When Phil Schiller announced that the iPhone would be moving away from the headphone jack last year, he claimed that Lightning was, from the start, designed to be a “great digital audio connector” that could provide clear audio, power, and digital music control where the headphone jack could not. Though the first pair of headphones mentioned during that keynote used Lightning, Apple changed the focus very quickly to Bluetooth. Though we have been impressed by the Lightning headphones we’ve reviewed since that announcement, the market seems not to have blown up like we had hoped. Enter Beem United, a new headphone company that surprised us with their excellent BeMe D200 ($170) Lightning IEMs with Active Noise Cancellation.
The D200 ships with an array of different tip sizes and a protective carry case. Its driver housings are small, with a classy circular design and attractive question-mark shaped strain reliefs. It’s also surprisingly light, despite its robust cable and four-button control pod that contains a DAC, amp, and ANC electronics.
We found the D200 to be very comfortable and easy to fit for a good seal. The four-button control pod (volume up, play/pause, volume down, ANC) works flawlessly, though we would have preferred buttons that were easier to differentiate without looking. Slightly detracting from the D200’s otherwise thoughtful design were the right angles at the top of its control pod that caused snags on clothes and desks and its flat cables can be distractingly microphonic in motion.
The only design feature of the D200 that we don’t like is its inclusion of white lights on the rear of the driver housings. They illuminate continuously when plugged in, and seem to have no function other than signaling to passers-by that these are “special” headphones. We can understand why Beem would want to draw some attention to their product’s otherwise tastefully understated design, but we would prefer an option to turn the lights off, especially since lights use power and there’s still no way to charge the iPhone while Lightning headphones are in use.
The D200’s sound signature is, like many headphones we’ve tested lately, best suited to popular music. It has a warm sound with a heavy bass boost and sounds best with pop, hip-hop and EDM. Compared to headphones with a more balanced sound, we found that detail suffered with rock and metal music, especially fast-paced tracks.
Treble seems to be significantly softened in the D200, which we thought made some EDM tracks less engaging – sometimes the highs are supposed to be sharp. Though this kind of a sound signature can have the effect of turning down the contrast in some music, the D200 more than makes up for it with its surprise feature – ANC.
The D200’s ANC works, and that’s a big deal. We tested the D200 extensively amid the cacophony of NYC streets and subways, and found that it handily strips away the loud, low frequencies that dominate these areas. Wind and higher-frequency sounds can still be heard (although attenuated by passive isolation), but this is common and probably unavoidable for an in-ear headphone. More good news – unlike other ANC we tested in previous years, there was nearly no difference in the sound of the music when switching ANC on. Even if we were thrown off in detecting these changes by the interrupting voice prompt, we are confident that any actual change is subtle enough to be ignored. Though a circumaural headphone would have isolated better, D200’s ANC does exactly what it was supposed to do – strip out ambient noise, allowing us to listen at lower volumes in noisy areas.
Additional features are available through Beem United’s free (and optional) companion app, available on the iOS App Store. The app detects that the D200 is connected and offers controls of ANC, two Ambient Aware modes, and Equalizer settings.
