[General Accessories] Rashmosh:
A Refined, Sleek And Chilly Stylish Version Of The Best Xiaomi’s Got To Offer​

My my, how time flies. It’s been over a year - and similarly over 136K views - since I wrote my original review for the Beryllium Xiaomi Pistons 2.0, or Xiaomi MK301. During the past year, I’ve gone through these 2.0s, along with a pair of 2.1s and various other IEMs, but I’ve never been quite as impressed with the combination of a sleek design and great audio, as I was with the original Xiaomi Pistons 2.0 (the 2.1s don’t really count as a separate product). However, at long last, Xiaomi has released another product to give the Xiaomi Pistons a run for their money - namely, the ”1 More Design ’Duomi’ Crystal Pistons”. The review sample of the Crystal Pistons I used was supplied by the renowned site iBuyGou, a highly trusted reseller of Xiaomi merchandise.

The first thing you’re going to notice about the Crystal Pistons, - whether you're coming from a previous pair of Xiaomi Pistons, or if you're completely new to the Xiaomi ecosystem -, is that they are, indeed, aptly named ”Crystal Pistons”. The Crystal Pistons are aimed at a more ”fashionable” niche of the market than the regular standard Beryllium Pistons, and you can definitely tell. A large crystal, made out of ”Swarovski elements”, dominates the back of each earphone, and it quickly becomes clear that these IEMs are something completely different from what we’ve come to expect from Xiaomi - at least visually. In fact, these earphones are so different that they are being sold under the name of ”Duomi” - the name of Xiaomi’s dedicated music streaming service - , together with the established name of Xiaomi’s long time design-partner - ”1 More Design”. The earphones are delivered in an elegant black container, with a sturdy premium-paper construction and a minimalistic exterior. The phrase ”your fashion, your sparkle” is the only thing engraved on the box, and the box is opened by simply folding the ”reverse seagull-wing flaps” upwards. This ”lid” (of sorts) is neatly sealed by magnets concealed within the black paper flaps, and just below these flaps there’s a stylish, slightly pink certificate that states that the earphones are made with ”Swarovski elements”. Beneath this certificate there’s a circular ”mold”, in the same soft silicone previously known from the Beryllium Piston molds, which the earphones are neatly tied into. The mold rests on a small container, in clear dimmed white plastic, which contains three additional pairs of tips. Beneath this, there is a fashionable ”pouch” for storing the earphones - which makes a satisfactory magnetic snap when it closes. Finally, there’s yet another light pink certificate, which details how you’re supposed to use the volume controls and so on. The price is, on iBuyGou, even lower than the Xiaomi Pistons 2.1, at just $17.99 at the time of writing (although normally it’s even steeper than the 2.1s, at $36.00, and on 1 More Designs own site it’s sold for $64(!)) All in all, this doesn’t seem like the functional, down to earth packaging and pricing of previous Xiaomi Pistons, and it becomes evident that Xiaomi is trying to go after a primarily female, premium target audience with their new ”Duomi” brand. This is only further accentuated by the fact that the most popular color for the Crystal Pistons is a bright pink metallic color, complete with pink Swarovski crystals, although both black and silver editions are also offered. On the inside, however, there’s no doubt that this is nothing except a Xiaomi earphone - but more on this in a short while.

If we first finish up with the exterior, these IEMs (In-Ear Monitors) are, despite being a bit overly feminine, actually really sleek and they radiate brisk serenity. My pair was of the silver edition, which seemed like the most masculine choice (although I’m having second thoughts about not choosing black instead), and they exude a sense of chilly ”coolness” (literally), with stylish ear-tips - that look almost frost colored - and exclusive-looking matte brushed silvery aluminium, which goes along extraordinary well to every sort of phone imaginable. The back of the actual earphones themselves have a 15° ”specular edge”, which gently curves down nicely to the dominant Swarovski crystal on each earpiece. The cord is made out of kevlar, just like on the Xiaomi Pistons 2.0, but Xiaomi has gone ahead and improved the durability of the cord by incapsulating the kevlar cord in a super-resistant ”TPE”-material. This should help make the already very resistant kevlar cord nearly impossible to damage by mistake. Further down the cord, it becomes evident that the remote has also been reworked and improved from the Xiaomi Pistons - greatly. Although it looks similar, with matte edges, a brushed surface, and soft plastic buttons, it’s completely reworked on the inside. It now features Xiaomi’s brand new ”AI Intelligent Dual Control Technology”, which allows the user to smoothly use every aspect of the remote’s functionality, whether he’s using an Android phone or an iOS device - and it actually works great, something I’ve waited for Xiaomi to implement. While on the subject of the volume control hub, or ”remote”, it comes equipped with three separate buttons - one for pausing/playing/summoning Siri/rewinding/skipping tracks, and two for raising respectively lowering the volume. It also comes with a microphone, the best part of which is that it actually - surprisingly enough - sounds pretty damn good: certainly more than good enough for clear calls or recording voice-notes, and the microphone is actually good enough to record a decent podcast with. Naturally it can’t compete with high range microphones for $100 or more, but it basically blows the rest of the earphone microphone competition out of the water. The remote hub is, just like on other Xiaomi Piston earphones, situated just below where the two cords from each earpiece intersect and merge to a single one. This is not ergonomically ideal, since the volume control hub becomes positioned just a tad too low, compared to for example the Apple EarPods - where the remote control hub is situated on the right ear cord. Xiaomi brought over the improved and slightly lengthened cord length, which was introduced last summer in the Xiaomi Pistons 2.1, which allows me to wrap the cord nicely around my iPhone 5S, and which is generally just more handy. At the end of the cord, literally, the earphones are connected to your preferred device by a standard, - albeit according to Xiaomi ”gold-plated” - 3.5 millimeter connector plug, which touts reduced signal loss and claims to convey a more ”authentic sound” than the plug in previous Xiaomi Pistons.

You can, however, tell that the Crystal Pistons have amazing audio as soon as you plug in the smooth - and surprisingly tight and comfortable - ”Pacifier Grade Silica”-tips and turn on your music. The sound is crisp and clear, and the Crystal Pistons have no trouble bringing forth intricate background melodies which generally go undiscovered. Similarly, Spotify’s ”Extreme” quality and Beats Music’s HQ audio really come to their right with the Crystal Pistons, where the subtle improvements of high quality audio are perceptible. I’m going to keep the audial review short, but the bottom line is that the sound is, just like with the Pistons 2.0 and 2.1, simply insanely great - for any pair of earphones. The Crystal Pistons deliver an impressively wide soundstage, both clear low and high frequencies, low distortion and feature a crisp and ”sparkly” tremble which stands out. This, along with a bass that can be appreciated by anyone, since it’s still tight enough for audiophiles to be able to enjoy it whilst it is also powerful enough for the general public to be satisfied, makes the Crystal Pistons a lot like the Xiaomi Pistons. I would also dare to say that the imaging in the Crystal Pistons, to a certain extent, is better than in the 2.1 Xiaomi Pistons. This, however, is only true to a certain extent, since the quality of the imaging is reduced more and more as the song goes on, and the audio sometimes quickly becomes muddled after extraordinary imaging at first. I think I have found the reason to this, which I present in the next paragraph.

If we continue to the innards of the earphones, we see that this is because Xiaomi built these IEMs around their absolutely astounding beryllium drivers, first introduced in the MK301 Pistons, and you can definitely tell that these are top-notch drivers. The Crystal Pistons also feature a reworked dual dampening system, called the ”Pistons Acoustic Dampening Technology System”. This is a lot better than Xiaomi’s other dampening systems traditionally utilized in the company’s non-Beryllium earphones and even superior to the dampening system in Beryllium Pistons, but I doubt it’s something we’re going to see introduced in the Xiaomi Pistons 3.0. The reason is simple - the Beryllium Xiaomi Pistons instead use an ingenious ”sound channel”, which allows fragments of the audio to pass through a small hole, protected by a mash-net on the back of the earpieces. Allowing unwanted audio to leave the earpiece, ironically, makes the Beryllium Pistons better isolated, and prevents that the audio ever becomes muddled. The Crystal Pistons, on the other hand, eschews this sound channel, and instead places its large Swarovski crystals on the back of the earpieces. This makes the Crystal Pistons generally leakier than the Beryllium Pistons - although they’re not as leaky as for example Apple’s EarPods -, and I believe that this is also the reason as to why the imaging decreases in quality. This is because the Crystal Pistons utilize a ”rear sound-wave path”, just like the Beryllium Pistons, but where muddled excess audio is channeled out of the earpiece in the Beryllium Pistons through the rear sound channel, excess noise is unable to escape in the Crystal Pistons. According to the technical details of the ”Acoustic Dampening Technology” in the Crystal Pistons, excess noise is instead reflected by the sound chamber walls, and are being ”bounced” back onto the Hi-Fi Beryllium diaphragm drivers, which naturally impedes sound restoration. This makes the audio just the slightest bit jumbled and messy compared to the Beryllium Pistons after a while - although it’s important to keep in mind that this is nearly undetectable.

In conclusion, the 1 More Design ’Duomi’ Crystal Pistons are great earphones. They are a more refined version of the Xiaomi Pistons 2.1, and they have basically kept everything that made the MK301s great and just added on that. The ”AI Intelligent Dual Control Technology”, which (finally) makes all the volume control hub buttons fully functional is a most welcome addition, and I’m pleasantly surprised that Xiaomi brought over the expensive Beryllium diaphragm drivers from the MK301. The Swarovski crystals are another expensive addition, and I honestly can’t understand how iBuyGou can make a profit from offering them for $17.99. The headphones are an absolute steal at that price, and I believe that it would be worth to buy them even at $36 or $64 if you don't previously own a pair of Xiaomi earphones. However, I will not replace my pair of Xiaomi Pistons 2.1 with these as my daily driver, mostly due to one thing - the design. The design is what these earphones are all about, but I’m simply not a fan of the crystal approach. This might simply be because I have that Y-chromosome which we are being told seems to be the root of so much trouble or simply because I'm not enough of a fashionista, but I don’t feel like walking around with gems sticking out of my ears. Perhaps I would reconsider if the audio was dramatically better than the Xiaomi Pistons 2.1, but the Crystal Pistons and Beryllium Pistons are basically at the same - extremely high - audial level. If anything, I would say that the Beryllium Pistons are ever so slightly better than the Crystal Pistons, since they feature the rear sound channel which relieves the diaphragm drivers from noise disturbance - but the difference is ever so slight that I might just be imagining it. Compared to any other earphones, these are simply amazing IEMs. The Crystal Pistons deliver crisp and clear audio that’s far ahead of the competition. I’d say, if you haven't tried Xiaomi Pistons before, you should place an order immediately. $17.99 really is an unbelievable deal for a pair of earphones of this quality, and if you believe the technical analysis diagrams on iBuyGou, then the Crystal Pistons Earphones beat a pair of Beats HEADPHONES in both Sound Pressure Levels and Total Harmonic Distortion. If you on the other already own a pair of Xiaomi Pistons, I would say that if you're fashion oriented and don’t have a particular dislike of premium crystals (albeit they’re just as small as a petite bead), you should definitely go for them. Simply, there’s a chance that my Xiaomi Pistons have finally found a superior pair of earphones - in Xiaomi’s new, fashion oriented yet absolutely superb release.