Introduction

There are far more companies in the audio space than I am familiar with, and Padmate was one of them when I was first approached about doing this review. Indeed, knowing that Padmate is a division of the Harda Group did not help much either, though I knew of some Intel relations and know-how. But then I heard the product itself was under the PaMu name, which had the bells ringing. There have been several different Indiegogo campaigns for PaMu earphones, each substantially more successful than the previous to where Padmate set a few records in the crowdfunding world. The PaMu Z1 covered today followed the same development cycle and is already a commercial success on that metric. But we aim to find out whether it merits a purchase at MSRP and how it stands up against the competition today. Thanks to Padmate for providing TechPowerUp a review sample.


You will notice Padmate itself being inconsistent in its use of the PaMu branding, with several occasions of a language barrier throughout the course of the review. First and foremost, it's a Chinese company aiming to break into the global market by working with PR firms. The PaMu Z1 is a set of true wireless IEMs and not earbuds as the name may suggest. It is available in a few different color options. The image above was put together by yours truly to showcase the other colors as I had the white and blue set in for review, and there are a few other nifty features, including removable and swappable "belts," which are plastic covers around the case for further customization. What's more important is the user experience and sound quality, which we will test in this review that begins with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications