BLON BL-03 II

Praised almost across the board as generous but controlled — sub-bass that reaches, a punchy mid-bass, and less bleed than the original. The dissent is narrow: GREQ hears a muddy, distortion-prone sub-bass next to dearer sets, and a few owners report 'no bass' at all, which on this short-nozzled shell almost always means the seal never formed.

“The bass sounds clean and smooth, with excellent control. Very surprising to get both this kind of bass quality and quantity for this price range.”

HiFi Oasis (HiFi-Dawson)

“Mainly I noticed that the BL-03II’s bass was the most likely to distort and was not as clean or clear as the other two, with a noticeably muddy sub-bass.”

GREQ, Head-Fi showcase review

Sources split. Three-quarters of the weight hears clearer, more present vocals than the original — cleaner lower mids, a livelier upper midrange, female vocals that 'pop'. A quarter hears the cost: vocals thinned out, an upper-mid lift that turns shouty on bright recordings, and a timbre several call artificial or robotic. Whether you call it clarity or thinness tracks how much you loved the BL-03's thick, warm voice.

Sources split. The larger camp hears an extended, airy, sparkly top that is smoother than its brightness suggests — no sibilance for most, and the biggest improvement on the original's dark roll-off. The other camp hears peaks 'in all the wrong places': a 5 kHz edge that turns sibilant on poor recordings, and a 12–13 kHz lift that adds a metallic, artificial sheen and fatigue with rock and metal. Both are describing the same graph; volume and recording quality decide which you get.

Sources split on the central question — is it a better BL-03 or a different, blander one? About seven-tenths of the weight calls it a refinement: the same warm, fun U/V-shape with the mud cleaned up and the darkness lifted, closer to modern targets. The rest — led by Paul Wasabii and the reviewers who channel him — say the changes answered the original's critics rather than its fans and left a competent, generic warm-bright set with none of the old magic. IEMRanking's two-reviewer aggregate lands at 4.1/10 'Unfavorable'; the Head-Fi showcase averages 4.1/5.

Sources split on whether the stage is a strength. The larger camp calls it average for the price — wider than the original's, with fair depth, but nothing out-of-head. A substantial minority, mostly community reviewers, rate it a genuine plus at $32, with real depth and height.

Sources split. Most find placement and separation accurate for the price — a few call the layering superb — while a minority hears a flat, two-dimensional picture, and Vortex Reviews heard and measured a channel mismatch on his unit that pulled centred vocals to the right.

An even split, to the decimal. One half hears resolution and micro-detail that punch above $32 — 'one of the most technical budget IEMs around', a clear step up from the original. The other half hears exactly $30 of detail, or less: 'not the greatest at retrieving detail', 'falls short', 'more like a 20 USD IEM'. The added 12 kHz air reads as detail to the first camp and as fake detail to the second.

Mostly heard as punchy and engaging — fast transients, a kick drum with weight — with a small but loud minority of owners who found it flat and lifeless out of the box. Given the measured +10 dB bass shelf, the 'flat' reports track a seal that never formed on the short nozzle; one Reddit poster who called it flat came back three months later to say it sounds very nice.

Sources split, four to one against. The shell is the BL-03's — tiny, teardrop, with a nozzle still short enough that the stock tips seal loosely and the whole thing wobbles or works its way out, and the stiff pre-formed ear hooks twist it further; nearly every reviewer tip-rolled, went up a size, or swapped the cable. The minority — small-eared listeners above all — say that once it seats it disappears and is a side-sleeping earphone, and that the longer nozzle fixed the original's shallow seat for them.

Sources split. The shell — pressure-cast zinc, matte-coated, fingerprint-proof — and the move to a flush standard 2-pin socket and a far better stock cable are praised by everyone who compares it with the original. The dissent is about what happens after the unboxing: a reviewer's unit arrived with a broken cable, seven of 62 Headphone Zone owners report the 2-pin connection loosening, the cable breaking at the plug or one side going dead, a Reddit owner's cable died at the 3.5 mm plug within two months, and another's 'kind of disintegrated in one ear'. Newer batches ship with the BL-A8's cable, which has been mistaken for a counterfeit.

Rarely discussed. The two sources that address it call passive isolation decent once a seal is found — one Reddit regular lists it among the better-isolating budget sets for a stage musician — but the seal is the whole question on this shell.

“it seals well while having a decent passive noise isolation from the outside surroundings”

Zerstorer_GOhren, Head-Fi showcase review (with third-party tips)

Sources split, roughly three to one in favour. The majority call it an easy $30 recommendation — 'the best-sounding IEM I have heard in the $30 price range', 'a no-brainer', 'one of the very best all-round packages in the entire budget segment' — and HBB would buy it. The minority say it is 'pretty meh for the price range' next to the Kefine Klean, Kiwi Ears Cadenza, 7Hz Zero:2, Tangzu Wan'er 2 and Tanchjim Bunny, that the 'upgrades' are incremental and don't justify costing more than the original, or simply sit on the fence. Nearly every reviewer adds that a $32 set with this many rivals no longer stands out the way the BL-03 did in 2019 — and as of late 2026 the US stores that carried it have stopped.