Meze 99 Neo Headphone Review

Meze are a Romanian company who are known for making some stunning high-end headphones and IEMs such as the Audio Elite, Empyrean and the Rai Penta. Thankfully, when companies such as Meze have successes in the higher end of the market, the tech within trickles down to the more consumer-friendly price brackets.

Priced at €199, the Meze Neo 99 are the first entry point to the Meze headphone range and we’ve been trying them out for the last few weeks to see how they perform.

What’s in the Box

The Meze Neo 99 come with a nice hard case to store the headphones in. Inside the case, you’ll find a detachable 3.5mm headphone cable along with an aeroplane connector and a 6.3mm adapter.

Design

The Neo 99 have a stylish black and silver design and have a quality feel in hand. At 260 grams, they are very light for over-ear headphones which makes them easy to wear for extended periods. Further helping the fit is the excellent self-adjusting headband that expands or contracts based on the user’s head size. It’s simple and means you get a great fit straight away.

The replaceable ear pads, made from ABS plastic, are very soft but still provide a good enough seal to keep out ambient noise.

The whole headphone is designed to be serviceable with all parts being replaceable. This is a nice feature to have and should ensure the headphones can last for many years. It’s not common to find this at this price point.

The included 3.5mm cable has an inline microphone along with volume control so you can use the Neo 99 to accept calls etc.

Neo 99 Sound

Sound is looked after by 40mm drivers in each can. These drivers need some time to burn in with use before they start sounding as good as they can. I left them playing music around the clock for a week before I started reviewing them.

The Neo 99 are a closed-back design. The soundstage isn’t huge in depth but it does stretch quite far left and right. Imaging, or the sense of being able to pick out the location of individual instruments, is good with the stage stretching more let and right than in depth. For live performances, you’ll feel like you are on stage listening rather than being in the audience.

The Neo 99 have one of the flattest frequency curves I’ve seen in a set of headphones at this price. It is a somewhat brave move by Meze as the trend of elevated bass continues in many consumer-level headphones which means to the uninitiated the Neo 99 may seem lacking in that area. What they do produce is a very reference sound with little to no colouration to the music at all.

If that reference sound isn’t your thing you will need to apply personal changes using an equaliser.

The sound produced is accurate and clear and they had no problem playing any type of music. They are an all-round set that can be used for many different types of listening. Bass is impactful due to the large drivers but it is tight and never bloated. Mids are clear and musical with guitars sounding lifelike while vocals don’t sound too recessed considering the frequency curve. Higher frequencies require some adjustments via EQ to really make them shine but this will, of course, depend on personal taste.

I tested the Neo 99 with a whole range of audio equipment to see how they performed. Headphones such as these often require a lot of energy to drive properly and while I did find the best experience was when connected to something like the powerful Cayin C9 amp, I also found them to work well with lower-powered devices.

The first device I tried them with was a Samsung Galaxy S10 connected directly to the 3.5mm jack. While the sound quality was ok, even at max volume it was still a number of steps lower than what I would have liked.

I tried with a selection of other phones that were around the office either via jack or a USB C to 3.5mm adapter and for the most part, I would like the volume to be louder. To get the best out of these headphones in a mobile sense you will need to introduce a DAC dongle. Using the Lotoo Paw S1 connected to the smartphones with USB C connections and to an iPad Pro, there was a huge step up in both sound quality and volume.

The S1 can drive the headphones without issue and also has built-in equaliser effects that have a minimum impact on sound quality should you wish to use them. Likewise with the M1 MacBook Air using the S1 or even directly via the 3.5mm jack it’s possible to drive these adequately.

Conclusion

The Meze Neo 99 are a high-quality set of headphones that produce a clear, reference sound. There’s still plenty of scope to adjust the sound via hardware or software but if this is the type of signature you enjoy then they are well worth checking out at this price point. The fact that they are fully serviceable is a nice addition at this price point and should give people peace of mind when purchasing.

To find out more please visit: https://mezeaudio.com/collections/all/products/99-neo