Had these for a while now. Penon Audio sent me a link to these with a few words of positive comment. I hadn't bought any headphones or earphones for a couple of years so I took the bait and bought these BQEYZ KB100's for about £34ish. Although I have a few pairs of headphones I have mostly been using my Fiio EX 1 earphones which I bought in March 2016, which still sound great, and the Sony MDR EX 650. Both of those are excellent earphones. The Fiio's have a wider soundstage, finer highs and are more airy. The Sony's are richer, with slightly more emphasis on the midrange, excellent bass and a very integrated sound. For vocals the Sony's are a little better and for instrumentals the Fiio's. Both are really superb for their respective price to performance. So I received the BQEYZ KB100's not even having heard of BQEYZ. We are now in the middle of a Chi-Fi revolution. I was once engrossed by the previous advent of Chinese T-Amps, little tiny amps that could blow more powerful big name amps away, but Chi-Fi earphones were a new thing.
So after burning the BQ's in for a few days, and subjectively enjoying them, I played them and compared them to the Fiio's and Sony's. My physical players were the Fiio X3 2'nd gen with the Fiio E17k amp and a Samsung S9 plus mobile phone. Both drove the earphones to high volume, especially the KB100's which were very easy to drive even by a mobile phone. The Samsung struggled to reproduce deeper bass and rumble with all the earphones, but to the credit of the KB100's they did find audible rumble on the Samsung if Dolby Atmoss and bass was turned up on the equaliser. My Yamaha HPH200 headphones, which I used as reference for myself, found the rumble easily on Nitin Sawhney's Anthem Without a Nation, the single best test for rumble to be found. On the Fiio X3 and E17 the BQ's were exceptional. It became clear that they were way in front of the Fiio EX1 and Sony 650's. Bass and rumble opened up. Earphones have definitely advanced in the past couple of years.
It was quite clear that the BQ's were pretty good in all departments. Bass was the most defined of them all, midrange a pace or two in front of the other earphones, and highs well separated and without harshness. It was the mid-range that really drew me. For vocal-centric music they had a much better soundspace than all the others, the vocals being slightly more forward than the others. Rather than being a V-shape with recessed vocals, it was a mildly curved response which BQEYZ had really got spot on. Separation, width and depth of soundstage were quite good. There was very little vertical soundstage, but I find that a problem with all earphones. There is a general richness about the sound, and although I doubt if they could be called a reference earphone, I could not find a piece of music they could not handle. They are not overwhelmed by bass but can really find it where needed...really find it. But they are also fairly even along the spectrum. If there is a critique compared to the best, I would think that certain classical music would need more clearly separated and distinctive highs, although more dynamic music like the Lieutenant Kije suite sounded fantastic. Simon and Garfunkel's in your head style music really comes to the fore as does Nina Simone and Passenger. Bassy music such as Sade and Bob Marley with their forward vocals sound great.
On the Samsung S9 plus, with Dolby Atmos and UHQ upscaler enabled, all but the deepest bass shows up well. Both highs and mids are well presented. Shame about the deeper bass though.
With earphones, rumble can sometimes be heard but not felt. Before the days of CD's and when vinyl was the main format, I had a Musical Fidelity B1 amp, Tannoy Mercury M20 speakers on stands and a Dual turntable, with little furniture in the room and a concrete floor. Not the most high end stuff but the bass would often hit the gut in felt waves. Nowadays the felt bass is mostly history.
There is a negative to the KB100's though, and it's nothing to do with their sound quality. These earphones get as tangled as an earphone can get. The cable is a woven, twisted, plastic chain style, which makes it very difficult to untangle especially the earpiece side of the weave. If you get it caught good luck. If you damage the cable, it's a replaceable 2 pin. That at least is good.
So I would recommend these as a bit of a bargain that punch way above £34.00. They give a lot of pleasure as they are a really musically rich, dynamic, unveiled and clear earphone.
Some of the tracks I used to review these earphones:
Bird of Paradise Snowy White
Slabo Day Peter Green
Don't Let me be Misunderstood Nina Simon
Holes Passenger
I Dug up a Diamond Mark Knopfler/ Emmylou Harris
Various Simon and Garfunkle
Ghost Town (live) Katie Melua
Nothin Townes Van Zandt
You Want it Darker Leonard Cohen
Various Sade
Various Bob Marley
Troika Lieutenant Kije Suite LSO
Elgar Violin Concerto Yehudi Menhuin (1932)
Ganamurthy U Srinivas
Anthem Without a Nation Nitin Sawhney
Oruro Los Kjarkas
