Update/Review on KZ-E10’s.
**There is a TL;DR at the bottom btw
I’ll break this down in topics and grade them each out of 10 and then give an overall score at the bottom.
Since they are true wireless I will start from there and then dive into sound.
10/10 for and of the wireless bits
The bluetooth connects fast. Just take them out, put them on and if you already paired them once. They is as quick as any BT5 enabled device. No problems there. Range wise: My room is right next to the stairs and I can leave my room, walk the 6 feet to the stairs, walk down the 13-ish steps and then only after I get off the stairs does the signal start to get lost. That’s with my phone on my desk which is 8 feet from the door. Very good there.
Overall Quality: 8/10
The actual earbuds are 10/10. However, the magnets to open the case are slightly weaker than I would like, and the battery circle part that goes around your ear doesn’t sit in the groove that well (Sorta loose, but it still stays in place okay). It’ll stay and close fine but it feels like the groove should be deeper than it is. Was going to put 6/10, but It’s going up to 8/10 because USB C. USB C is the best. Period.
Sound Quality: 8/10
Make sure that if you have not already, go to Settings -> Connection -> Bluetooth -> Advanced -> and turn off Media Volume Sync. It absolutely destroys the quality of the sound coming from these ear buds. It shoots up the bass to how the hell do these produce this amount of bass levels. It also puts the volume at if you have any volume at all you will be ear raped levels. With that off we can actually talk about how they sound. Honestly, no problems here. To my ears the signature is pretty V shaped. More tilted to the base side, however. The mids and highs are still there in stride, though. Since I’m terrible at describing things I’ll just compare them to the Tin T2’s. The T2’s have a little more sound stage. That most likely is because of the little biddy hole on the back of the T2’s(These have a hole near your ear. I don’t know if its for sound or if that’s for a sensor) and their foam tips. I tried foam tips with these but the mediums I had were too big. I’d have to get some very small ones for it to work out. The smallest they provided tips worked the best for me. It gave the greatest sound stage for some reason and also the most comfort. Really close to the T2’s in soundstage and sound in general. The balance is pretty damn close. They are more “closed” sounding that the T2’s, however. Again, I think this is because of the type of tip and lack of hole. It’s not a bad sound at all though. I tried Apple AirPods because my brother has them and this blows those out of the water. Those sound empty and airy and just a nope. These are good though. The only real reason I am dropping 2 out of the 10 stars is simply I prefer a more “open” sounding sound, which gives whatever I am listening to (my orchestra playlist benefits most from this). And that there is a noticeable hiss/white noise at the volume I listen at, which is not that loud at all. It didn’t bother me that much, but it is something to bring up and I think it’s a consequence of them being bluetooth enabled. Even the Dac on my S9, which is only pretty decent, was a lot cleaner than them. I noticed the same thing on the Air Pods I tried. Although I think it’s inevitable, it’s still annoying.
*Went for a run during writing this and outside the noise was much less. Something in my house must be creating some extra noise. I didn’t notice nearly as much of noise when I was running and when I stopped and lowered the volume to try and hear the noise, It was very hard to notice unless I turned them to 1 or 2 clicks up from 0. They’s not as bad as I thought noise-wise.
Fit 12/10:
Supreme. They fit my ears exceptionally well. I haven’t had any ear buds fit this well, ever. I haven’t tried an extreme amount of earbuds but they fit better than the normal sony/apple/any earbud you get for free and they fit better than my Tin T2’s. Nothing to complain about here. Even when I was running they didn’t even move. They are very stable. The fit is perfect for me.
Controls 6/10:
The touch controls work perfectly. No problems there. There just is no way to adjust the volume with the actual ear buds. That was my only issue. The controls are decently intuitive as well. Though it’s sorta weird that next song is on the left earbud, and previous is on the right ear bud. Those two things are my only complaints here.
Additional stuff:
The USB C cable is tiny. Like really really small. It’s a 6 inch(15cm) long cable. It’s tiny.
TL;DR (Total Score: 8/10):
The touch controls could use a volume adjustment. They also could have swapped the next and back track buttons. It’s left for next, right for back. The sound quality is pretty good. They sound like a Bass-y version of the Tin T2’s that are a little less clear/“open” in sound quality/style. And also have some noise issues (Maybe? That part is weird, read the note above Fit for more info on that). I’d buy them for what I intended to buy them for: To work out with. They’ll do that exceptionally. They are perfect for that. I wouldn’t use them to sit down and enjoy, but if you just want something to easily pop in your ears to run and walk around with, then these are great. I didn’t test the microphone quality, but it uses google assistant just fine when talking at a normal volume. So I’m guessing it’s probably fine. I’d give them my recommendation if that counts for anything. Another thing: They charge via USB C. It’s great.
Edit: The tips there are the foam ones I tried. They come with clear silicon ones installed.