Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: audio quality stacks up, lack of ANC falls down

It's been all go at Edifier since the company was established back in 1996 – but the most pertinent point in its timeline (in the context of the headphones reviewed here) is its acquisition of Japanese headphone legend Stax back in 2012. 

It's quite obviously given Edifier the confidence to go toe-to-toe, both in terms of pricing and performance, with some of the most credible brands around making the best headphones that money can buy. 

After all, what word is there to describe a pair of wireless over-ear planar magnetic headphones that cost very similar money to a pair of Apple AirPods Max (albeit minus the active noise-cancelling (ANC)) other than ‘confident’? 

But is this confidence justified in Edifier's Stax Spirit S5 over-ears? That's what this review is here to detail for you. But up-front it's clear that these aren't designed for those seeking a pair of the best ANC headphones on the market. 

Edifier Stax Spirit S5: Price & Availability

The Edifier Stax Spirit S5 wireless over-ear headphones are on sale now, and in the United Kingdom they cost £499 per pair. In the United States they go for $499. And although no pricing in Australia has been confirmed so far, it seems likely they'll set customers there back AU$949 or thereabouts. 

Yes, this is serious money for a pair of wireless over-ear headphones, but it's not unheard of. The specification and feature set of the S5 is approaching 'unheard of' status, mind you.

Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Features & What's New?

There's one obvious point of difference where the feature set of the Stax Spirit S5 is concerned: the planar magnetic drivers they use to deliver sound. 

Unlike the much more common dynamic driver methodology, which uses a conical diaphragm driven by a voice coil within a magnetic field to produce sound, planar magnetic drivers use a tremendously thin (a mere 2μm thick in this instance), flat diaphragm with implanted wires, suspended in a gap between two magnets that vibrate the diaphragm to produce sound. 

The magnets need to be big enough to cover the entire surface area of the diaphragm, which is why this type of design tends to be bigger and heavier than the dynamic driver alternative. It's a more power-hungry arrangement, too. 

The Stax Spirit S5 uses the second generation of Edifier's 'EqualMass' wiring. By connecting different numbers of wires of the same width in a symmetrical structure, uniform driving force can be achieved – the diaphragm will move back and forth with the same momentum across its entire surface, keeping distortion to a bare minimum.

The rest of the S5 specification is slightly less radical but no less impressive. They use Bluetooth 5.4 for wireless connectivity, and thanks to the Qualcomm QCC5181 system-on-chip they have support for top-end LHDC, LDAC and aptX Lossless codecs – so paired with an appropriate source of music they are capable of serving up music at a lossless 16bit/44.1kHz resolution as well as lossy 24bit/96kHz. There's aptX Voice onboard too, which is currently as good as it gets when it comes to call quality, and there’s also multipoint connectivity available. 

Battery life is an uncomplicatedly impressive 80 hours from a single charge, and if the worst should happen then 15 minutes on the mains is good for a chunky 13 hours of playback. Android users with a device running Marshmallow or newer can take advantage of Google Fast Pair too (seeing as that operating system is from 2008 you should be more than covered). 

All pretty impressive so far, right? But there's one quite big box that goes unticked where the Edifier are concerned – and that's active noise-cancellation (ANC). The company can bang on all it likes about how the carefully ergonomic shape of its earpads and the equally painstaking clamping force and hanger arrangement it's specified provides significant passive noise isolation, but the simple fact is this: over-ear wireless headphones costing this much should really have ANC.

Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Performance

The Edifier Stax Spirit S5 is not one of those products that takes its time to reveal its strengths and weaknesses – these headphones waste next-to-no time in letting you know what's what. So it seems only appropriate that I get straight to it too.

The S5 are a spacious, entertaining and extraordinarily detailed listen. No matter if you stream some 320kbps MP3 content via AAC or 24bit/192kHz FLAC files using LDAC, they can peer deep into a recording and return with all manner of pertinent observations. Their ability to tease out the finest details, the most transient episodes in a recording even from the very edges of the soundstage, is remarkable.

And it's a big, well-defined soundstage the Edifier create, too. It's properly organised, so every element of a recording – no matter how complex or instrument-heavy it is – has plenty of room in which to stretch out. 

But despite the open nature of the soundstage, the S5 tightly unifies recordings into a single occurrence – there's a definite sensation of performance to the way these headphones deliver an audio file. Integration is convincing, and at no point does any part of a recording sound remote or estranged.

Low frequencies are deep, nicely shaped, properly textured and – sure enough – loaded with detail. Rhythmic expression is convincing as a result of the straight-edged control of bass sounds, and momentum levels are kept up where they need to be.

Midrange fidelity is equally impressive, too – the Edifier communicate the attitude and character of a vocalist in a manner easily described as ‘explicit’. The top of the frequency range is, in absolute terms, on the sibilant side of neutral, but this really only becomes an issue at significant volumes.  

There's significant dynamic headroom available, so the contrasts in volume and intensity in a recording are made absolutely plain. And the detail retrieval available here extends as far as being able to identify the harmonic variations in an instrument from note to note – all of which goes a long way to making the S5 presentation persuasive, entertaining and convincingly musical.

The lack of ANC isn't all that much of an issue in many situations – sure enough, the Edifier provide a fair amount of passive noise isolation. And that's especially true when using the lambskin earpads. But there's no denying the amount of ambient sound that's audible if you decide to use your S5 on public transport or something like that. Some listeners will enjoy everything these headphones do to the point they can overlook this shortcoming, some listeners will not. 

Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Design & Usability

By prevailing planar magnetic headphone standards, the Stax Spirit S5 are reasonably compact and, at 347g, not much heavier than those dynamic driver-equipped models they want to compete with. They're impressively built and finished, and have sufficient articulation in the frame to ensure their travel case is among the more compact around.

The steel headband has plenty of adjustment, the amount of padding at the contact points is (in the Goldilocks manner) just right, and the clamping force is really nicely judged. Really, the only issue regarding the design of the S5 is the liberal use of animal hide – cow for the outside of the earcups, lamb for one of the two pairs of earpads provided in the packaging. Yes, you can swap the lambskin earpads for the ‘cooling’ mesh alternative (which doesn't heat your ears quite as rapidly as the animal alternative).

There are a few physical controls around the edge of the right earcup, just above the USB-C slot: power on/off, volume up/down and a multi-function button. You can decide what this last button does in the ConneX control app that's free for iOS and Android – there are a number of options.

The app also has quite extensive EQ adjustment facilities, allows you to switch multipoint pairing on or off, enable Game mode, and so on. The left earcup, meanwhile, features just a 3.5mm analogue input – Edifier supplies both USB-C and 3.5mm cables for hard-wired listening. 

Edifier Stax Spirit S5 review: Verdict

There's plenty to admire about the sound the Edifier Stax Spirit S5 produce – they're a lively, wildly informative and profoundly enjoyable listen. 

Their specification is, with the exception of no active noise-cancelling technology, right on the money too – and they're demonstrably built to last too.

Also consider

Great planar magnetic headphones at this sort of money are not all that easy to come by – but the FT5 by FiiO sound great, look good, and are a bit more affordable even than the Stax Spirit S5. They're not wireless, though, and they will swamp the smaller-headed listener – so you'll make your own mind up on both of those scores. Otherwise, you may have to consider dynamic driver alternatives – and if you do so, well, suddenly you've a whole host of choice…