Check Out Shanling’s New Flagship ME700 IEM
Whilst Shanling mainly focuses on portable music players, their recent venture into the IEM market has brought about quite a couple of products within their own IEM range. Coinciding with the announcement of the new flagship M6 player as well as the UP4 Bluetooth DAC/AMP, Shanling having also introduced their newest flagship IEM – the ME700.
Where the previous ME500 was built around a triple-driver setup, the ME700 jumps ahead by upping that driver-count to a total of 5 per earpiece. This consists of a 10mm dynamic driver along with a dual Knowles balanced armature package as well as an additional dual custom balanced armature package. However, what makes the dynamic driver a bit more special is that it’s apparently gold-plated. So, where it seems all the hype is currently around beryllium and beryllium-coated drivers, it’s rather interesting to see Shanling head for a gold-plated design.
The impedance and sensitivity of the ME700 is rated at 18-ohm and 106 dB/mW respectively, which should ensure that it can be adequately driven with enough power by the majority of portable players and Bluetooth DAC/AMPs.
The shell is of a 3D-printed acrylic variant, whereas the face-plate features a cultured marble construction. The ME700 also apparently features premium MMCX connectors , which should ensure a longer service-life of the product since the connectors can often be a point of failure.
According to Shanling, the ME700 also ships with an 6N Neotech silver cable which is terminated with a 2.5mm balanced connector, but it also includes both a 4.4mm adapter, as well as a 3.5mm single-ended converter/adapter as standard.
Unfortunately no details or hints with regards to expected pricing for the ME700 have been given, but the estimated availability is somewhere within the Fall of 2019 as is the case with the M6 and UP4. Considering that the ME700 is probably aimed at competing with FiiO’s FH7 and perhaps even Dunu’s DK-3001 Pro, we are likely to see the price of the ME700 fall somewhere between the $300-400 range, although a price-tag of over $400 isn’t totally inconceivable either.
