Introduction

The world of personal audio—especially as it comes out of Asia these days—is so rapidly evolving that one can hardly keep up with new product releases and even brand names. So I can not fault you for not knowing anything about Truthear, which is a brand that only just came into the public eye a week or two ago. Indeed, it is a new brand that seemingly came out of nowhere and is already grabbing a lot of eyes owing to multiple things executed well simultaneously. For one, the brand partnered with SHENZHENAUDIO, which is among the largest Chinese audio distributors today. Second, it worked with manufacturing partners that established brands such as MOONDROP and FiiO used themselves. Third, they knew marketing was key and came up with a multi-fold strategy to have a fairly unique debuting product. All this has led to the Truthear ZERO, and thanks to SHENZHENAUDIO for providing a review sample to TechPowerUp!

The full name of these in-ear monitors (IEMs) is the Truthear x Crinacle ZERO, and this is one of the few times a reviewer collaboration has been more than just a tuning tweak of an existing product. Crinacle has been involved in several such collabs over the past year+, including the Eclipse (with FiiO) and Midnight (with SeeAudio) we have covered before. There’s also a new budget-friendly planar IEM with 7Hz that I am testing as we speak, and I generally appreciate the guy’s tuning while also recognizing that each of the previous two reviewed products were fine but not essential/must-have by any means. Would this time be any different, given also the brand involved is a mystery in more ways than one? Let’s find out in our review today as we begin with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications