When you look at your new headphone packed in a brown cardboard box like cheap electric equipment and no headphone case inside, you question your buying decision. But give the beast a real good burn in, and then the magic begins.
It's value for money, no nonsense open back plano magnetic. Sound stage is huge and technically perfect.
My genre of music (jazz, vocal, country) feels organic and open. Bass is tight abd good extension. Highly recommended.
HPZ service is always top notch.

Great headphone with a very precise and transparant sound and big soundstage after you change the standard cable with a aftermarket cable. In my case with a pure occ balanced XLR 4 pin cable.
Paul

Best headphones to purchase in 2026 Thanks for headphone zone and Raghav sir

Earlier hearing in Sennheiser HD650S2 paired with Cayin RU9.
Had plan to buy Planner magnetic on Raghav's bithday deal narrowed to Hifiman Ananda for it's discounted price.
Now HiFiMAN - Ananda paired with same RU9 felt something can't be expresed. Experience it........ . New music instruments can be heared in same song which are all heared earlier for several years particularly in 21st century songs.

Recently bought the Ananda Stealths during the sale and boy I was pleasantly surprised with how much better these sounded compared to my fidelio X2 and HE400se. I am using an IFi zen dac with balanced cables to plug these to my PC. More on the sound in a bit.

First of all, these are very comfortable to wear and I can listen to them for long hours. For comparison he400se gave me a headache after an hour or so due to the headband design. That same head band design being on the edition XS, was one of the reasons why I went for the Ananda stealths instead since it has a suspension strap and both sound close enough otherwise based on reviews.

On to the sound then. Wow! The level of detail, soundstage/imaging, vocal clarity, timbre, dynamics it's all leagues above anything I have heard before. Anything expansive like Hans zimmer turns these into a mini movie theatre inside your head!
Classical music especially cello was a treat to listen to. Most genres sound good on these to be honest.

It more or less has a balanced sound signature. But the treble can be a bit too sharp for many people. I did some EQ, lowered the upper treble frequencies from 5 khz onwards, added a base shelf and also raised the 1.5 khz level slightly. These headphones are very responsive to EQ and I have found my perfect tuning to relax and enjoy the music.

Inspite of such detail and imaging with different levels of instrument separation, these still sound surprisingly coherent! You are not distracted by the technicalities and instead just get lost in the music.
End game for me atleast for now, haha!

I upgraded from the sundara. I bought this at 27k and I can't believe the kind of sound I am hearing. It is out of the world soundstage and detail. I have heard emperians and stax..these are 70% there at 10% price.

First planar headphone - and I could hear the difference. Soundstage isn’t all that wide, probably to do with Stealth Magnet (as noted in multiple reviews). But sound quality is really good - well balanced with a teensy bit of excitement added to it. Haven’t completed the recommended burn-in period of 150 hours. Will update this review once I find my footing.

To start with, this isn't the first time I had heard Ananda. Back in 2018 I had picked up the Sundara from Hifiman office at Bengaluru, I was hosted by the great folks at Hifiman for an entire afternoon where I sat and auditioned Sundara, Ananda and Arya. I picked up Sundara back then due to budget constraints, and I enjoyed it for some good 1.5 years without any issues, later sold it off to move on. Fast forward a few months or an year, I was back in market looking to pickup an upgrade, runs decently off portable source but scales well with desktop setup, and wouldn't strong-arm me to redo my entire chain. Initially I was looking for Arya, HD800s and Auteur, to which I realized that they will definitely need me to upgrade my entire chain - build s specific chain them. So after putting a lot of thought, I started looking for something else, and narrowed down to Ananda. As per reviews, they are decent upgrade over Sundara, pretty easy to drive, does decently with all genres and have a favorable sound signature.
So I picked up the Anandas and here I am! Soundwise I have no complaints, these sounds great, lows, mids and treble sounds pretty even to me - non of them are emphasized to overshadow the other, soundstage and imaging is great with great layering. They sound pretty intimate with lot of emotions in the presentation, energetic and to the face kind of an impactful sound. Personally this was not something I was looking for but I am getting used to it and with burnin the to the face kind of presentation is gradually taking a backstep. I have hardly used them for 20hours or so, so I am sure things will change with ~200 hours of burn in and I feel it will only get better. Buildwise, I feel they are pretty good, they do have a bit of clamp force but then that is what keeps these huge cups on our ears so that's fine I guess. The cables are okay, I just didn't like the springy characteristics. And I really dont understand the logic of providing 2 single ended cables, seems to be of mediocre quality, and only difference is length. Hifiman should have put a little thought to this and rather provided one good quality balanced cable, I think that's a fair ask for a headphone that costs 1000$.
Find me on social media for the detailed reviews coming out in a week or two.

Super clean, non fatiguing, natural sound putting you in the centre of the music. You postpone taking it off the ears which, to me, is the truest test. A balanced cable increases the output substantially though. Bass is just about enough for me though the lower frequencies cannot match the experience of good speakers. But the overall experience of being mobile while listening to high class astonishingly detailed speaker quality sound is a bliss.

Reviewing these headphones after using for more than a week. Out of the box, these cans sounded pretty ordinary. In the user guide they mentioned that these need 150 hours of burn in. After burn in the bass sounds punchier, treble sounds cleaner, vocals sound amazing, soundstage gets better (it isn't that wide like Sennheiser HD800) . Female vocals like Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Adele sound mind blowing. You can easily distinguish between a mp3 and a flac file through these headphones. So, the audio source is important. One thing I didn't like is the build quality. It is pretty average for the price. No earcup swivel along the vertical axis and also a cheap headband. This isn't a big issue for me, but could be a problem for some. These are heavy headphones, but don't feel heavy on the head. Overall happy with the purchase and would recommend these. Note that bassheads may not like these. The sound is quite neutral and if you want emphasized bass, go for Audeze headphones.

Edit on 13 Oct 2023:
Have used these headphones on and off for almost 4 years. Thought that these would be my end game headphones because of the sound quality. Had kept the headphones safely in its box untouched for about a month while I was on vacation. After I returned, I found on reconnecting the headphones the left driver stopped functioning. No sound. Oh no! It is not an issue with the cable nor the connector. The driver is dead. The conductor path on the diaphragm is chipped off in some places. So, the circuit is broken on the left driver.

It's a shame that a great sounding headphone can just die randomly because of poor quality control issues. Will never buy Hifiman stuff again ever. I've used Beyerdynamics and Sennheisers which have lasted for decades. 1 star for Hifiman. I don't care how good their products sound if they can't last for even 5 years. Save your money and stick with the legendary brands. Sennheiser HD650 is my daily headphone now which is way cheaper than Ananda and much more durable. If you don't mind a dead headphone after the 1 year warranty period ends, you can give Hifiman a shot. Their products sound really good. But, quality is disastrous, enough to give this brand a pass. Goodbye Hifiman.

Ananda is an excellent sounding headphone and very well balanced headphone with slightly more pleasing treble timbre. I highly recommended for it.