Welcome to a new instalment in the ongoing Headphones in Pictures series! Today I’m going to show you a trio of well-known headphones by KZ that recently made their debut: the KZ ED16, KZ ES4 and KZ ZSA. I received all three headphones in the last few days and I already started listening to them (with mixed results).
Each is very different from the others, not only in terms of appearance (and the differences are quite striking), but even in terms of sound. All of them are V-shaped as in KZ’s best tradition, but their specific signatures are completely different.
The ED16 are so far my favourites in terms of design and comfort – their lean shells look good due to their electric blue, but they are also comfortable due to the small size and peculiar shape that make them fit very well in the ears. In the pictures they are paired with the Yinyoo 6-core copper cable for cosmetic reasons, but also because I can’t make myself like KZ’s plasticky stock cable and I’ve been using them mostly with the replacement cable.
Also, a fun fact: look closely at the right earpiece (which is conveniently placed on the left in the pictures) and read what’s written there.
Update: the KZ ED16 review is out!
The KZ ES4 are (aesthetically speaking) quite not what I expected them to be compared with the pictures – the shells appeared a bit more blue in the promo pictures, but they’re instead a bit dull. Other than this, though, they fall in line with expectations: they are indeed a smaller and cheaper version of the ZS10. Alas this seems to be the case with sound, too, though I have only had one hours of listening time so far and I have yet to listen to them closely. They are fairly comfortable to me, anyway, so at least they’ve got this going for them.
One thing I also noticed is that the nozzle is bigger on the top, so they should have better grip on eartips – that’s something new from KZ, considering how they usually go for straight nozzles.
Update: you can now read the full KZ ES4 review!
The last entry is the KZ ZSA. They seem like a smaller KZ ZS6 and they are fairly similar to the RevoNext QT2. Their peculiarity is the double colour scheme, where the faceplate is black and the rest of the housings is red; they’re made of metal and appear fairly solid. These are the ones I received last and I have had barely any chance to try them; I only had enough time to find out they offer close to no isolation – apparently those vents on the faceplates are real.
Update: the KZ ZSA review is also out now!
There are also a few other products I have laying around and which I will feature in upcoming entries of the Headphones in Pictures series. Alas (or luckily) university has kept me quite busy in the last several weeks, so I had to slow down my blogging activity. But the end of the summer exam season is close to an end, so expect news soon!
