Introduction

Anyone who has been in the market for in-ear monitors (IEMs) in the last couple of years has no doubt heard of MOONDROP. The China-based audio brand originated in 2015 and has relished a meteoric rise in both brand awareness and market share, to where it has expanded greatly to include TWS earphones, portable DAC/amps and dongles, and even keyboards in its product portfolio. Such is MOONDROP’s success of late, that 12 of the top 16 best-selling products on SHENZHENAUDIO—one of the largest audio distributors on the planet—belong to MOONDROP as of the date of this review. As such, I was eagerly anticipating to see whether MOONDROP could do to headphones what it, and a few other Asian brands, have done to revolutionize the earphone market, and bring excellent quality at a reasonable price.

MOONDROP held a live stream in July this year to publicly announce its debut into the world of over-ear headphones with not one, but three different headphones. Not only was there going to be the expected dynamic driver set, but it surprised everyone by also announcing a planar magnetic and an electrostatic set of headphones. Here’s a decent written overview for those who don’t have the time to watch a 20 min+ video, but the takeaway is MOONDROP promised quite a lot of things which didn’t all go to plan. Logistics delays outside of MOONDROP’s control meant the VENUS planar magnetic set took longer than the 1st August release date announced, and then there was the part where the dynamic driver set VOID had it’s own issues, resulting in a last-minute launch postponement—more on that in a separate article. It is now November 2022 as I write this review and the VENUS is up for a timed pre-order/group-buy at a discounted price, followed by a full launch planned in December. Regardless of when you see this review, the question remains—has MOONDROP got it right with the VENUS? Thanks to SHENZHENAUDIO for providing a review sample to TechPowerUp, as we aim to find out for ourselves today.

Specifications