Help choosing my first pairs!
With the latest Aliexpress "sale" I've got a handful of decent coin discounts and a few vouchers and decided I might as well try a few new pairs of earbuds. For the last few years I've been switching between bluetooth earphones as they break and thought I'd bust out my old Fiio X1, BTR5 and a 3.5mm to usbc adapter and give wired another go.
In addition to a pair of cheap IEMS (Tangzu Wan'er Red Lion) I thought I'd grab some cheap(ish) flatheads. I haven't used a pair of flatheads in probably 20 years now, but the lack of isolation and ear fatigue has me intrigued. Thought I'd pick up pair of ultra cheap (~£5) to toss in my bag when I'm out and cheap (<£30), nicer pair to use at home. They'll mostly be used for either music or single player gaming (trying to get more use out of my retro handhelds lol). Not really sure exactly what I'm looking for response or sound wise, best I can do is the last pairs of "premium" audio peripherals I used and enjoyed being a pair of VSonic GR-06 IEMs and Audio Technia ATH-AD900x open back headphones (if that helps at all lol). Most of the stuff I've tried since hasn't really blown me away so I kinda just reverted to "budget" pairs whenever I needed new headphones/earbuds.
For the ultra budget the current front runners are between:
- Yincrow X6 - £1.74
- Nicehck Traceless - ~£2.80
- FAAEAL Iris 2.0 w/black cable - around £4-6
- NICEHCK YDSmall - ~£4-6
Honestly, between these I'll probably grab either the Yincrow or Iris 2.0, both seem well regarded and liked. X6's are probably ahead because of just how cheap they are, but I could be persuaded to triple the X6 budget for the Iris lol.
And the regular cheap pairs are between:
- Douk Audio S3 (apparently Aoshida E60 clones?) - £13.80
- Lun Sheng Aerolian Bells - £8.73 (no cable, probably grab a tripowin zombur (£3.5) or zonie (~£6))
- Nicehck EB2S Pro -
£16.23£8.68 - Sivga M260 - £24.79
- Fengru BP32 130ohm Beryllium - £26.19
Here I'd like a bit more advice, quoted prices and the "discount%" are kinda all over the place so I'm not sure which pair offers the best price to quality ratio.
(Prices for both categories are after seemingly arbitrary coin and voucher discounts)
Was also gonna grab some Venture Electronics Ex-pack lite pads to try out too (~£5). Am I safe in assuming that foam pads in general are swappable between most pairs?
Thanks in advance for any help and or advice!