When I started doing audio reviews more seriously earlier this year, I was not expecting my first experience with the HIFIMAN brand to be a set of TWS earphones! HIFIMAN is not just treating the wireless market as a money-grabbing machine, and I say this knowing people will scoff at the cost of the TWS800 anyway. I do think the future of consumer audio is in the wireless market, and things such as the recently released Deva Pro with the R2R Bluetooth DAC show HIFIMAN wants to be "HIFIWirelessMAN," too. The company is well-regarded for a lot of things, but its previous attempt at breaking into the TWS market resulted in a 50% discount for the TWS600 that is in place more often than not. I don't know whether the same will happen with the TWS800, but if it does, there's certainly a strong argument to be made for purchasing these at $150. This is so unlike anything else I have used in the past that I had to throw out all my expectations from a TWS set and treat this as its own thing. Be it the immense physical size, which actually does not affect the fit as much as you would think, or lack of typical technological features—mobile app, aptX HD, hybrid noise cancellation, and so on—HIFIMAN instead decided to go a completely different route than the typical Qualcomm QCC30xx/50xx and V-shaped tuning combination to where I started looking at IEMs for tuning comparisons.

There is generally good tuning here, at least in my opinion, but it gets marred by a couple of things. The elevated response at 4–5 kHz—the so-called presence region—results in some shouty and distorted output. But the lower maximum volume/amplitude of said signal makes it fare better comparatively, albeit while resulting in a less-energetic bass response that may hurt appeal. To be fair, nothing about this is mainstream, so some of those cons are not really that bad in real life. If you treat this as its own thing, there are still issues no doubt, but the pros outweigh the cons to where I was left impressed. It's just the $300 bill that is hard to swallow, which the increased complexity of the build inside no doubt contributes to. Where else will you find a dedicated amplifier module to tackle a 150 Ω impedance driver in a TWS set of all things? We then get to the use of multi-flanged ear tips, another first for me in this market. Look, at $300, it's not easy to recommend it. At the same time, I don't want to dismiss it as a parlor trick since there are working concepts here that I would like to see adopted and tweaked. If a TWS800SE comes up, for example, I may well be in line to see what HIFIMAN has done there.