Sennheiser, being a known audio brand, has its line-ups in various sub-categories such as headphones, true wireless earbuds and in-ear monitors or IEMs, which is where the IE 200 pair gets counted under. Priced at Rs. 14,990, the IE 200 is a mid-range offering from the company for people looking for balanced and high-fidelity sound. Let’s try and see if these do any justice to the price tag.
Design: The Sennheiser IE 200 sport a 1.2-metre braided cord that has gold-plated MMCX connectors for the earbuds and has a decent weight to it at 4grams.The earbuds loop has an almost L shape to it and is detachable so you can connect another compatible cable to it. You might take a few minutes to fit the IEMs well enough with the loop – however way you prefer, and once done, the pair doesn’t feel overweight and it is comfortable to wear. There’s a front vent (hole) on both earbuds for bass experience, which you can choose to cover, if needed. There’s no built-in mic, as seen on several other Sennheiser products previously. It may not feel as premium to wear or carry around but there isn’t much wrong with their build quality and design in general compared to Sennheiser’s higher-end offerings. Also, along with extra sets of silicon and foam adapters, you get a nice pouch in the box to carry this pair around.
Sound quality: The IEMs are powered by a 7mm transducer driver, which is on somewhat similar lines to what Sennheiser used on its higher end IEMs such the IE 900 and IE 600 (though not exactly same). The pair sounds really clean and somewhat spacious-sounding tuning. The bass is clean but not too pronounced and the treble is handled well enough to give you slightly elevated treble than I had expected though mids seem balanced. For just about every music genre you would try, the sound seems to be detailed and without extreme bass and low soundstage, though you can get beefier bass with silicon eartips with buds pushed slightly more into your ear. I didn’t use any special DAC to try these IEMs but regular USB C to 3.5mm audio jack adapters from Vivo. But if you want to get more out of these and don’t mind investing a but more into your sound experience, you might try a DAC to go with this, especially if you care about lossless music (whether streamed over something like Apple Music, or offline). For its pricing, the sound quality overall isn’t bad at all. For people who want their audio to be bass-heavy and less smooth, though, may not like it very much.
Verdict: The IE 200 offers a lot of stuff at a price that’s unheard of for high-fidelity audio. With a clean and customizable bass experience (that’s not too heavy or preferred by everybody) and highly smooth music delivery, the pair would be a decent option to consider for those looking to spend a little on their wired audio experience on the go, or looking to upgrade from an entry-level pair of earphones.
