The brand new Takstar PRO82 closed-back headphones has bursted into the audio scene with a total renovation from its predecessor, Takstar PRO80 model. Featuring a Ø40mm new NdFeB driver with high sensitivity, wide response range and large dynamic. Adopts high polymer coating diaphragm, pure bass, penetrating mids and exquisite highs.
Takstar PRO82 full-size headphones come with a soft and comfortable headband and ear pads for long time listening without stress. Ergonomic design fits different head shapes.
Designed with 3 level bass adjustment function, user can adjust the bass according to the music style to exert the best perfomance.
miguelccoelho –
TL;DR: you don’t want to spend too much, but want real quality? Buy These. You want to be a cheap a** and go under 50€? DON’T DO IT! BUY THESE!
Lets discuss the details then.
First, I’ll have to thank BenF from the Head-fi forums for his great review, all the advice, and chatting when getting and after getting these headphones.
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When it comes to price / quality, these are AMAZING. Seriously, for 80€, you can’t do better. Hell, there’s even a lot of discussion that under 200€, you can’t do better.
To start off, comfort. They are comfortable as a warm bath on a cold morning, as comfortable as a lovers embrace on a lonely night. All drama/theatrics aside, these are really really comfortable. The first few days, it may seem a bit like there’s a certain pressure (not too much, but it’s there) until they give in a bit, and then, they are perfect. The pads are very comfortable, and fit well, and they become sort of a second skin.
Then, these have a neutral sound, there’s no coloring whatsoever. They are very transparent. This may be good or bad, depending on the rest of your setup and what you want. If you listen to low quality sound files / streams, you will notice that. Like I said, transparency can be bad. However, if you hear good quality music… It will sound amazing! In fact, I’d say that’s the second best part of these, they can sound amazing, and I can’t stress that enough. They don’t have a very wide soundstage, but it’s more than enough for regular users who don’t know much about this, but they compensate this with what people call imaging. You can hear a ton of small details. I can hear a lot of details, and I came from the HD419 which barely have any (they are cheap, very bass heavy headphones). With a month of use, I started noticing small details on some songs and videos that I had never even thought about.
Listening to the following song, especially the guitar solo:
DAMN THAT LOVELY GUITAR SOLO! AND DAMN THESE FOR BEING SO GOOD! Aaaand I had to go listen to that the song again…
I have a 1.0x/3.3x Objective2 Amp coming in, and I will still have to test with it. But since that’s a very neutral Amp, it should pair up very nicely (and that’s what others have reviewed).
They are also closed headphones, which means, they will dampen outside sound. Not block, these won’t isolate you from the world, but it dampens quite a bit the sound. I can still hear quite a bit of things with these on, without sound playing, but once sound starts, damn, it kinda feels like I’m slowly isolating from the outside. As an example, I use an MX Blue keyboard, which means click click click (especially because I bottom out a lot). If no sound is playing, I can hear myself typing this with good clarity. However, once I start my Spotify, with a medium volume, it dampens a lot the sound of me writing. It won’t stop completely all sound, but it’s not that far from that.
Gaming with these has been a blast. I can’t promise you’ll listen to all the steps in CS:GO (I don’t play it, so I can’t promise that), but that imaging I mentioned allows you to listen to small details in your game sounds. As an example, sound steps on Rise of the Tomb Raider, the birds, the growl of the bears… All sounded great and helped me feel completely immersed in that setting.
Plus, this version from Headphoniaks nets you a beautiful box that brings them properly protected, a bag to transport them too (the bad has those swimming shorts’ nets inside), an adpater from 2.5 to 3.5mm, and a good quality cable. Wait, cable? Don’t all phones have one? Why does it matter? Well, because it’s quality AND removable. That’s right, you could then buy one of those cables that have a microphone integrated and use them on your phone. Talk about flexibility and extras right? There are downsides to that, like not being able to use amplifiers and all, but for mobility or online talking, it’s worth it.
To finish off, there is actually mods that can be applied that can even improve them (will be testing that when material arrives). “Modding the phones? Isn’t that dangerous or difficult?”. Well… it’s simply changing the foam pads, and that’s it… You even gain on soundstage with that. Easy to do and nets you improvements on one of the weaknesses. Yes, I do have those pads comming in too, to test everything out.
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Now, do they have weaknesses? Yes, they do have some.
First, sibilance. If you listen to a lot of sound with strong highs that are prone to it, it will show up. Is it terrible? Nope, far from it, it’s just there. But if you are sensitive to it, it has the potential to annoy you. Personally, I still haven’t found something on my regular listens where they are noticeable at all, but you better be aware. A good example for a sibilance test, especially the first part of the video:
Mids are not perfect, they are very slightly recessed. They are great, but are still the weaker part between lows, mids and highs.
Soundstage is good, but not amazing. It could do with more, but it makes up for it with the precision you get from them, but you know… It could be perfect right?
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At the end of the day, for their price, you can’t go wrong. I’ve seen people mention that, with a proper amp, you can easily compete with headphones a lot more expensive. I haven’t had any of those headphones, so I can’t say that for myself, but I can say that these are amazing for their price. And when people who spent hundreds before on others, ended up buying these and keeping them, that says quite a lot. Like in all hobbies, you can always fall on a rabbit hole of spending more and more money to get exponentially less for the money.
(For anyone that has done 12th grade maths, the relation of price and quality gain in headphones is a logarithmic function: the more you spend, the less you gain per unit of money ($,€,etc).)
But these are one of those that are definitely worth a lot more than what you pay for them. It’s on that part of the curve where you will feel that it’s definitely money well spent, I promise you that. Plus, even if you like to color your music, you can always do it through the amp, there are options out there. Since the 82 pro are transparent, it’s probably worth trying to see how they fare on being colored.
If you want to see more feedback, reviews, mods, etc: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/takstar-pro-82-review-impressions-and-discussion-thread.849965/
Go there and ask your questions. It’s worth it. Then come back here and buy them, for this price, you get the phones, the beautiful box, the bag to carry them, the cable and an adapter.