Introduction

On one side are companies like Beats by Dre and Skullcandy. Even though audio is their core business, they're first and foremost fashion brands. They have insane marketing budgets and pump unfathomable amounts of money into endorsements by famous singers, sports people, and random celebrities. That gets them media presence and soon, buyers start flocking to their stores solely because they want to own that same pair of headphones their favorite basketball player is using.

Then there are companies like 1MORE, whose products you won't see dangling from LeBron James' or Beyonce's neck. Rather than burning money on marketing, they focus their efforts on making excellent headphones and let their quality serve as the brand's ambassador. If you heard about 1MORE before, that's most likely due to their fantastic $99 Triple Driver in-ear headphones. We sang praise to them in our recent review and wholeheartedly recommended them, and we weren't the only ones - these are currently universally acclaimed as the best choice for anyone who's after a pair of IEMs (In-Ear Monitors) in the $100 price bracket. Today, we'll take a look at their bigger, even more ambitious and twice as costly sibling - the $200 1MORE Quad Driver in-ear headphones.



Right off the bat, let's talk about the "quad-driver" shenanigans. What that means is that both headphones come equipped with four small speakers. Each of these is in charge of a different set of frequencies. The bass and midrange are taken care of by a diamond-like carbon dynamic driver, two balanced armatures (think tweeters) handle high frequencies, and another balanced armature is in charge of ultra-high frequencies, the uppermost part of the high range spanning up to 40 kHz - way beyond what us humans are capable of hearing. Of course, the whole idea is to achieve a feeling of sound coming out of a single speaker, so don't confuse this with surround sound and don't worry about four "speakers" being distinguishable while you're listening to your favorite tunes.

The 1MORE Triple Driver and Quad Driver are the only THX-certified headphones in the world. That doesn't tell us much about the specifics of their performance, but it does confirm that they satisfy a certain level of sonic quality. They come with an in-line remote control and a microphone, a tangle-resistant Kevlar cable, and an impressively luxurious bundle.

Specifications

• 1 dynamic carbon driver + 3 balanced armatures
• 32 Ω impedance
• 20-40,000 Hz frequency response (specified by the manufacturer)
• Closed-back in-ear design
• In-line remote control with microphone
• 3.5-mm and 6.35-mm analogue connectivity
• 1.25 m tangle-resistant Kevlar cable
• Weight: 18.5 g