BLON Z300: The Electric Boogaloo

This IEM was bought with my own money

The Z300 is an IEM from BLON made in collaboration with HBB (Bad Guy Good Audio Reviews). It’s marketed as the successor to an old favourite: the BLON BL-03. The BL-03 was my second IEM ever, and I personally hold it in fairly high regard, so the Z300 will have to at least be as good for it to be a worthy successor. The Z300 is similarly priced at ~35usd.

tldr; Warm and dark with good instrument detail + Solid/good accessories for 35usd. Unless you don’t like this tonal balance, hard to go wrong with this IEM.

Packaging, Build, and Fit:

The box itself is small and compact. Inside, you’ll find a soft pouch, two sets of silicon tips in 3 sizes (translucent white and translucent black), a fairly nice and solid cable, and the two earpieces. The cable is well behaved and feels more premium than what I’m used to at this price point. The earpieces use a metal shell, painted in either white or very dark blue (looks black most of the time). The shell is shaped in a way that ought to fit most ears but might not always be the most secure fit. The nozzle should be long enough for most. Though, I found that shorter tips like the Moondrop Spring tips or TRN T tips worked best for me, and I found the fit in my ears to be a non-issue.

Sound Impressions:

This YT playlist is representative of the genres or types of music I listen to when coming up with a review (they are not the specific tracks I use for testing).

The Z300, right off the bat, I could describe to have good bass quality with lots of quantity. The bass is reasonably clean and fast while also having enough for most bass heads (I’d say that it has similar quantity to the FIIO FH3). Despite this bass emphasis, vocals and mid-range instruments were adequately detailed and not at all muddied. I found most instruments to be loud and clear enough. Specifically, attack on strings and percussions were clear and impactful. Though, the same could not be said for vocals. I found both male and female vocals to be clear and detailed, but I often found myself wanting to turn the volume up because vocals would be a bit recessed for my liking. Treble performance was middling while imaging also wasn’t notable. I found “just another day” by yanaginagi to be very pleasing on this set.

Vs. BLON BL-03

The Z300 has a warmer tonal tilt compared to the BL-03. The vocal issues I saw with the Z300 were not as present on the BL-03, but I would also say that the Z300 sounds more detailed than the BL-03. Additionally, I found bass quality to be clearly better on this set. While it has too much bass for my tastes, it never sounded muddy or bloated and was reasonably tight while the bass of the BL-03 would sometimes be noticeably slow. Additionally, the Z300 accessories and fit were head and shoulders above the original BL-03. There should be no reason to get the BL-03 unless you are willing to mod it (I find the BL-03 can be modded to be more tonally aligned to my tastes) and take time to find a setup where the fit is a non-issue.

Vs. QKZ x HBB

I actually only ended up getting a QKZ x HBB because Jacstone posted that they had similar graphs on the Super Review Discord server. That and it was another bassy HBB collab IEM. They’re similar tonally, but the QKZ x HBB is worse in every way as compared to the Z300. On the Z300: bass is tighter and more impactful, mids are cleaner and more detailed, treble isn’t non-existent. Additionally, accessories could be worth the difference in price and more. Similar enough in terms of tonal balance, but Z300 clears the QKZ x HBB in every way. No-brainer, if you’re interested in the QKZ x HBB and have enough money to be willing to go up a price bracket, then the better option would be the Z300.

Vs. Kiwi ears Cadenza

The Cadenza is likely the most obvious competitor at this price point. Both the Z300 and the Cadenza could be described as V-shaped but both with different tonal balance. The Z300 as a warmer tilt with recessed vocals while the Cadenza has a less emphasized bass to go alongside forward vocals. Treble performance on both are similar. Bass on the Z300 is of much better quality: more impactful and tighter. Similarly I found instruments to be more detailed on the Z300. However, vocals, especially female vocals, were much less recessed on the Cadenza while having similar detail. The Z300 and Cadenza are comparable with regards to accessories. I do wish the cadenza came with a pouch as well. Finally, fit no both should be similar. Though the Cadenza is smaller with a shorter nozzle. The decision between these two could be boiled down to taste: Do you prefer vocal performance or do you value bass and instrument detail? Both are good options and I might lean to the Cadenza to be a better all-rounder IEM while the Z300 could be a good option in an arsenal of varied IEMs.

Conclusion

The Z300 is a very solid IEM and I would call it worthy of being called the “BL-03 successor”. It has very good quality bass and detailed instruments, but suffers from mediocre treble and recessed vocals while having good build and fit. The Z300 is a well tuned, bassy option at the sub-50usd price bracket that has competitive detail and doesn’t compromise on accessories.