KBear Neon Review

KBear is a Chinese brand and this is KBear Neon review. They are producing for many years. I met them with a nice bang for buck iem KS2 and the rest followed like Kb04, Lark, BElieve, KS1 and now their venture into Etymotic’s game field Neon. Let’s see how this attempt ended up

Box, KBear Neon, Cable

Black box with neon styled letters. Nice touch with its name and drivers.

Neon is transparent and looking like a tiny neon bulb or minilamps of stereo. Nozzle is short and wide so being versatile to allow nearly all eartips besides Etymotic or Shure tips. Cable is replaceable, braided, somewhat thick and plated in silver. There is even a chinguard feature! I wasn’t seeing this in that prices.

Sound

Following technical results are based on unamped listening off LG G7. Dark Timbre (at the background) reminding me of e1k. Somewhat bright. Great clarity, lovely transparency for its price, instrument and instrument/vocal seperation. Airy atmosphere and space between instruments. This space is even between the sticks of a drummer. So with it clarity and speed, you can even distinguish every single drum / cymbal etc drummer hits. Speed is high as it should be at this BA (balanced armature) iem. Decay at treble is high speed but I can’t say the same for mid bass instruments. No sibilance. Vocals are clear and transparent as other effects/instruments are. Extensions do not extend more than they should.

Bass, Mid, Treble

Bass is BA as others are too.  Meaning high control and low bass compared to a DD. Special tuning of KBear giving it extraordinary bass reponse for a BA. But this get its enormous resolution for its price and getting better as you isolate and insert deeper. Mids mean clarity and musicality and vocal in general speaking. Vocals are in front of your face. You can live a horrendous time (!) with a trash metal classic http://www.deezer.com/track/65690440 because Neon’s BA driver, with its clarity and speed, is so potent at handling complex and fast tracks. Treble is where the BA driver shines. Not plenty especially at higher treble but more than decent to keep you up with a electroguitar solo.

Amped

Gained texture in addition to all the technicalities above. And seperation at 1st and 2nd layer of vocalists became obvious. The distance between within the stage grew bigger too. Or now I can hear the exact distance between the singer and drum kit. This kind of sound information is most probably exclusive to this kind of iems and the studio itself where the music is recorded. (The reviewer was listening tracks out of Abney Park studio) Besides a great studio where the Beatles is born, even Rammstein is pretty enjoyable (technicalitieswise) after Neon is fed with Q5K amp.

KBear Neon Review Conclusions

I think more than great at synth based music of 80’s. You must hear Duran Duran’s classical with it. http://www.deezer.com/track/3130431 But very good at other genres. Some might have heard the famous Etymotic er2xr. Here is something (especially with BA unlike it has DD) like its beta. It has very good layering capacity and transparence even when unamped. You can purchase from this link.