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Recommended Component 2025 - Stereophile
Five Stars - What Hi-Fi?
Stereophile Product of the Year Awards 2023 - Headphone Product Finalist
Editor's Choice Award 2024 – hi-fi+ Magazine
New Upgraded Version of an Award-Winning "Best Headphone"
Focal's new Utopia 2022 Reference Headphone represents an evolutionary design upgrade in terms of both acoustics and aesthetics. The winner of "best headphone" awards from audiophile publications around the world several times over, Utopia has become a leader in high-end headphones. The new 2022 version manages to improve upon an already exceptional component.
"Recommended Component" Honors
Stereophile honored the Utopia 2022 by awarding it the magazine's coveted Recommend Component status for 2025.
"HR [Herb Reichert] described the Utopias as capable of producing "a gut-level realism that is rare in high-end audio," adding that the Focals are 'lightning-fast, extremely open, and profoundly uncolored.'"
"Compared to its predecessor, HR noted, the 2022 Utopia 'exhibits a more complete transparency, a quicker, higher bounce, and a more assured way with momentum.'"
Award-Winning Performance
England's hi-fi+ magazine honored the Utopia 2022 with an Editor's Choice Award for 2024.
"Our listening test revealed that the Utopia 2022 delivers exceptional performance. It can be driven by most headphone amplifiers and still sound superb."
"The headphone has a precise soundstage, solid bass response, and excellent detail. It excels at capturing the entire frequency range with solidity and harmonic equanimity. Overall, the Focal Utopia 2022 is a reference-quality headphone with outstanding sound and comfort, making it a top choice for music lovers of all shapes and sizes."
"Competitive with the Best at Any Price"
The Utopia 2022 also won a Stereophile Product of the Year Awards 2023 accolade as a Headphone Product Finalist. According to Herb Reichert, "If I already owned 2020 Utopias, I would not sell them. But I might consider owning both, or experimenting with amps and cables. Compared to its predecessor, the 2022 Utopia exhibits a more complete transparency, a quicker, higher bounce, and a more assured way with momentum. Focal's Utopia is easy to drive, and its looks and sonics are competitive with today's best at any price."
"This is a Slam Dunk"
"It’s extremely well built, visually attractive, very comfortable to wear for long listening sessions, and sounds great with almost any decent headphone amp. It also will scale to as high as you care to go (spend?)," reports Dave McNair, Part-Time Audiophile, January 13, 2023. "For the headphone nuts out there, this is a slam dunk. For the high end headphone curious – that can spend some cash – put these on your shortlist to audition. You can thank me later."
"I can attest that the good stuff, the true magic of the Utopia, is here in abundance. Detail and resolution, tempered by cohesion and (for lack of a better term) musicality," notes Trav Wilson, Headphonesty, November 16, 2022. "Sonically, the Utopia (2022) deliver all I could wish for in a pair of headphones. I can offer no higher praise. Focal is tops in my book for aesthetics as well. The Focal design language is immediately identifiable and portrays luxury and elegance."
Upgraded Speaker Drivers
With the new Utopia, you get superior sonic performance and unequaled reliability. Utopia retains its famous ‘M’-shaped dome and pure Beryllium speaker drivers for transparent and true sound reproduction. The new addition to the speaker driver is the upgraded voice coil. The brand new coil is made up of 30% copper and 70% aluminum, taking driver reliability to the extreme while maintaining Utopia's excellent performance.
To push the limits even further, Focal has incorporated the ‘M’-shaped speaker driver grille originally developed for Clear Mg headphones, which follows the curve of the dome. This improves the linearity and reproduction of the treble.
"One of the Finest Headphones Money Can Buy"
England's What Hi-Fi? gave the Utopia 22 its top rating of Five Stars, calling them "one of the finest pairs of headphones money can buy."
"Feed them with a system of suitable quality and you’ll experience one of the finest sounds we’ve yet heard."
Sophisticated Comfort and Aesthetics
Utopia 2022 pampers you with a new level of comfort and aesthetics. The forged carbon yokes, made from recycled carbon, are modern and sophisticated in style, while providing more lightness. The honeycomb grille, synonymous with Focal's open-back headphones – and the Black Chrome ring – showcase subtle design details, like the Yin and Yang on the outer case and the black and red double grille on the speaker driver.
Like its predecessor, Utopia 2020, the new Utopia 2022 continues to include a treasure trove of valuable accessories. It comes with a faux leather box for storage plus a lightweight, rigid carrying case. You also get two detachable cables: one 5ft (1.5m) mini-jack cable with 1/4” (6.35mm) adapter, and one 10ft (3m) cable with XLR connector.
An Outstanding Listening Experience
The listening experience is outstanding in terms of realism, natural sound reproduction, dynamics and clarity. When listening to Utopia, the headphones virtually disappear and the audio signal is revealed with a level of precision never achieved until Utopia.
"The world's best headphone?" asks Steve Gutenberg in a CNET.com review for June 18, 2016 for the original-model Utopis. "Sure, it's expensive, but the Focal Utopia redefines what it means to be an audiophile headphone in 2016."
"The Elear and Utopia are simply extraordinary," raves Tyll Hertsens, InnerFidelity.com, July 18, 2016. "The sense of dynamism, tonal balance, and smooth clarity of both are, to put it mildly, disorientingly disruptive to my sense of where headphones are at today and in what way and by how much these are better."
The Utopia Story
Utopia is result of a rather risky challenge: to offer an audio experience worthy of the brand's high-fidelity loudspeakers . In order to achieve this, Focal approached the design of the various components very differently to other players in the market.
The first obvious aspect is the extent of the open design. When Utopia is worn, the sensation is remarkable: there is absolutely no change in perception in terms of room size. This desire to not have an impact on the impedance of the room the user is in, clearly contributes to the realistic sound of the headphone.
Vastly Improved Comfort
The next step for Focal's mechanical engineers and designers was to improve the comfort of the headphones. There are still many high-end headphones which no doubt offer excellent performance, but comfort is a difficult issue over long periods. So, Focal focused on designing a headband with a constant bend, regardless of the size of the user's head size. This spreads the weight of the headphones evenly over the head to avoid the feeling of pressure on the head or ears, which is all too often the case with other products.
The yoke is also very impressive, both in terms of purity of the design and in terms of comfort. Thus, the yoke doesn't have traditional vertically rotating mechanics, as this has been integrated into the headband.
In addition to this, the asymmetry of the attachment points connecting the yoke to the ear-piece improves the distribution of clamping pressure and ensures excellent sealing and great comfort.
The ear-piece also deserves praise for its remarkable aesthetics and its impressive open design. This avoids any mechanical compression of the transducers while preserving exceptionally realistic sound. Equipped with high-density memory foam, Utopia provides perfect sealing and adapts seamlessly to heads of all shapes and sizes.
Pushing the Limits of Speaker Driver Performance
A characteristic which really sets Focal apart is its ability to innovate and push back the limits in the field of speaker drivers, while managing its own industrial process at the production site based in Saint-Etienne, France. The challenge to reproduce experiences worthy of the brand's best loudspeakers has resulted in a major innovation in the world of headphones: the very first completely open back full-range model.
"Magnificent Sounding"
"The Focal Utopia 2022 is a magnificent-sounding dynamic driver headphone, one that is truly worthy of being called a high-end flagship," reports Marcus, headphonia.com, June 24, 2023. "It looks beautiful, it sounds incredibly pleasing to my ear, at least, and has the resolution and required levels of transparency to allow it to be super-easy to find the right setup to hear it at its best."
"The Utopia 2022 delivers a sound profile that is rich, smooth, and impactful. It carries a subtle warmth, an added sense of punch but avoids sounding boomy or muddy. The mids and highs are well-textured and articulate, with a hint of polish that gives them a smooth character," notes unheardlab.com, December 21, 2024. "The bass quality is exceptional, offering a deep, punchy performance with outstanding tactility and impact."
