XENNS Mangird Tea 2 Review




The Mangird Tea came out a while back with some positive reviews and a decently pleasant overall sound. I personally enjoyed using it for its warm and somewhat too polite sound. It lacked a bit of air and treble, but the overall mid-range and bass was on point. Fast forward to now, and Mangird has rebranded to XENNS, but still also carries the Mangird name. Confusing, I know. But the Tea 2 is their new product with XENNS packaging, and Mangird on the faceplate. Luckily, its a good sounding IEM and let's dive a bit more into it!

First - Linsoul did provide me this review unit. It retails for $349 and can be found here: https://www.linsoul.com/products/xenns-mangird-tea2




Unboxing

The Tea 2 comes with a silver-colored braided cable with 2-pin connectors which is pretty nice to use and easy to handle. It's soft, and doesnt tangle easily, which is a bonus.

The faux-leather jewelry box is clean and attractive, and it has plenty of space for the IEM, with cables attached, a little mesh pocket for tips or small accessories. 

The Tea 2, itself, is a comfortable-fitting, acrylic-resin IEM with a barely-translucent black finish, and a very subtle, yet attractive faceplate with varying shades of blue reflective flakes across it. The branding, "Mangird" is written in cursive across the faceplate, though it's not tacky in anyway.

Sound Impressions

The Tea 2 takes a lot of the same sound signature of the original Tea, but adds more quantity in the upper midrange and lower treble region to give this Tea 2 set a much more balanced sound, whereas I found the original Tea to be tasteful, but a little dark and muted. The general sound is very appealing to my ears, and falls closely along what my preference target curve is.




The bass levels on the Tea 2 are quiet nice. I like that it is warm-tilted, but not muddy, and focuses more on sub-bass. That said, the bass quality isn't the best at this price range, and does come off across as rounded, and missing an extra layer or two of depth. For example, when I listen to Bill Laurance Trio's live version of the Pines, the stand-up bass guitar is just one-noted, and missing details. In "Signal in the Noise" by GoGo Penguin, the kick drum intro is more of a thud sound that something with expression. The overall quantity is really quite nice, however, and in most listening, I do value tonal balance over quality.

The mid-range extending up to the upper-mids is vastly improved over the Tea in my opinion. There is now no veil and not a dark sensation I got with the original Tea. The quantity here is perfectly fine and ideal. Perhaps there could be a bit more in the lower treble region to increase the dynamics and air to the overall sound, but that may lose the general "Tea" sound of being a warm, and comfy, cushy sound.

In general, I find the Tea 2 to exhibit a really solid balance of bass, mids and treble. Perhaps, a little more treble would improve its sound a tad, but there's not a lot to really complain about here. The technical performance is average for its going price of $350, but it is still a solid contender and improved quite a bit over the original Tea. All of that said, given its price, it'll find stiff competition from more technically gifted and similar tonality in the Moondrop Blessing 2 series, the 7Hz Timeless, and the S12 from LetShuoer.



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