BQEYZ Summer Review (2) – Amazing Music
Today we talk about BQEYZ Summer, the most recently released model by Zhou family’s company.
In this Article
At-a-glance Card
| PROs | CONs |
| Pleasant musical presentation. | Accurate tip selection and 50h burn-in required. |
| Well-calibrated midbass transients and details. | Some timbre incoherence. |
| Vivid treble. | Thin highmids. |
| Wide soundstage. | Lean mids and vocals. |
| Above average technicalities. |
Full Device Card
Test setup
Sources: Apogee Groove + Burson FUN + IEMatch / Questyle QP1R / Sony NW-A55 mrWalkman – JVC SpiralDots eartips – Stock cable – lossless 16-24/44.1-192 FLAC tracks.
Signature analysis
| Tonality | BQEYZ Summer has an overall pleasantly musical W shape presentation, which is definitely one of the product pluses. Talking about timbre, however, some incoherency has to be noted: while a very good job has been made in my opinion on eliminating that “electrical” nuance many other piezo drivers come accross with more frequently than not, what I do get is that highmids and trebles come out definitely too thin and a tad artificial, which sort of clashes against low mids’ and midbass’ otherwise quite organic texture. A pity, really. |
| Sub-Bass | Sub bass quantity is nice, rumble is significant. On the other hand speed is slower than ideal which makes the ooomph often a bit too thick, sometimes even artificial. |
| Mid Bass | Mid bass are quite well done, a nicely musical compromise between speed and body. BQEYZ Summer bass offer a very nice presence and quite some texture and detail, without obfuscating mids which do fall behind, but due to their own leanness not to midbass bleeding. |
| Mids | Mids have a good, organic tonality and presence, too bad they lack some body. Low mids have a slight but perceptible warm coloring. Highmids on the contrary sound a bit cold, sometimes artificial, and always quite thin; guitars and high-hats are mostly affected. Sibilance can be almost entirely avoided by accurate (I should more honestly say painful) eartip selection. |
| Male Vocals | Clean and reasonably detailed, BQEYZ Summer male vocals could do with more body to fully shine. |
| Female Vocals | Definitely lean, they reflect some of the general highmid thinness. |
| Highs | Presence trebles are vivid and dynamic, solely affected by some thinness in some occasion. Some air is delivered too which makes them overall quite pleasing. |
Technicalities
| Soundstage | BQEYZ Summer’s soundstage is very nicely extended, more in width and height, less in depth. |
| Imaging | Instrument positioning is well delivered on Summer, distribution privileging the X axis |
| Details | Mid bass, high mid and treble details are above average |
| Instrument separation | Separation is also well carried out. Different sounds appear well layered in most occasions, getting a bit lower remark only on crowded passages involving many cymbals or hihats, or on the opposite end when superfast subbasss passages are involved (can’t keep Paul Chamber’s pace, most of the times). |
| Driveability | From a purely electrical standpoint BQEYZ Summer are quite easy to drive due to their 32 ohm impedance and nice 107 dB sensitivity. On the other hand, a good quality amp source is strongly recommended to make sure especially highmids are properly rendered. |
Physicals
| Build | Housings are made of plastic (resin?) which offers the advantage of a definitely light weight. I don’t see any obvious reasons to be concerned about durability. |
| Fit | BQEYZ Summer shape and size adapt well to my ear. Nozzles are not too short, fit is very easy for me. |
| Comfort | Thanks to a very natural fit, I find them comfortable also for long sessions. |
| Isolation | Passive isolation is very good thanks for BQEYZ Summer housings “filling” my concha properly |
| Cable | Stock cable is a good quality silver plated copper, with single ended termination. Which is a double piece of good news as due its shape the 2-pin connectors on the housings are quite recessed and finding a “fitting” alternative may be trickier than it seems. |
Specifications (declared)
| Housing | Ultra-light (4.2g) resin housings |
| Driver(s) | 1 x 13mm PU+LCP diaphragm coaxial dynamic driver, 1 x 5-layer piezoelectric ceramic driver, 1 x second generation custom-tuned balanced armature driver |
| Connector | 2pin 0.78mm |
| Cable | 8 core silver plated single crystal copper cable, 3.5mm single ended termination |
| Sensitivity | 107dB |
| Impedance | 32 Ω |
| Frequency Range | 7 – 40000 Hz |
| Package / accessories | Carry case, cleaning brush, 1 set of 3 (S/M/L) white-blue “atmospheric” silicon tips, 1 set of 3 (S/M/L) black “balanced” silicon tips |
| MSRP at this post time | $129,00 |
Other notes & comments
A few technical pieces of advice first of all.
One: BQEYZ Summer are extremely eartip sensitive. The package comes with 2 alternative S-M-L silicon tips, neither of which offered me either good comfort or good sound rendering or both. After quite a lot of rolling I settled on JVC SpiralDot silicon tips as the best compromise for my tastes.
Two: if there is one pair of IEMs were “burn-in” does make a difference, that’s BQEYZ Summer! The first few minutes of auditioning resulted in a very “closed”, un-airy, almost “deaf-noted” presentation. I left them down playing for a couple of days and it all became evidently better.
Three: cable’s 2-0.78mm-pin connectors are quite ordinarily recessed, but the housing shape around the receptable is “bowly” – the result is that only a 2-pin male connector featuring a protruded nozzle will fit. Nicehck 16core high purity copper cables won’t fit, for example.
Coming closer to the heart of the matter – how BQEYZ Summer sound – I underline my sincere appreciation to BQEYZ for having been able to brush-off that too common, artificial, “electrical” after taste I heard on most piezo drivers to date, even on higher-tier models (*cough*LZ-A7*cough*).
On the flip side the single aspect that I liked less is this timbre mismatch between the BA+Piezo section and the DD section, the former wanting more body to sound organically coherent to the latter. Given this, a competent source featuring at least above average high-mids / treble control is more than a recommendation when selecting a good pair for BQEYZ Summer.
One last consideration about the price category: BQEYZ Summer’s $129,00 asking price is imo indeed compliant with the product’s general quality, both on the non-sound and sound-related aspects. On the other hand, the same is true for a few other IEMs in the $100-$150 price bracket, which makes it extremely difficult for any single one to stand out of the crowd at least a bit, let alone earn a “royal crown”.
Disclaimer
A special thank you to Elle Zhou for providing Summer’s sample for review. You can buy it at the BQEYZ Official Store.
Our generic standard disclaimer.
