The Way It’s Meant to Be Heard: A Review of the Ultimate Ears Super.fi 5 Pro

I was supposed to leave this review for later, perhaps after my exams. However, I just can’t help it! My pleasurable experience with my new earpieces has forced me to blurt this out right now. In short, it truly has been a lovely start for my online shopping trend.

The payment and selection process was easy enough that’s for sure. I just had to pick a seller with my product and one which offered the lowest price. Of course, I can’t trust the seller just because his price is the lowest. You may never know if the product is an imitation model from China. So, I had to look at the feedback given by previous buyers. I was flabbergasted. It was a grand total of 47,900+ ratings and 99.7% of them were highly positive. Wow! The description of “Power Seller” given by eBay is spot on! The seller, Yogi Computers, gained my trust in a matter of seconds. The next few steps couldn't be simpler: just pay the fees via Paypal and an email confirming payment and shipment is sent almost instantaneously.

The shipping cost was certainly not cheap (US$26.99 to be exact). However, I have none but one choice: I had to use United States Postal Service’s (USPS) Express Mail International shipping. This is USPS’ fastest shipping method. It seems a little pricey for a product weighing in at merely a few hundred grams though. Nevertheless, the package’s ETA was within 3-5 days and it had to be sent from Pennsylvania all the way to Burnaby, BC (that’s more than the entire width of North America). The estimation was dead right. Within 3 short days, I came across a note from the post service. It said an attempt to send me a parcel has been in vain, and recommended me that I pick the parcel up myself at a post office nearby. And so I did.

The packaging itself was aesthetically pleasing. A matt blue and white paper bag with a quality leaflet attached to its side indicating all the necessary postage details. Also, I noticed that the package made a stop at JFK airport, and then Jamaica before arriving at its intended destination.

Upon opening the bag, I was immediately confronted with a stench of foul smelling gas. It smelt like the odor found within plane cargo (of course!). And there you have it, the very box housing my earphones.


After reading numerous articles on reviews of these earphones, I couldn't wait to try them for myself. However a ridiculous impediment stood in may way: the hard plastic box was a hassle to open. The plastic was so reluctant to break itself apart. I had to resort to brute force ripping with a set of DIY tools! By the time the box finally gave way, I ended up with blister-ridden fingers. Darn, this box could have even withstood a ton of C4 explosives! I guess quality products go hand in hand with quality packaging.

The box neatly housed a bag of ear tip sleeves; a ear-junk cleaning tool (LOL); a sound volume attenuator; a chic and elegant looking metallic case; a ¼ inch adapter jack; and of course, the earphones themselves. I had a fair bit of time sampling the myriad of sleeves and adjusting the reinforced cables so that it loops round my ears securely. The intended method of wearing these ‘phones aren’t the normal one of simply letting the cables dangle from your ears. These required the cable to be wrapped round the back of your ear, perhaps to attain a more secure fit and to minimize the microphonic effects (cable thumping noises).



Without a moment to lose, I seized my iPod and booted it up. I first song that I played was Jay Chou’s 发如雪 (hair like snow). To me, this is the perfect song to test my new earphones. It starts of with a clear and sparkly drizzling sound and later climaxes to produce a deep bassy sound. Besides, the song is encoded in Apple Lossless. To make a long story short, the sound was absolutely stellar! The detail of the Super.fi 5 Pros outstripped my Sennheiser CX300 by a mile! Bass reproduction was deep and tight. When directly compared to my Sennheisers, the bass was clearly less muffled and muddy. The midrange was also proficiently controlled too. In other words, the lows, mids and highs were flawlessly balanced. It was a definite upgrade for my now aging Sennheisers. As expected, the upgrade in sound quality was certainly not as radical as moving up from the despicable pair of iPod pack-ins to my Sennheisers. But the stepping up from my CX300 was a profound difference nonetheless. With twin balanced armatures per earpiece, the reason for this can’t be too hard to comprehend I guess!

Additionally, the ear loops worked exactly as advertised. No matter how hard I shook my head, they kept the earpieces from falling off. The earpieces go deep into my ear canals, but never felt overly intrusive.

So at long last, after agonizing lengths of earphone testing in a store over in Singapore, I have finally found the perfect model that satisfied my cravings perfectly. As I recall, I have tried various models from Shure and Etymotic, but none them seemed to entice me. With above average comfort levels, superb sonics and a relatively low price tag, the Ultimate Ears Super.fi Pro 5 is one earphone which justly lives up to its name!

The complete package

"The Ultimate in Super Fidelity", that is what it stands for.
T’ang