Astell&Kern AK UW100 review: Seriously great sound MSRP $299.00 Score Details DT Recommended Product “Astell&Kern lives up to its reputation for top-notch audio quality.” Pros Cons If you want a reliable set of wireless earbuds with decent sound, good battery life, and even active noise cancellation , you’ve already got tons of great options. But for a smaller subsection of buyers — often referred to as audiophiles — “decent” sound simply isn’t good enough.
The result is a fairly large, rounded-pentagonal earbud that is instantly recognizable as an A&K design, just not quite as sculptural as its other products. It’s a compromise, but I’d argue it’s mostly a successful one. In terms of size, the UW100 are about as big as Sony’s WF-1000XM4, which puts them among the largest group of earbuds — far bigger than Apple’s AirPods Pro or Jabra’s Elite 7 Pro.
Most wireless earbud companies don’t talk about the specifics of their DACs or amps because the average buyer doesn’t know or care about these components as long as everything just works. But A&K customers aren’t average buyers and they do care, so the company is making sure they know that the UW100 aren’t just a collection of off-the-shelf parts with an A&K logo stamped on them.
Too often, people stick with whatever comes installed from the factory, only to later complain about a bad fit, or worse, bad sound. Both problems can be solved by using a different size of eartips, and by requiring that you install a set of tips before you can use the UW100, A&K gets you to actively think about these choices.
For the most part, the connection was strong and reliable, with the exception of one morning as I walked to the gym and both earbuds intermittently dropped out for 2 seconds before reconnecting. This only lasted for about 10 minutes and it didn’t recur, so I can’t say what was going on, but it’s possible that A&K will need to issue a firmware update if the problem persists.
This kind of performance lends itself to virtually any music genre. Unless your sonic preferences lean heavily toward ultrapowerful bass, you’ll love the UW100’s default tuning. Aspirational EQ A&K could probably have taken the same route as Master & Dynamic, KEF, and Grado, and let the UW100’s out-of-the box EQ speak for itself, but it chose to include four presets in the AK TWS app, including bass emphasis, high emphasis, vocal emphasis, and game mode.
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