These 5-star hi-fi headphones shocked me with their unbelievable price

It hasn’t even been in existence for eight years yet, but Austrian Audio has already established quite a reputation – especially where entry-level, affordable over-ear wired headphones are concerned.

The brand's Hi-X15 headphones, for example, had an asking price under £100 here in the UK at their time of testing – and they could put the frighteners on alternatives costing twice as much.

So are Austrain-Audio's Hi-X20 more of the same? They cost a little extra, sure, but they’re still not what you’d call 'expensive'. Can Austrian lightning strike yet again? Spoiler alert! Yes, these are 5-star affordable wired headphones well worth your attention.

Austrian Audio Hi-X20 review: Price & Release date

The Austrian Audio Hi-X20 are on sale now, and in the United Kingdom they sell for £120 per pair. The going rate in the United States is $150, while in Australia it’s around AU$250.

That’s not a huge amount of money for some wired, over-ear, closed-back headphones from a brand with a great reputation, but then again it’s not as if the Hi-X20 are your only choice at this sort of money. FiiO, Sigva, Sony and others all have alternatives with which to tempt you…

Austrian Audio Hi-X20 review: Features & What’s new

The feature-set tends to be pretty focused where products like this, at a price like this, are concerned. And sure enough, the Austrian Audio Hi-X20 don’t have many features – but the features they have are more than suitable.

Like every other headphone in the company’s ‘Hi-X’ range, the Hi-X20 are fitted with 44mm full-range dynamic drivers.

They’re paired with a ring magnet system that creates a strong magnetic field, along with a lightweight membrane and copper-covered aluminium voice-coil – the intention is to optimise airflow and facilitate rapid impulse reaction. It’s a set-up, says Austrian Audio, that can deliver frequency response of 12Hz - 24kHz.

The bottom of the left earcup has a 2.5mm socket, and the packaging includes a three-metre length of cable with an appropriate ‘click/twist’ termination at one end. At the other end, there’s a 3.5mm jack, along with a 6.3mm adapter.

And, well, that’s about it. These two features are basically what constitutes ‘a pair of wired headphones’ – everything else is simply designed to support them.

Austrian Audio Hi-X20 review: Performance

Yes, the Hi-X20 share exactly the same driver arrangement as every other Hi-X model in the Austrian Audio line-up – but the company has been quite open about its ambitions for the revised and rethought tuning it’s undertaken for this application. And it seems safe to say its hard work has not been in vain.

If you’re preoccupied with the notion of ‘bass’ and the sort of presence your headphones are capable of generating, you might conceivably find the Hi-X20 sound rather skinny.

Listen a little longer, though, and you’ll likely realise that there’s plenty of bass extension, bass presence and bass variation available here – it’s just that these headphones are rapid in their deployment and controlled where the onset of low-frequency information is concerned.

Low-end stuff is simply not permitted to hang around, because if it was it might interfere with the momentum of the presentation and the entirely naturalistic way the Hi-X20 express rhythms. And that would never do – so while these are not the heaviest-hitting headphones you ever heard, don’t imagine that you’re not getting an accurate account of your music from the bottom of the frequency range to the top.

They attack the top of the frequency range with determination, and are so detailed and articulate through the midrange that a vocalist’s motivations are never in doubt. Integration of the frequency range is clean and confident, and the overall tonal balance is quite carefully neutral – if there’s a skewing of the tonality in what you’re hearing, it seems most likely it’s coming from your source player rather than from the Hi-X20.

The sound is open and spacious, and the soundstage the headphones are able to create is confidently laid out and properly controlled – but there’s never any suggestion of remoteness to the way the Austrian Audio presents a recording.

They’re quite tightly knit, unified performers that seem to understand the notion of ‘performance’ better than pretty much any price-comparable rival of similar configuration. There’s none of the cramped immediacy that some less accomplished closed-back designs indulge in here.

Add in considerable dynamic headroom for when the sonic going gets intense, significant powers of detail retrieval, and the ability to carefully contextualise the more minor and/or transient moments in a recording, and you’ve got a pair of headphones that both resolves and entertains like nobody’s business. It’s a potent combination, and it’s a rarity for anything like this sort of money.

Austrian Audio Hi-X20 review: Design

As I said, the 'design' of the Hi-X20 exists simply to allow the cable to transmit the audio signal and the drivers to deliver it. This is why all over-ear headphones look pretty much the same – because to do anything else would be like trying to reinvent the wheel.

At 255g the Austrian Audio aren’t especially heavy, and thanks to a thoughtful hanger arrangement and some nicely judged clamping force they’re no kind of burden to wear.

The fact that the contact points of the earpads and the inside of the headband are made from slow-retention memory foam covered by synthetic leather doesn't do any harm either. The earpads are easily replaceable, too, which makes the Hi-X20 seem even more of a long-term proposition.

The headband and its hinged yokes are made of metal, and the plastic in which it’s shrouded is, like the plastics that make up the outside of the earcups, robust and actually quite tactile. There’s a lot of articulation in the frame of the Hi-X20, more than enough to allow them to fold up into an appreciably compact shape – and into the soft bag provided in the package.

Unlike the Hi-X models I've come into contact with before now, the Hi-X20 are quite good-looking and understated in the way they’re finished. The all-black finish of the Hi-X20, broken up only by some quite subtle branding in red, is an up-market deal.

I have never had an issue with the quality of materials, or the standard of build and finish, of the other Hi-X models I've used – but they all deployed too many colours in their design and ended up looking like a crash involving several different pairs of headphones. The Hi-X20 are more sophisticated in appearance.

Austrian Audio Hi-X20 review: Verdict

If the sound of a pair of headphones can be broken down into a list of tick-boxes – 'detail retrieval', ‘dynamic response', ‘tonal balance', and so on – then the Hi-X20 tick all but one with a big, fat Magic Marker.

Even the unticked box – 'bass presence' – isn’t as serious a shortcoming as it might, at first, seem – the Hi-X20 have low-frequency fidelity and impact on their side, they just don’t overdo things.

In pretty much every respect, therefore, the Austrian Audio Hi-X20 are an accomplished and thoroughly entertaining listen. An ace affordable wired 5-star headphone option.

Also consider

The FT1 over-ear closed-back headphones by FiiO are worth considering at Hi-X20-adjacent money, as are the Sigva Oriole – both of these feature wood quite prominently as a material, though, so you’ll have to be a fan of the rustic aesthetic.

If you can live without the closed-back configuration, though, then the Grado SR80x make an awful lot of sense (except for the people who might be sitting near you while you’re using them, given their sound leakage).