Touted as the grandfather of portable audio, Etymotic’s original ER4B and ER4S came into the world in 1991 as the world’s first commercially available universal in-ear monitor. Etymotic continues its legacy with the ER4SR and ER4XR, which are updates to their legacy ER4 lineup with slight tweaks to their target curve to accomodate for more mainstream tastes.

But on the other end of the spectrum, the budget lineup of Etymotic’s product range had historically been an afterthought in the eyes of the audiophile community. Perhaps the most popular of which would’ve been the HF5, but you’re probably not aware that Etymotic had no less than eight lower entry models, which includes the MC series (MC2, MC3 and MC5), the HF series (HF2, HF3 and HF5), the MK5 series and most out-of-place of all, the “Ety Kids” EK5 which is a volume-limited MK5 (if memory serves me correct).

The new ER2 series serves to streamline all of these lower-end models into two signatures, just like the new ER4 and ER3 series. No more confusing jumbles of letters and numbers, just the use of “SE” or “XR” to denote the reference or bass-boosted tuning respectively.

The ER2 takes a significant departure from the ER3 and ER4 in that the ER2 utilises a proprietary dynamic driver, but do note that they are not the first dynamic driver IEM from Etymotic (that honour goes to the original MC lineup). And of course, the significant price cuts compared to the ER3 and ER4 makes the ER2 a much more enticing offer for the masses.

Of course the big question now remains: how different is the ER2 from their bigger, more expensive brothers?

Product pages

ER2SE: https://zeppelinandco.com/products/etymotic-er2se

ER2XR: https://zeppelinandco.com/products/etymotic-er2xr

MSRP: $160

Driver configuration: single dynamic