Westone W30 Review

Our Westone W30 (now the updated IEM model MACH 30) review celebrates one of Westone’s bestsellers, and as a recent person reviewed he believed they sounded better than his older W4 series Westone IEM’s. We’ve never had a pair returned and that is always a good sign. We thought we’d use different reference tracks for this review and are using music from Tidal HiFi playlists.

The first track up is Paper Planes by Sleepwave and immediately you can feel the warmth that the W30’s give off. We spend a lot of time listening to the UM Pro 30 and UM Pro 50 so the difference in the W series is clearly different right out of the gate.

The feel of the UM Pro series is often very very balanced. The W series has a more consumer-friendly feel to them – they’ve put time into sculpting the sound signature to be what you would expect for a broad listening audience.

The Westone W30 are a triple driver earphone with a crossover to help push the right frequencies to the right driver. Overall they are very comfortable – light and easy to wear for long periods of time.

Tech Specs

Let’s start with the geeky stuff and get that out of the way.

• Sensitivity: 107 dB SPL @ 1 mW
• Frequency Response: 20 Hz – 18 kHz
• DRIVER: 3 balanced armature drivers with a 3-way crossover
• CABLE LENGTH: 50” / 128 cm

Bass Notes

The Bass response is great. It is warm but for this price range, you won’t be disappointed. 9 Crimes by Damien Rice is always one of the tracks we try out for Bass response. The opening sequence features a nice piano which is introduced to a deep bass/timpani thump in the intro. We always listen to see how much and how deep it sounds.

These bring the instrumentation through nicely but not enough to make you feel like your standing next to it, but you’re not going to get that until you get up to the W50-W60 ranges. No complaints here – the bass felt good. Stepping up to music mixed to make you go boom, we tried some David Guetta with Sam Smith – Dangerous. The intro was wonderful – the strings sit in the back of your left ear and a clean and acoustic. The vocals come in strong and then it all builds up to a great sounding track.

This was good but we felt these could go deeper with the right track so then we tried some Sohn and finally Eminem. Sohn was nice, you wouldn’t notice any fatigue listening for long periods be we still here was more here so we upped the mix to Skrillex.

Overall these a well balanced and lows, mids and highs will never compete with each other.

Mid Notes

Some of the lower mid notes were warm at times but not so warm it became wooly. The higher mids are great. We like the mids on the W30 because they sit well balanced in the middle, where they should be. If you listen to acoustic music or classical these are going to step up your listening pleasure a lot.

If you listen to rock or rap they will equally make you find new joys in some of your favourite tracks. Wicked Ways for Eminem does both the mids and bass good justice. We also took Pink Floyds – The Endless River for a walk knowing that the huge sound of Dave Gilmour’s guitar would let us know how the mids on the W30 were.

No complaints – although it’s hard to complain about Dave Gilmour’s guitar work, even if it was through iPhone earphones..cough cough…

High Notes (Treble)

Treble is a funny thing for audiophiles and music lovers everywhere. Some love it sharp and ripping your head off, some like it a little rolled off, and some wouldn’t be able to tell you.

The highs are balanced and clean. Not a hell of a lot of sibilance but not too much also. You would not find these difficult to listen to for long periods of time. They don’t ever make you wince at low or high volumes.

At times the highs feel distance but still easy to make out. God Only Knows by She & Him show the mids and treble nicely with the clear acoustic guitar and front sitting vocals. 

PRAT (Pace, Rhythm and Timing)

No complaints but we didn’t start rocking in our chair or anything. Listening to Faith No More’s Motherf***er has some nice pace to it which we really enjoyed. Tool’s Tix

Emotional Quotient (EQ)

This depends on what you’re playing. Not as high as others in the Westone and Shure range but you’ll not feel like anything is missing either. 

Noise Isolation

Commuting on the Vancouver Skytrain or Toronto subway is way more enjoyable with some noise isolation – these achieve that. The trick is always to make sure you don’t restrict the sound when you compress the foams to get them in your ear, else it will sound like crap.

Build Quality

Great – no complaints. So light and easy to wear, very good for long flights, working at your desk for long periods or commuting.

Accessories

• EPIC Replaceable cable and MFI G2 cable
• Hard Case
• Foams of many shapes and sizes
• Cleaning tool
• Optional cable with inline 3 button control and mic
• Exchangeable faceplate options = 3

Westone W30 Review Conclusion

Comfortable, great sound and great build quality. You’re not going to have a lot of complaints about the W30. Well balanced and a good range to boot.

These don’t have the EQ that some higher-end IEM’s have but everything else is here for a complete package.

Check pricing and more info here (now the updated IEM model MACH 30).

This post was last updated on 2025-01-14 / Some images from Amazon Product API & some links may be affiliate links which may earn us a commission from purchases.