Audio Performance

The sound quality of the Mixcder E8 is by far its strongest aspect. Considering the fact that we're talking about a $70/€60 pair of headphones, you definitely get your money's worth in terms of audio performance. This pair of headphones is quite bassy, but without the bass being completely overdone and all over the place. While thick and audibly boosted in the sub-100 Hz region, the bass manages to stay cohesive enough for the Mixcder E8 to be nice to listen to for even rock and metal music, where a sloppy bass normally completely ruins the experience. One other pitfall the Mixcder E8 manages to avoid is to overpronounce the bass guitar in guitar-driven genres, which is a risk that's present whenever someone decides to boost the bass response. A bit more kick and bite wouldn't hurt, although I again have to come back to the price—at $70, the Mixcder E8 really does sound good.

The overall sound signature has a certain amount of artificiality to it, increased by the fact that the sound stage is fairly narrow and shallow, but it leans towards the warm side, which is what many people will undoubtedly like. The vocals are fairly natural and uncolored. They never feel too distant or drowned out by instruments. They also don't have a sharp edge that would make them potentially annoying. You can't expect miracles in terms of spatial positioning; in that regard, the Mixcder E8 behaves like any solid pair of closed-back headphones.


The sharpness is absent in the treble as well. These aren't very bright headphones at all, which is why they aren't exceptionally detailed either, but Mixcder struck a decent balance between accuracy and listenability. There's no chance of ear fatigue with even longer listening sessions. This is a good feature to have, especially when we take into consideration that travel headphones are oftentimes used for many hours without a break (think transcontinental flights). The Mixcder E8 won't tire your ears after hours of listening to treble-heavy music.

The fact that they don't support more advanced Bluetooth audio codecs, such as aptX HD or LDAC, isn't a big issue here as I don't consider them revealing enough to be bottlenecked by the SBC codec. With that said, you can get even more out of them if you connect them to a decent sound source with the supplied wire. That's mainly because the built-in drivers can handle high volumes without distortion—higher than what you'll be able to achieve in wireless mode. I'm aware that many users worry about their wireless headphones not being loud enough. The amplifier that's built into the Mixcder E8 won't allow you to crank the volume up to an unbearable level. At times, I wish I could have turned the volume up by one or two more "steps", but I was generally satisfied with the volume range.

It goes without saying that the passive noise isolation is very good as it drowns out a lot of background noise (fellow commuters, office chatter), and people around you won't be able to hear what you're listening to.

Active Noise Cancelling

It's exceptionally hard to quantify the level of active noise canceling (ANC) on headphones. What I can definitely tell you, though, is that the Mixcder E8 doesn't come anywhere close to the likes of the Sony WH-1000XM2/XM3 or Bose QC 35 II in this regard. Deep sounds made up of constant frequencies are the only ones the ANC feature of these headphones manages to nullify to some extent. Anything in the mid or high-range will be as audible as it is when the ANC feature is deactivated. It is commendable that the ANC feature doesn't completely ruin the audio performance of the Mixcder E8, although some important differences compared to passive mode do exist as the sound stage becomes even smaller, which has everything sound like it's positioned closer to your ears, and higher frequencies become significantly harsher and more fatiguing. Whenever I used ANC on these headphones, I was hesitant to listen to them on the highest volume setting, which I regularly did do when ANC was off.