Hifiman Arya WiFi Review

Introduction

The Hifiman Arya WiFi are not like other wireless headphones, in a bunch of respects. 

They can stream audio over Wi-Fi, as the name suggests, letting them connect directly to Spotify, for example. The Hifiman Arya WiFi also have high-end planar magnetic drivers, for the kind of sheer audio capability most wireless pairs can’t even touch. 

And, unfortunately, many of us won’t be able to touch the Hifiman Arya WiFi because of their pricing either — even though these are the more affordable alternative to the even more expensive Hifiman HE1000 WiFi, among the brand’s first-wave Wi-Fi pairs. 

These are great wireless headphones that fulfil a worthwhile enthusiast niche, particularly for at-home listening. But I have the same issues as I did with the HE1000 WiFi, primarily that they have a mid-bass bump not heard in most other Hifiman headphones. I’m not convinced they need it, and the Wi-Fi system takes some getting used to as well. Learn to live with their quirks, though, and you have a pair of real world-class wireless headphones on your hands.

The Hifiman Arya WiFi cost £1409, and while the company’s pairs are renowned for selling at drastically reduced prices over their years on shelves, we are yet to see if this happens with the WiFi series too.

Design

• Open-back design
• Plastic outer cups
• Hammock style headband

The Hifiman Arya WiFi have two design traits that mark them out from other Hifiman headphones, which are mostly open-back hi-fi pairs intended for home listening. First up, this pair has on-cup controls as they are wireless. 

These are also relatives of a sub-family of Hifiman headphones called Unveiled. This is why the Hifiman Arya WiFi have those strange armoured-looking indents on the outside of the cups. The concept is by getting rid of the grille behind the driver, you end up with a more open and clean sound. 

DIY mods to achieve the same effect are not uncommon among nerdy headphone fan circles. The Arya Unveiled made some folks feel concerned the drivers — which are ultra-thin membranes sandwiched between magnets — could be damaged by small stray bits of metal or metal objects. But this new WIFi pair has a wide-bore grille to help avoid this. 

That’s right — Hifiman got rid of the grille, only to replace it with another grille. But the concept still has merit. 

The Hifiman Arya WiFi have large, oval-slash-egg shaped cups big enough to fully enclose most ears without sitting on cartilage. These headphones don’t adapt to your head in particularly overt ways, though. The cups don’t swivel, and while the headband size is adjustable, the hammock part that sits on the top of your head is not. 

I’ve found the Arya WiFi perfectly comfortable for five-plus-hour listening sessions, mind, and while the cup padding may feel a little stiff on day one, this will soften up over the days and weeks. 

Don’t buy them expecting overflowing luxury, though — advice that goes for all higher-price Hifimans. The outer cup casing is plastic, and the plastic buttons feels a little cheap. But thankfully they don’t make a clicking sound with harder footfalls, as my Hifiman HE1000 WiFi do. 

Cable aside, the accessories package starts and ends with a piece of foam packaging that can be used as a headphone stand.

Features

• Bluetooth with LDAC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD support
• Wi-Fi with unofficial Spotify Connect support
• Up to 23 hour battery life

Hifiman’s Wifi series headphones do not have a 3.5mm or 2.5mm connector on the cups, so you can’t treat them like conventional Hifiman wired pairs even if you wanted to. 

Instead, one cup has a USB-C connector, used for charging and for the one form of wired connection — great for plugging into a laptop. This means the Hifiman Arya WiFi always use one of the set’s big bullet-point features, the Himalaya DAC. 

This means the Hifiman Arya WiFi can own the signal path from digital signal source to the sound played through the drivers. 

This ties in nicely with the Wi-Fi transmission, the real unusual part here. The headphones have their own wireless system, which operates without the need for a companion app on phone or laptop. 

Instead, when the Hifiman Arya WiFi are first used, they transmit their own Wi-Fi network, allowing you to connect to them with another device and tech the pair your home internet credentials. Following that they can hook into certain streaming technologies like Apple AirPlay.

It works great most of the time but user experience here is not close to the slickness I’d expect from Sony or Bose, for example. And Hifiman’s written instructions are sketchy. However, you can be setup within a couple of minutes if you don’t encounter issues and then can largely forget the whole setup process for a good long while.

These headphones have three key modes and the Hifiman Arya WiFi use a multi-colour LED on one cup to indicate which you’re currently in. There’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and USB. 

Contrary to what you might expect, I actually saw lower latency from Bluetooth transmission than Wi-Fi. The benefit of Wi-Fi streaming is more about sound quality than latency. 

A couple of usability niggles you’ll have to live with: there’s no audio cue when you change sound modes. You’ll likely need to take them off to see the LED colour. And to compound that, there’s an extended wait whenever you switch to the Wi-Fi mode. It’s effectively like a computer booting up each time — which I expect Hifiman needs to do in order to avoid a big hit to battery life in the Bluetooth mode. But it’s a bit annoying.

They are rated for 23 hours in Bluetooth mode, just 6.5-7.5 hours when streaming over Wi-Fi.

Sound Quality

• Planar magnetic drivers
• Up-front presentation
• Energetic character

The Hifiman Arya WiFi combine some of the best bits of Hifiman’s various signature sound elements, while also suffering slightly from the same characteristic that put me off the HE1000 WiFi just a touch. 

For all their seriousness, the Hifiman Arya WiFi make for great party headphones. They have a relatively up-front presentation, putting their extended, well-separated sound field up close to your ears rather than letting it extend out in more relaxed fashion like a landscape photo fading off into the distance. This slightly more aggressive, energetic style is something I usually associate with Hifiman’s round headphones, not the “egg” shaped ones like these. I’m a fan.

Textural resolution isn’t quite at the level of the far more laidback HE1000 WiFi, but the Arya WiFi are a lot more fun to listen to with plenty of music styles. There’s slam and propulsion, with just a slight bit of textural granularity to the upper-mids that might not appeal to some ears. 

Some perceived smoothness is traded away to give these headphones a greater sense of drive and energy. But you still get plenty of the great technical elements usually associated with Hifiman’s planar magnetic pairs, like rapid decay — which contributes to the bass coming across punchy and taut  — and clear imaging. 

Like the Hifiman HE1000 WiFi, these headphones do have some extra bulk in the midbass region. This acts as warming filler that I find can clump around vocals in a way that makes the Arya WiFi sound less precise, less high-end, than they might otherwise. 

I listened to them side-by-side with the non-Wi-Fi Hifiman HE600 to make sure this wasn’t something my ears were fabricating. And, sure, enough, those headphones have a more consistent sense of having properly resolve textural detail throughout the mids. In the Arya, there’s more of a focus on the lower mids and the upper mids, and this means it comes across the detail in vocals is mainly provided by the highest mid-range frequencies. 

The effect isn’t unpleasant, but it’s of a bonus warmth being offset, not the more consistent mid-range presentation I hope to hear when you get to this level of headphone. 

Should you buy it?