The Anthem Five E2 isn’t a $150 universal IEM, but a $150 custom IEM.

As far as I know, the E2 is the cheapest custom IEM your money can get you. At least, if not the cheapest CIEM, it would be the cheapest hybrid custom IEM you can buy. Most US CIEM manufacturers typically bottom out at the $200 range at the very minimum, for instance the InEarz S150 (which still has an MSRP of $275), and virtually all of these budget models are built with a single BA driver due to razor-thin margins. Now, you could go cheaper if you look to ASEAN markets, for instance Avara and their $100 AV1Lite, but I don’t know how exactly it differs from the $170 AV1 and so I’m skeptical on exactly how much quality Avara could provide for that paltry sum.

Basically, excluding the unknown outliers, the E2 exists in a whole new price bracket of its own. The only custom IEM you can realistically buy with $150 is a title that grants exclusivity within a sizeable proportion of the custom IEM niche, in which a potential buyer simply requires a custom-fitted IEM and where sound quality takes a backseat priority. Again, this is $150 for an IEM that’s custom-moulded to your own ears and is essentially one of the most bespoke things that you can get in the audiophile market, a service that typically had a barrier-of-entry of much higher than $150 historically. And as long as the final product isn’t completely garbage, nobody would complain much about the imperfections.

Of course, the concept of “you get what you pay for” rears its ugly head at this level of penny-pinchery, so you might have to roll the dice in terms of Anthem Five’s QC. Be it the problems I’ve personally experienced with my review unit or perhaps more that you might come across as a customer, but I guess that’s just to be expected.