I’ve always been of the mind that if you can afford it, buy it. Whether that thing you want has a price kicking around in the bargain basement, whether it sits as a mid-range offering or is right up there as nothing but stratospheric, if you find something in the world that is going to make your life better, and make you happier in the long run, go for it.
I’ll admit that train of thought has caused issues on occasion, and my other half is firmly entrenched with a different mindset. But ultimately, if you can afford something without getting yourself into financial difficulty as you do so, price should not come into consideration. Life is short.
That train of thought is helped by the fact that, for the most part, something with a relatively high asking price should – in theory – be of greater quality than something that sits at half, quarter or lower in the pricing scale. How that scale slides will be completely dependent on the individual in hand.
Basically put, if you’ve got the cash available to buy something, and you really want it, go and buy it.
And if you’ve got £1249 spare, go and spend that on the Audeze Euclid earbuds. See, they are supremely well made, sound better than anything else you’ll ever put in your ears and will, almost certainly, make you happy, safe in the knowledge that you are leaving the power of your audio delights to a seriously good piece of kit. They are probably the last set of IEMs you’ll ever need to buy, and your life with them will almost certainly be a good one. At least until you look at your bank balance, perhaps.
Obviously there’s no getting around it and £1249 is a ridiculous amount of money to pay for some earbuds, particularly when you consider that Apple’s AirPods Pro cost a grand less and Google’s new Pixel Buds Pro are less still. If you can afford it though, or if you want the best of the best and are willing to let your wallet take the pain, crack right on. I’m not sure there’s much out there that is better than what the Euclid is able to provide.
We’ve been using our Audeze Euclid earbuds for a good few weeks now, and honestly, we’re pretty blown away by them. We like good sound but are far from being audiophiles and for that reason you won’t find us talking about the 18mm drivers or how Audeze have squeezed in a 5mm sound port, how the planar magnetic sound inducers handle the all-important audio, or how the frequency response is up there with the best of them. If you want all that technical gubbins, you’re better off elsewhere. What we will tell you though is that the closed-back Audeze Euclid earbuds really do fit in that ‘hear it to believe it’ category of audio-bringer, capable of covering a wide range of uses and an even wider range of audio options.
The earbuds themselves are simply glorious, precision milled from aluminium, topped off with a tad of carbon fiber. Fairly large in size when you consider them against other buds on the market, they ooze utter quality. Black with gold trimmings, slapped with a big gold Audeze ‘A’ logo on the outer side, they look great, if a little understated. We know that’s hard to imagine when you’d throwing a ton of gold trim levels onto anything, but these never really scream ‘look at me, look at how expensive I am’. But then, Audeze didn’t particularly run that vibe with their Penrose X Wireless headset either – still THE best sounding Xbox headset we’ve used. These are all about the audio that goes in.
The Euclid buds are pretty useless when taken as a single entity and it feels fairly strange that they don’t come in a particularly small, pocketable case. Earbuds, in our eyes, should be something that you can pick up and run with, take on the go with you as you run the rule over the world, listening in on podcasts, pounding out a run with music or working Game Pass angles as you sit on the commute to and from work. These are not for that. Well, they could be, but we’ve found that the Audeze Euclid earbuds are much more suited to those times at home, when you’re really looking to immerse yourself in the audio of your choice; music or gaming.
Hooking the Euclids up is relatively easy, at least once you get the hang of things. Two small connectors sit on the externals of each bud and by taking the gold plated cable of your choice, plugging them in gets the audio moving. And yes, these are buds that require a cable attached to each in order for any sound to emit; the cable of choice depends on your situation at hand.
In the box, Audeze have included multiple options. Our favourite has been the 3.5mm jacked braided cables which have allowed us to connect the Audeze Euclid buds up for gaming purposes. A simple plug into our Xbox Series X|S controller, or into the audio port on our laptop, has seen us have our gaming sessions powered by some of the best sounding buds you could ever imagine.
We’ve been using these for a good few weeks now, and for solo gaming efforts, we can’t think of a better Xbox audio solution. Frankly, the sound that comes through is immense, massively rich and full of the finest detail. No matter whether we’ve been racing in Forza Horizon 5 or F1 22, playing through the utter madness of Saints Row, or feeling the beats of something like AVICII Invector, the Euclids have nailed each and every sound. In fact, we’ve been gaming on Xbox for a couple of decades and are hearing things through the Euclids that we’re pretty sure never existed before – they are that good.
Downsides to the gaming angle are that they fall short whenever you’re looking to spend any decent amount of time in party or game chats, and the lack of any buttons, sliders or controls while using the braided 3.5mm jack-ended cable means that you’re restricted to utilising the in-built Xbox audio settings whenever you wish to turn the volume up or down. But then, that’s where Turtle Beach’s latest controllers like the REACT-R and its on-controller volume controls come into their own. Mostly though, if you’re a single player gamer and you want to become properly immersed in the sounds of the scene, you’ll find that the Euclid’s can provide it in spades. Just don’t try and use it for multiplayer chat.
Other cable options include a similar braided offering with a hefty old-school pro-audio jack on the end, along with a Bluetooth option. It’s this which has been perfect for whenever we’ve gone down the Game pass route on our phones, making the most of the Gamevice Flex and GameSir X2 Pro controllers. What’s nice about the Bluetooth cable are the in-built in-line controls that help in terms of game volume and the ability to take calls with the Euclids in ear. You can even use the Xbox App to create party experiences, helping push the multiplayer angle should you so wish. Fiddly yes, but it’s doable. Again, as you’d suspect, there’s next to nothing to complain about here either.
However you use the Audeze Euclid Earbuds, you’ll find that the fit and finish is great. Slightly tricky to initially fit into your ear, once you understand the push and twist nature, feeding the external cabling over your ears to create a hook, you’ll be flying. It’s easy to wear the Euclids for hours at a time too, in fact, we’ve done just that through our Xbox Series X|S sessions.
Better still are the numerous bud tips that are included in the box, with multiple offerings allowing for various ear sizes and fits. There are three types in all; the all-round Audeze silicone tips, a secondary silicone offering from Spintip that we’ve struggled to fully enjoy and a foam offering from Comply. We’re particularly keen on the Comply tips as these seem to bring a bit more heft to the audio. They are also extremely squishy, ensuring that there is next to no chance of having an incomplete, inferior fitment. We’ll admit that we were in love with the Audeze Euclids anyways, but switching in the Comply tips makes everything feel even more immersive. We’d go as far as to say it’s these Comply foam tips that should come as the default on the Euclid earbuds.
So what’s not to like? Well, you could take that £1249 price tag into consideration, and you could mention the fact that cables can feel a bit old hat; a tad fiddly. You could even mention that these are far from pocketable even when flung into the little carry bag. But aside from that, you’re looking at near perfection. The sheer delicacy of the audio range massively outweighs any negative thoughts.
Unless you work with deep, detailed audio on a 24/7 basis, fully dipped in the technology that is out there, we’d suspect that the Audeze Euclid earbuds are going to be the best sounding, best fitting earbuds you’ll ever likely stick in your ears. They cover a range of use scenarios and are equally brilliant for gaming or music; whether for an evening session, when on the go or for when you’re looking to hide away from the world. Frankly, they are an absolute joy to use.
A huge thanks goes out to Audeze for providing us a review unit of the Euclid earbuds. You can grab the Audeze Euclid earbuds for yourself by visiting Audeze direct. Tell them we sent you.
