7Hz Salnotes Zero review
I paid £24.69 for these wired in-ear phones and they are the best I have ever heard.
That could be the end of the review and basically sum up how I feel about them, but some more detail may be useful.
The reviews around YouTube and in other places are almost universally exceptional and this concerned me because it looked and felt like a Chinese company throwing out all sorts of rewards in return for positivity. This happens so much that it can be hard to know what is real, but the buzz around Chi-Fi is growing and rightly so.
In the box you get the phones which come with a detachable cable with the port of your choice. I went for USB-C so they could work with my iPhone, Mac (UPDATE: doesn’t work with my MacBook Air) and iPad. There is also a colourful selection of ear tips thrown in which add an add aesthetic aspect, but these particular phones are much more subtle than some of the other models.
On the ears they are very comfortable and I am guessing that at some point I will find the natural way to put them on, but the fit really is impressive and even with the wire you can forget that they are on.
However, it is the audio quality which stands out. I am no expert, but after having used a variety of in-ears from many mid to high-end brands I cannot work out how these sound so good for such a low cost.
The bass is not overbearing and some will not like that because heavy bass is very common now (too common?), but the way every sound is reproduced is exceptional. Podcasts sound close and crisp and games pop with even the location of some parts becoming apparent, but for music I am genuinely stunned.
I cannot recommend them enough as an emergency pair if you run out of AirPods battery or even for calls from a laptop, but be aware that using them may well stop you wanting to go near your other earphones. They are so good and it's the first time I have been surprised by tech in a long time.