This 30-Year Old Flagship is HOW Good?! Sennheiser HE90 Brought Back to Life!
The $6,000 ESLabs ES-HE90 faithfully recreates the (no longer available) legendary Sennheiser HE90 Orpheus at less than half the cost, delivering the effortless and ultra-open electrostatic presentation at a fraction of the price of the original.
We tested the ESLabs ES-HE90 at the Shenzhen International Audio Show last month, and this is one you're going to want to know about. This $6,000 electrostatic headphone is an (extremely) faithful recreation of the legendary 1990s Sennheiser HE90 Orpheus flagship—which is neither easy to do, nor cheap.
It's only possible because ESLabs has been spending years learning about the original HE90 as an object of personal fascination, enough so that their owner Benson actually became the go-to community member for those with HE90s who needed repair.
Here are our initial impressions of the ES-HE90:
Ergonomically, the ES-HE90 is extremely comfortable. It provides an exceptionally plush, featherweight listening experience, and the earcups are massive, featuring ultra-soft pad material that feels luxurious against the face.
Clamp force is remarkably gentle—almost loose—allowing the frame to hover comfortably on the head without pressing aggressively into the jaw or temples. While it lacks the dense, heavy clamping structure typical of modern planars, the relaxed fit allows the headphone to virtually disappear during long listening sessions.
Sonically, the ES-HE90 presents a bright, transparent, and ethereal sound signature that immediately draws favorable comparisons to high-end flagships like the HiFiMAN Susvara and Audeze CRBN—and when we say favorable, we mean we like it more than the aforementioned comparison points.
The upper-midrange/low-treble features a noticeable forwardness around 3 kHz to 4.5 kHz, imparting a notable sense of clarity and "unveiling" to stringed instruments and acoustic tracks, though this emphasis comes that the expense of the whole signature being rather light when it comes to portraying fundamentals of instruments and vocal body.
The treble performance is presented with a mix of effortlessness, airy shimmer, and a marked sense of detail. While listeners sensitive to low-treble energy between 3 kHz and 5 kHz or upper treble above 10 kHz may detect occasional sibilance, the high-end presentation feels exceptionally open and unconstrained.
The bass response is on the "clean" side, coming across as predominately agile and textured, prioritizing the crisp attack of kick drums over deep bass rumble.
Acoustically, it produces a free-air-like sensation that minimizes ear pressure, creating a realistic, speaker-like atmosphere (even if the actual imaging and timbre is quite unlike speakers).
Final Thoughts
The ESLabs ES-HE90 captures the luxurious charm that made the original Sennheiser HE90 an icon. While its forward upper-midrange and energetic treble tilt make it less suited for listeners focused on music feeling "full-range", its feeling of transparency and how this leaves the listener with a notable feeling of "damn, this sounds expensive" makes it something we think most audiophiles are going to want to hear at least once.
If you're an enthusiast seeking top-tier electrostatic performance without five-figure "collector's item" markups, the ES-HE90 is an extraordinary achievement and definitely worth putting on your radar.
