The KZ ATE is an interesting value proposition. At the time of this writing, they can be found on Amazon for $12 and Ebay for ~$10. If I had to use one word to describe these headphones, it would be inoffensive. Before I get into why I find these so great for listenting, let’s talk about the build quality.
The looks and build on these have surpassed my expectations for a $12 IEM. If you wanted to blend in with the Canada Goose students, these can definitely get you close to there. In fact, my friend saw them and thought they looked “really boujee”. When I told her it was $12 dollars, she couldn’t believe it. The cable is not, to be frank, complete shit. It starts with a nice right angle connector to relieve strain. The cable itself has a nice translucent rubber casing around it that breaks into a nice Y-split. Furthermore, you can see the inner wiring of the headphones. These are meant to be wrapped around your ear before going into your ear canal. Unfortunately, there is no memory wire, so they have a difficult time staying wrapped around my ear while I am walking briskly around campus. In place of this, The KZ ATE tries use a clever plastic gold piece to add weight to the cable and keep it in place, but it doesn’t really do a good job of it.
Additionally, my pair has a microphone on the cable for an extra $. While the convenience is nice, I found that it picked up a lot of wind noise. I pity the person’s ears I was talking to at the time of this testing.
The issue with many earphones us college students buy is that they don’t make it past two months. Unfortunately, the KZ ATE doesn’t alleviate this anxiety by permanently melding the cable to the driver. Thus, these headphones may not make it out alive after a using your cable as a bungee cord to save your phone from hitting concrete.
Moving onto the drivers/earphones themselves, they are built of translucent plastic. The shell/housing is designed to try and conform to the shape of your ear. Thankfully, they do not smudge or attract fingerprints easily.
The fit: So I have to come clean here, I have small ear canals. Even with the smallest included tips in the package, I had a difficult time getting these to fit in my ear. It often involves, twisting the pair into my canals until I find a snug fit. When I do manage to get a good fit, I forget that these are in my ear, which is a good sign.
When I go to study, I put on my earphones/headphones to do two things: listen to music and cancel out noise from my surroundings. They do a decent job at isolation noise at normal listening levels. It’s not as nice I’d like it as I can still hear the silly conversations going on around me at the library. However, as I crank the volume up, the background noise starts to fade away with no leakage, but this comes at the expense of my own hearing. That is kind of important if I am being honest.
Finally, it’s the part everyone wants, the sound quality. For the past week, I have enjoyed using these as my daily drivers. In fact, as I sit here writing this article, I forget that I have these wrapped in my ear and listening to music. Like I said, these IEMS are “inoffensive”, meaning they are able to create a euphonic sound without being too shouty or piercing. This lets me listen to hours on end without feeling fatigued. Listening to songs with cymbals, like Boo’d Up by Ella Mai, the ATE does not render them as sharp icicles pricking my ear drum, and as a result, I have no urge to turn down the volume.
Furthermore, vocals are nicely presented without being so dominant that it drains out other instruments. When I listened to Sorry not Sorry by Demi Lovato, I was not able to detect the despicable ‘SSSS” noise that Demi makes every time she says the letter S. If you know what this sound is, you know it’s not pleasant at all. I’m glad that KZ has managed to avoid producing it.
The best part about these headphones is the bass. It manages to nearly precise and not bloated and boomy. While some people may like that, I don’t to be frank as it ruins the music. The KZ is able to decently reproduce sub bass as well with good presence. While listening to “Why So Serious” from the Dark Knight Album, I was able to mostly hear the sub bass that starts around 3:30 seconds even though it was a little unclear and fuzzy at times. I did have to crank up the volume all the way to hear it however. If you want to have some fun, you should try to play this through phone or laptop speakers, you get complete silence because the speakers CAN’T HANDLE THE BASS. Listening to “Solar Sailer” by Daft Punk, there is a part with bass that goes up down up down up down in frequency multiple times to a final lower note. While the KZs struggle to differentiate the individual bass notes, making it sound like one drawn out bass note, you can hear the final lower bass note at the end. All in all, it is able to reproduce a strong bass presence well, despite some hiccups here and there.
All in all, at $12 dollars, the KZ ATE definitely outperforms its price category. It provides similar sound to what I would expect from $50-60 IEMs while looking decently good from. The only downside is the rubber cable which tangles kind of easily and the fact that it is non-detachable. The sound manages to very warm and comforting with strong bass. If you are a basshead and want some cheap IEMS, these are for you. Even if you are not a basshead or need a secondary pair of IEMs, I would still recommend buying these as they sound excellent for almost all genres of music.
All testing was done with a laptop and phone. No other components such as an amplifier or DAC were used. All music was played through spotify.