KZ ZS10 Pro 2 Long Term 5 Month Review - Great Sound on a budget

The KZ, ZS10 Pro 2 is a hybrid in-ear monitor with a low price of about $50. It is a hybrid because it has 1 dynamic and 4 Balanced Armature drivers per side, hence the 10 in the name. I absolutely love how it sounds, it has a fun v-shaped profile, with boosted bass and treble, and best of all it comes with 4 little switches to boost bass, boost bass again, boost salmon…nah im kidding, BOOST BASS AGAIN, and to dip the higher frequencies. Its like davie504 and big mouth billy bass performing all your base are belong to us in a bass pro shop. Try saying that 10 times in row. Although you can boost the bass, it never gets into bass head territory, bass is well controlled, rolls well, and doesn't bleed into vocals. Treble is also well managed, I am incredibly sensitive to treble and this doesn't fatigue me at all, unlike like the Samson SR-850. Sticking To Bass, this might not be the right IEM for BASS heads, songs Like still D.R.E, or black and yellow might seem slightly lacking in the mid-bass, sub and low bass sound great though. These still sound good but that is it, bass heads are literally the only people who wont like the sound tuning. As mentioned the Bass is tuned not to bleed in vocals or ranges where it might not have to be so other bassy songs like peanut butter jelly, bonkers, and ofcourse crab rave sound bassy and punchy. Additionally, the bass that is there is well detailed and almost never gets muddy. If you are a bass head, have a look at Fat Freq for iem’s or soundcore for buds, they have what you want. Speaking of muddy, the KZ ZS10 Pro 2 is all sorts of weird and wonderful in this department. As a metalhead I can think of so many songs that would absolutely turn into a muddy mess on anything other than a rather large multi speaker sound system, but not this, no matter what I play through it it stays clear. BUT, there are a few songs, and I mean extremely few, where some sounds can get slightly muted, but again this is rare and its not obvious, you will only know its muted if you know the track well on better speakers or headphones. Both male and female vocals sound great, vocals are crisp, clear and sharp, not too sharp and not tin(ny) or metallic, I have heard metallic BA’s before and this is not one of them. Drums sound amazing on this, drummers always get disrespected on budget personal audio equipment, but here the drums are prominent, clear and detailed. All instruments are clear and with no issues. As a device for actual audio monitoring the KZ’s punch way above their price. In my previous video I made a bunch of audio mistakes and there were a few audio issues I could only clearly pick up and correct when using it, sounds that my open back headphones decided not to even play. So yeah my audio still sucked but it could have been worse. If I actually used this, and not my open backs, for testing before I started recording I would also have noticed that my mic was picking waaaay too much bass from my voice and moved it further from my voice. So yeah this is now my new live audio monitors, and as a bonus they seal my ears so I can mostly hear what's being recorded Being an IEM, there are also some other negatives: Fit can be hard, but the size and weight is fine here, I have no issues, and my wife briefly used it with no issues either. Soundstage is compressed, it is not non-existent, but it is a factor when coming from open back or large soundstage headphones. And ofcourse the classical in your head sound, but honestly this is only strange in a small percentage of music and most people would never notice. I daily drive open backs and after a minute I forget about it. Driving the headphones is also no issue. My wife’s samsung, with the samsung adaptor, my xiaomi, and wife’s ipad all provide enough power. Just a tip: dont use the apple dac / or apple 3.5mm adaptor on android devices as it will be capped at a lower power as android still has an unpatched bug with adjusting hardware power. Also any european spec xiaomi phone will have reduced volume, bass, and highs; thats not the iem’s fault thats just EU regulations and how xiaomi handles it. There are workarounds, and I highly recommend you test some. The KZ ZS10 Pro 2 comes with a removable cable, one large pair of foam tips, and a few silicone tips. I really recommend the foam tips if they fit. All in all I love this iem, dont get me wrong it's not amazing for listening to music, though it plays a lot of songs perfectly, and I actually mean perfect, but it is really really good, A tier even, and I can recommend it to anyone that is not a bass head. And for actual monitoring I must say that I am sold, I switched to editing videos with these and I have used these to check my audio before recording. #kz #iem #audioequipment #headphones #earbuds #chifi #aliexpress #aliexpressgadgets #aliexpresshaul #aliexpressreviews #unsponsored #andretalkstech