MEE Audio Pinnacle P1

£180

Right at the top of Mee Audio’s earphone range sit the Pinnacle P1s, with all-metal shells and enough accessories for two pairs.

The Mee Pinnacle P1s have large earpieces and a comprehensive array of tips is included to ensure a good fit. There are three standard silicone sets, three double-flanged silicone pairs and three Comply foam pairs. As usual, the foam tends to provide the best seal and isolation.

Mee Audio also includes two cables with the Pinnacle P1. One is a ‘standard’ cable with a black finish and a one-button mobile phone remote, the other a chunkier translucent cable with no remote housing but a silver-plated oxygen-free copper wire. This one is the ‘audiophile’ choice. The cables pop off the earpieces using standard MMCX connectors.

Single dynamic driver

The Mee Pinnacle P1s use a single 10mm dynamic driver to produce a very smooth midrange that can deliver vocals with a natural and musical sensibility. There’s some extra warmth that stops them seeming over-clinical, but insight is what this pair are really about, as evidenced by the neatly rendered staccato percussion on Nitin Sawhney’s Nadia.

Low frequencies are solid, but only down to a point, as the same track’s plunging synth bass shows – these are not buds to deliver the earphone equivalent of a chest-rattling bass. The sound is also slightly narrow, making the general scale appear a little limited. Thankfully, high levels of detail and texture are there to save the day.

An earphone of slow-burn appeal and subtle musicality, the P1s are sure to grow on you. They just made picking high-end in-ears that bit trickier.