First of I can't stress enough that I' am nowhere remotely close to being an audiophile in any stretch of the imagination. But as most people I was born with a pair of hears, and is there one thing I love it's good sounding audio going through them.
So basically I have neither in-depth experience nor any technical edge backing me up while writing my comparison between these two pieces of _hands down_ magnificent engineering from Westone.
I’ve been using my pair of Westone UM3X for the past three years and have loved every little detail of its sound and audio quality.
But recently my cable broke and I had to send them for repair and to my astonishment Variphone, the European service partner or Westone in Europe replaced my Westone UM3X without any questions even though they where three years old going way past the one-year warranty. They weren’t just out of the one year warranty, they had faced water damage, the housing of my left earpiece had been glued back together in a very bad way because it had cracked ones and the cable was broken.
Regardless Variphone simply replaced them entire with a set of new ones and charged nothing other than shipment fees.
As you may understand this kind of customer support really deserves its name in gold! And therefore I figured Westone and Variphone deserved every money they get so I decided to purchase myself a pair of Westone 4R in addition to my beloved Westone UM3X, now I have one spare pair and my girlfriend can use the ones I don’t use.
And this of course gives me a great opportunity to share my thoughts on them both and do a small comparison between them.
Test equipment:
Before starting with the actual comparison, let me tell you about my testing equipment, I strictly use Shure Olives Medium eartips and all listening is happening on a iPhone 4 playing high quality (320kbps Ogg Vorbis?) from Spotify. Perhaps not the best testing scenario, but its what’s I’m using my Westone’s for 99% of the time.
Build quality:
Lets start off with the build quality. This is the one part where I have always felt the Westone UM3X doesn’t rise to its price-tag. They are fairly lightweight, which is a good thing but they feel like two pieces of rather cheap plastic and the entire housing exists of mainly two pars split almost in the middle where the one part house the actual armature speakers and the other is the part going into your ear. It lacks quality feeling to it and if you plan on using these when you train outside beaware of rain and damp conditions as these two parts did break apart from each other after a while for me and I had to glue them back together.
The Westone 4R on the other hand is an entirely different story. Whereas the UM3X feels like cheap plastic the 4R’s feels much more like high quality. Though its still plastic, and plastic never feels that solid, it has a superior feeling to them compared with the UM3X. And to make matters even better the earpieces is one piece of plastic so you won’t need to worry about them tearing apart like with the UM3X.
The cable:
They both feature “the same” Westone “EPIC” cable, but there are some noticeable differences nonetheless. The Westone UM3X features a plain cable with a mini-jack connector not optimized for use with mobile phones equipped with a case forcing you to take matters into own hands if being used with a phone case.
The Westone 4R on the other hand comes both with a mini-jack connector optimized for mobile phones wearing a protective case and it features small plastic tubing around the cable for you to wrap the cable more comfortably behind and around your ears. And obviously as this is the “R” version the cable is indeed removable and replaceable.
The sound:
Now to the most important part of the comparison, how do they actual compare in sound and audio quality?
I fired up my training playlist on Spotify and gave them both a spin, the playlist exist of:
- Robbie Williams – Advertising Space
- Maria Mena – All this time
- Brandi Carlile – The Story
- Katy Perry – Fireworks
- P!nk - Raise your glass
- 30 Seconds to Mars – Kings and Queens
- Bon Jovi – Always
- Annie Lennox – Into the West
- Enya – May it be
- Frode Langhelle for TV2 – Vinnersjel
- London Music Works – King Arthur Woad to Ruin
- Saw – Hello Zap
- Jennifer Warnes – Up Where We Belong
- Tinie Tempha – Written in the Stars
- Chris Medina – What are words
- Twilight Orchestra – Bella’s Lullaby Extended Edition (Long version of River flows in you)
- Jasper Forks – River flows in you Eric Chase remix
- The B-52’s – Rock Lobster
- Robbie Williams – Angles
- Robbie Williams – Come undone
- Robbie Williams – She’s the one
- P!nk – I don’t believe you
- Jordin Sparks – Tattoo
- Avicii – Levels (Radio edition)
- Beth – Someone like you
- Avenged Sevenfold – Dear God
- Avenged Sevenfold – Afterlife
I did also play through huge parts of The Hobbit audiobook and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows read by Stephen Fry.
So there is some varied music tracks there. As Spotify doesn’t offer any kind of equalization and the built-in equalization for iOS does not affect Spotify there has been done no adjustments whatsoever.
Right of the bat there is no doubt that they are both of very high quality, but there are some clearly differences in how they present the sound. I won’t start bragging about whom sounds more correct than the other, I guess they both sound perfect is terms of raw audio quality but they give you a very different feel to the sound as their sound signature are quite different so even myself not being close to an audiophile easily hear the difference.
And to be honest, for me the UM3X feels superior to the 4R in about every aspect of the sound signature. First of all in almost any track I play both the vocals and the instruments are easily more noticeable with the UM3X compared to 4R. To me the 4R almost feel muddled in comparison, I don’t know how the UM3X are able to do it but there seems to be much more detail in the sound. You hear the vocals better; you can pick up each of the instruments more easily without any of them overdue and drown the other. It simply feels like the UM3X are able to play on a higher spectrum, which the 4R simply aren’t able to reach.
But this has some slight drawback, the UM3X might feel a bit cold compared to the 4R and at times high pitches in songs might peak a little too high making it feel somewhat distorted, but that rarely every happen.
At the same time as it feels like the UM3X reach a spectrum higher than the 4R it also goes deeper and provides more “punch” than the 4R. This is easily noticeable with tracks like Avicii – Levels and Saw – Hello Zap where the UM3X managed to provide a feeling of a punch that the 4R does not manage to create. In my honest opinion the 4R doesn’t really deliver much in the bass department at all, neither is the UM3X suitable for any heavy bass-heads out there either.
I can’t say much other than the fact that I enjoy the sound of the UM3X more than the one of 4R. It’s as simple as that. The same time I would almost go as far as claim the 4R to sound more natural and “correct”, but the UM3X does something with the sound that I cannot describe and it makes the sound pop and come much more alive than I have heard from anything else, not even my Sennheiser HD 650 are able to give the sound this feeling to it. Its like the UM3X has been tweaked in such a way that it manages to take the sound and upscale it to a higher resolution, at least that’s the best way for me to describe the feeling as everything feels more present, being vocals, instruments or whatever.
But I guess its not for everyone’s liking, as I mentioned countless times the UM3X makes the music sound more detailed than normal and I’ll bet for some this won’t sound right at all, but for me I couldn’t find it more enjoyable and for me the decision ended up being much easier than I would have though.
Westone UM3X keeps being my absolute favorite and I’ll guess my girlfriend will take over my Westone 4R’s. Perhaps the 4R would become better with some equalization? Sadly, as far as I know Spotify for iOS doesn’t support equalization.First of I can't stress enough that I' am nowhere remotely close to being an audiophile in any stretch of the imagination. But as most people I was born with a pair of hears, and is there one thing I love it's good sounding audio going through them.
So basically I have neither in-depth experience nor any technical edge backing me up while writing my comparison between these two pieces of _hands down_ magnificent engineering from Westone.
I’ve been using my pair of Westone UM3X for the past three years and have loved every little detail of its sound and audio quality.
But recently my cable broke and I had to send them for repair and to my astonishment Variphone, the European service partner or Westone in Europe replaced my Westone UM3X without any questions even though they where three years old going way past the one-year warranty. They weren’t just out of the one year warranty, they had faced water damage, the housing of my left earpiece had been glued back together in a very bad way because it had cracked ones and the cable was broken.
Regardless Variphone simply replaced them entire with a set of new ones and charged nothing other than shipment fees.
As you may understand this kind of customer support really deserves its name in gold! And therefore I figured Westone and Variphone deserved every money they get so I decided to purchase myself a pair of Westone 4R in addition to my beloved Westone UM3X, now I have one spare pair and my girlfriend can use the ones I don’t use.
And this of course gives me a great opportunity to share my thoughts on them both and do a small comparison between them.
Test equipment:
Before starting with the actual comparison, let me tell you about my testing equipment, I strictly use Shure Olives Medium eartips and all listening is happening on a iPhone 4 playing high quality (320kbps Ogg Vorbis?) from Spotify. Perhaps not the best testing scenario, but its what’s I’m using my Westone’s for 99% of the time.
Build quality:
Lets start off with the build quality. This is the one part where I have always felt the Westone UM3X doesn’t rise to its price-tag. They are fairly lightweight, which is a good thing but they feel like two pieces of rather cheap plastic and the entire housing exists of mainly two pars split almost in the middle where the one part house the actual armature speakers and the other is the part going into your ear. It lacks quality feeling to it and if you plan on using these when you train outside beaware of rain and damp conditions as these two parts did break apart from each other after a while for me and I had to glue them back together.
The Westone 4R on the other hand is an entirely different story. Whereas the UM3X feels like cheap plastic the 4R’s feels much more like high quality. Though its still plastic, and plastic never feels that solid, it has a superior feeling to them compared with the UM3X. And to make matters even better the earpieces is one piece of plastic so you won’t need to worry about them tearing apart like with the UM3X.
The cable:
They both feature “the same” Westone “EPIC” cable, but there are some noticeable differences nonetheless. The Westone UM3X features a plain cable with a mini-jack connector not optimized for use with mobile phones equipped with a case forcing you to take matters into own hands if being used with a phone case.
The Westone 4R on the other hand comes both with a mini-jack connector optimized for mobile phones wearing a protective case and it features small plastic tubing around the cable for you to wrap the cable more comfortably behind and around your ears. And obviously as this is the “R” version the cable is indeed removable and replaceable.
The sound:
Now to the most important part of the comparison, how do they actual compare in sound and audio quality?
I fired up my training playlist on Spotify and gave them both a spin, the playlist exist of:
- Robbie Williams – Advertising Space
- Maria Mena – All this time
- Brandi Carlile – The Story
- Katy Perry – Fireworks
- P!nk - Raise your glass
- 30 Seconds to Mars – Kings and Queens
- Bon Jovi – Always
- Annie Lennox – Into the West
- Enya – May it be
- Frode Langhelle for TV2 – Vinnersjel
- London Music Works – King Arthur Woad to Ruin
- Saw – Hello Zap
- Jennifer Warnes – Up Where We Belong
- Tinie Tempha – Written in the Stars
- Chris Medina – What are words
- Twilight Orchestra – Bella’s Lullaby Extended Edition (Long version of River flows in you)
- Jasper Forks – River flows in you Eric Chase remix
- The B-52’s – Rock Lobster
- Robbie Williams – Angles
- Robbie Williams – Come undone
- Robbie Williams – She’s the one
- P!nk – I don’t believe you
- Jordin Sparks – Tattoo
- Avicii – Levels (Radio edition)
- Beth – Someone like you
- Avenged Sevenfold – Dear God
- Avenged Sevenfold – Afterlife
I did also play through huge parts of The Hobbit audiobook and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows read by Stephen Fry.
So there is some varied music tracks there. As Spotify doesn’t offer any kind of equalization and the built-in equalization for iOS does not affect Spotify there has been done no adjustments whatsoever.
Right of the bat there is no doubt that they are both of very high quality, but there are some clearly differences in how they present the sound. I won’t start bragging about whom sounds more correct than the other, I guess they both sound perfect is terms of raw audio quality but they give you a very different feel to the sound as their sound signature are quite different so even myself not being close to an audiophile easily hear the difference.
And to be honest, for me the UM3X feels superior to the 4R in about every aspect of the sound signature. First of all in almost any track I play both the vocals and the instruments are easily more noticeable with the UM3X compared to 4R. To me the 4R almost feel muddled in comparison, I don’t know how the UM3X are able to do it but there seems to be much more detail in the sound. You hear the vocals better; you can pick up each of the instruments more easily without any of them overdue and drown the other. It simply feels like the UM3X are able to play on a higher spectrum, which the 4R simply aren’t able to reach.
But this has some slight drawback, the UM3X might feel a bit cold compared to the 4R and at times high pitches in songs might peak a little too high making it feel somewhat distorted, but that rarely every happen.
At the same time as it feels like the UM3X reach a spectrum higher than the 4R it also goes deeper and provides more “punch” than the 4R. This is easily noticeable with tracks like Avicii – Levels and Saw – Hello Zap where the UM3X managed to provide a feeling of a punch that the 4R does not manage to create. In my honest opinion the 4R doesn’t really deliver much in the bass department at all, neither is the UM3X suitable for any heavy bass-heads out there either.
I can’t say much other than the fact that I enjoy the sound of the UM3X more than the one of 4R. It’s as simple as that. The same time I would almost go as far as claim the 4R to sound more natural and “correct”, but the UM3X does something with the sound that I cannot describe and it makes the sound pop and come much more alive than I have heard from anything else, not even my Sennheiser HD 650 are able to give the sound this feeling to it. Its like the UM3X has been tweaked in such a way that it manages to take the sound and upscale it to a higher resolution, at least that’s the best way for me to describe the feeling as everything feels more present, being vocals, instruments or whatever.
But I guess its not for everyone’s liking, as I mentioned countless times the UM3X makes the music sound more detailed than normal and I’ll bet for some this won’t sound right at all, but for me I couldn’t find it more enjoyable and for me the decision ended up being much easier than I would have though.
Westone UM3X keeps being my absolute favorite and I’ll guess my girlfriend will take over my Westone 4R’s. Perhaps the 4R would become better with some equalization? Sadly, as far as I know Spotify for iOS doesn’t support equalization.
Too bad they cost nearly 100$ more than UM3X...
