Hifiman HE600 Review

Design

• Open-back design
• 1.5m removable cable

The HE600 are part of Hifiman’s new-for-2025 range of headphones, and they break from the tradition of making almost all pairs black by default. With occasional forays into brown tones. 

This pair, the Edition XV and Ananda Unveiled all embrace silver, the base colour of the metals that make up the cups of many of Hifiman’s headphones. It looks good. 

But the part some may have trouble with is the Hifiman HE600 feel no more luxurious or well-made than pairs half the price, like the Edition XV. 

They still use a basic-looking cable, and have the same plastic headband inner than raised an eyebrow when I reviewed the Hifiman Edition XV. 

Don’t bank on these being a particularly smaller, subtler-looking headphone than Hifiman’s egg-shaped cup sets either. The Hifiman HE600 have a hammock style headband with an outer frame that extends above your head far more than the HE6V2. Or even the Hifiman Sundara, which have a more minimal headband structure. 

Of course, all this matters less than it might as the Hifiman HE600 are resolutely home headphones. They have open-back cups, leak loads of sound and don’t isolate much at all. 

The more built-up headband is also in aid of improved comfort, which can be an issue in some of Hifiman’s relatively heavy planar magnetic headphones. These headphones don’t have the luxurious fit of a pair of Sennheiser HD800, and unlike many I’m not generally a big fan of hammock headphones. 

But after all that, I still find the Hifiman HE600 perfectly comfortable for all-day wear. You’ll see others griping about the fit of these headphones online but I think they are perfectly decent. Their feel can also be altered with some aftermarket pads like those from Dekoni. 

The default ones are Hifiman’s long-standing style with velour-like fabric on the parts that sit on your face, less porous synthetic leather for the sidewalls. If you expect luxury treatment when spending this much on headphones versus the company’s cheaper pairs, you’re in for disappointment. 

And in the box? You just get the one portable-length cable, terminating in a 3.5mm plug, and a 6.35mm adapter. It’s pretty stingy for a pair of headphones at £700-plus when plenty of folks are going to need to use an extender cable for their setup, particularly when the much cheaper Audivinia LE include three cables. 

My take is Hifiman knew it had to sweeten the deal with that pair, while the HE600 concept is pretty enticing for headphone fans on its own: a new take on the HE-6 you don’t need a headphone amp to drive properly. 

Sound Quality 

• Exciting, high-energy sound
• Fast-sounding and highly textured
• Moderate width and scale among Hifiman headphones

The Hifiman HE600 are all about returning to the earlier days of the brand. They don’t remind me hugely of my (very) old Hifiman HE5, but for many that’s not going to be too bad a thing. 

Hifiman’s earliest headphones were quite raw and aggressive. They offered great slam and projection, but later models sounded a lot more refined, with less challenging treble. 

The Hifiman HE600 don’t transport you back to those rough old days. But they do combine modern Hifiman refinement with fantastic dynamics, top drawer bass impact and precise imaging. 

All of this works in concert to make the HE600 sound wonderfully alive, with a sense of energy that doesn’t rely on, say, excess sub-bass or spicy, revealing treble. It’s more about the sheer ability you can get with a headphone that has a top-quality planar magnetic driver, whose precision is often hard to match with a traditional dynamic driver setup. 

The HifiMan HE600’s best bits didn’t jump out me the very first time I put them on, though. They were there, but these headphones don’t knock you over the head with an immense Sennheiser HE800 style soundstage — for that instant sense of epic scale. 

The HE600 is somewhat smaller scale, even compared to plenty of Hifiman’s own pairs. But the sound diorama built here is highly three-dimensional. It has unusual depth, effortless layering. And its presentation is “in your face” enough to contribute to the aggression of, well, aggressive, songs without the audio itself having an exhausting hard edge. 

Compared to the other Hifiman pairs I’ve tried in the 2025 range — Edition XV, Ananda Unveiled, Audivinia LE — the HE600 easily outclass the rest in terms of the consistency of textural detail throughout the mids. And it leads to the most consistently realistic interpretation of vocals too, with the Ananda Unveiled likely coming in second to my ears. 

After listening to the Hifiman HE600 for a few weeks now, though, what’s most impressive is how these headphones manage to have such impact and slam without leaning on, for example, a sub-bass boost. To my ears the lowest bass registers sound pretty linear. The Hifiman HE600 are the “Brad Pitt in Fight Club” of headphones, without any of the dodgy cultural connotations that characters appears to have picked up in recent years. 

The one problem is my ears get so into that propulsive energy, I do find myself pushing the volume a little too far with the Hifiman HE600 at times. Just as I did all those years ago with the Hifiman HE5. They’re great for music enjoyment, but perhaps not your hearing if you’re cavalier with the volume knob.  

Should you buy it?