your usual graphic EQ is that a graphic EQ gives you set frequencies to adjust, like how the Sonys do it, but with a parametric EQ you can choose the specific frequency, and even set the Q-factor. It’s really for more advanced users, but what I don’t like about how it’s done here is that there’s only 4 bands, and you can only go 3 decibels up or down, so you can tweak the sound to a certain extent only.

Microphone Pickup Comparison

In quiet condition, the mic pickup is quite good. My voice was loud and full. However, in noisy or windy conditions, although the noise gating was quite aggressive, some noise still comes through, and it sometimes cuts into my voice which made it fade out. In less noisy scenarios, the mic pickup performs well.

👉 Have a listen to the sound quality samples.

(Tested mic pickup in both quiet and noisy conditions using loud cafe noise and wind noise from a fan.)

Conclusion

Overall, I can see these headphones appealing to a specific part of the market. People who prefer a streamlined approach with minimal but meaningful features like long battery life, multipoint pairing, and a big focus on audio performance.

However, this will be a small segment of the market willing to spend this much on wireless headphones without ANC or Transparency mode. But if your focus is on sound quality, these are worth listening to. They have very fast response, low distortion, crisp, clean and energetic. Definitely worth a listen. Let me know in the comments what you think of the STAX Spirit S5.

If you’d like to check the latest prices of the headphones, click on the Amazon links below.

Check latest Price:

Edifier STAX SPIRIT S5 - ($499) Link TBA

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