Closer Examination

The HIFIMAN Mini Shangri-La is a clean looking set of headphones, albeit not necessarily one which will feel premium in the hands. HIFIMAN has a few different headband designs that tend to be circulated between its headphones, and this particular one is the same as what we've seen on the budget-friendly HE400se, as well as the HE-R9/R10 and the Edition XS too. There is no suspension band here, with HIFIMAN using a single, thick faux leather-covered headband with memory foam filler inside. While it works well enough in practice since it's comfortable and wide enough to minimize hot spots on the top of the head, it's still one of the least expensive headband solutions and leaves little doubt as to where HIFIMAN considers the Mini Shangri-La to be positioned in its lineup. The good news is that these headphones are fairly light and low in density, so the headband was still plenty comfortable for me. It terminates in silver-colored plastic housings with the HIFIMAN logo on one side and "Mini Shangri-La" branding facing outward, with L/R markings on the inside to go with certification labels as relevant.


Looking closer on the inside, we see the headband continues into this plastic housing. A steel band is part of the headband assembly and is used for sizing, with several cutouts in the steel the plastic ends slot into. Sizing options are plenty, however they are going to be more useful for those with larger heads than smaller ones. The clamping force from this headband is also weaker than I'd like, and this plays a big role in the overall listening experience with the Mini Shangri-La, as we will soon see.


The good news about this headband assembly, at least compared to the cheaper suspension headband system HIFIMAN uses with the likes of the Sundara, is that we do get some form of horizontal ear cup swivel for some wiggle room, courtesy the cutout in the plastic housing. There are additionally two pivot points, courtesy the C-shaped yokes/frame for the ear pads themselves to have near-360° rotation around the center, although do note that the attached cable gets in the way if you try too hard here for whatever reason. The bottom line is that the Mini Shangri-La may not look the most ergonomic or premium, but there's enough flexibility here to grant a comfortable fit for most people reading this review.


The Mini Shangri-La is an open-back set of headphones, as is the case with pretty much every e-stat on the market, and HIFIMAN has adopted a honeycomb mesh-style grille on the back which adds protection to the fragile drivers while minimizing back wave reflections—somehow I doubt we'll be seeing an unveiled version of a HIFIMAN e-stat any time soon. The driver is massive, as with other such oval-shaped HIFIMAN headphones, and we can see some of the nanoparticle coating on the diaphragm resulting in a green/pink color shift depending on the viewing angle. The ear cups touch each other slightly on the bottom, albeit not enough to worry about uneven ear pad wear. The ear pads are secured in place using multiple clips on the contact surface, which in turn is a plastic ring glued to the rest of the pad itself. This allows for the ear pads to be user-replaceable, while looking similar to the HIFIMAN UltraPads sold separately for $79. Removing one helps confirm the hybrid composition used here, with softer polyester on the contact surface and protein leather on the sides. The pads are also contoured to better fit around the ears, and we see there is also a protective lining to prevent dust and other contaminants from hitting the drivers, that adopt a conventional plate design. The diaphragm is stretched under tension and secured in place in the ear cups, with the material being thin enough to almost see through the whole assembly.


On the bottom and angled towards the front is where we find the attached cable fits into the ear cups. Most e-stats don't have detachable cables given the difficulty of getting a stable removable Pro bias connection. The Mini Shangri-La can be placed on your desk without pressure on the cable connection points even in the absence of a headphone stand, although this is where I really wanted to see HIFIMAN use their better headband system, allowing the ear cups to lie flat on the desk and further reduce any stress here. HIFIMAN makes it harder with the cable being thin and flat, with the sleeving quite see-through and prone to working itself loose over time if the Shangri-La Sr. and Jr. cables are anything to go by. With other headphones where you can replace the cable easily, the build quality of stock cables is less of an issue—not so here, unfortunately. There's a simple splitter in the pathway of this long cable, allowing for easy connection to energizers (e-stat amps) that might be placed further away from reach owing to either real estate concerns on your desk and/or need for ventilation or active cooling for the amplifier itself. It terminates in a standard 5-pin STAX Pro bias barrel connector fit into a rather bulky housing. I appreciate the markings on the top to help align the termination to fit easily into the energizer output though! Overall, I also like the black and silver aesthetics of the Mini Shangri-La, and it looks nice with a matching stand too.