Modern technologies provide many ways for companies to build their products as quick, as cheap, as inexpensive as possible. New BGVP DN3 model is a good example.
Chinese products are not totally into hi-end, but clearly offer good combination of price and quality. They clearly have good sound. Of course you can start demanding top solution quality from budget solutions, but it’s of course makes little sense. Staying adequate, you can clearly see that if not revolution, there is a good progress in this area. You can hardly find obviously bad models nowadays. Secondly, modern headphones have good quality nowadays, and one can be really astonished about what 50-USD pair can do, and this is probably the first threshold of audiophiles starting their journey. Well, BGVP DN3 have surpassed it.
They can be purchased new for about 65 USD and of course cheaper when purchased second hand. This model is really interesting and competitive.
Accessories and packaging
What can one demand from budget headphones? Certainly you can’t expect wide accessory range and have to be thankful for what you got. When the total price is 65 USD and each set of tips adds a dollar to the final price, probably it’s not huge. Pouch also costs something. And you won’t notice how the price tag will go above 100 USD. So I haven’t expected anything like that from such budget offering, but I have to say that it’s okay. The accessory range is not luxurious, but also not scarce.
The box is made in a traditional way — main box covered with a dust cover. There are headphones depicted on the latter, accompanied by headphone name and logo. On the right side there is information about cable connector, color and microphone presence. Also you will find scannable QR-code.
Back side is traditionally covered with specifications. As we can see, headphones have two types of transducers. They are traditionally hybrids sporting dynamic and armature transducers. Dynamic is beryllium one. The sensitivity is 109 dB and the impedance is 19 Ohm. This means they are quite sensitive and even have audible background noise from some sources. For example when I connected them to my laptop, the background hiss was quite obvious.
But let’s go back to the box.
Apart from abundant paperwork there is a simple fabric pouch. If we remove everything, we can find headphones lying in projections of special materials. It’s a separate pleasure that the surface of this material has special stamping. This means it does not gather dust and remains good for photos. It also looks neat and fresh. There are 3 sets of ear tips above the headphones. But probably to say that is too much. There is only 1 pair of foam tips. Apart from that we get 3 pairs of vocal and bass tips. The first have notably wider and shorter nozzle, while the second are narrower and longer. They change sound of course, and it’s a pleasure that the bass ones do not lay back mids and highs too much but are accurate. This means that if the track is not full of bass you might even not note the difference. But in tracks with abundant bass you can clearly hear the accent.
You will of course need a cable to hear it and luckily there is one in the box below the headphones. In my case it’s 4.4 balanced cable but there is also a regular 3.5 single ended cable available to order.
Design and comfort
The inside part of shells reminds me of CA Solaris distantly, but the shells are not large. It is made of metal. I have good fit regardless of chosen tips, but the headphones protrude from ears less with vocal tips.
Shell has almost triangular shape with angled barrel where obviously all internals reside. Nozzle is growing out of it, and it reminds of what Dunu do — it has only a protruding projection for better tip grip. It however copes well with its task. There is also a protective grill on the end of the nozzle.
Both sides of headphone have compensating projections. The outer one is rather large and is positioned on faceplate. To be honest, I’d prefer to mask it somehow or to put it on butt-end, but it does not look bad by all means.
It’s interesting that there are different faceplates. The right earpiece has company logo with diagonal and wide lighter lines on the black background. The left earpiece sports thinner lines with horizontal (or vertical, depending on how you watch it) lines without logo. Everything has the same style, so it looks interesting and stylish. There are also MMCX connectors that look reliable. There is a red mark on the right side to mark the channel. The same mark can be found on cable connector.
Cable
Cable deserves couple of words as well. It’s rather simple but convenient. The jack is straight and is made of metal. Connectors on the shells are straight, also made of metal and have right and left marks. These headphones can be worn over-ear only so the cable has pre-formed ear hooks. Small plastic splitter does not cause any usability disruption and holds chosen length well. As I’ve said, the cable is simple. Round shape of cable, non-transparent black coating. No audiophile looks there. Simple, practical and convenient. The cable is light, convenient and has no microphone effect.
Sound
Of course sound is the main part. Hybrid technology usually hints on emotional and full of drive sound, but it’s only partly realized here. We rather have flat headphones here (not totally flat, but closed to it), having coherent and good transmission of whole frequency range. They do not have abundant accent, but also do not sound smooth. Everything is in place. The further sound impressions are made using vocal ear tips, but keep in mind that you can add bass with other tips if required.
Lows
The bass presentation is flat. Of course it is not the deepest, but has good control. This means that headphones cope with fast parties well. Not ideal, of course, but mind the price. There is good weight. Having no abundant accents, lows still have well defined priorities and good balance. Bass tips help add push and texture but won’t turn headphones into bashed.
Generally speaking, the model copes with lows transmission well. Of course some may lack bass since even with bass tips the accent is not big. The same goes for weight and wholeness. To repeat, bass has analytical type and is well balanced.
Mids
Mids can be described as such as well. They are flat, detailed, precise, with good weight and slight accent on micro details. The headphones have good level of details in their budget, and you can hear the peculiarities in sound of various instruments, including their timbre. Even if whole balance tends to micro details, the headphones do not lack weight and on the other hand do not cut the recording into smallest pieces, making it non-emotional.
Highs
Highs are not smoothed and even accentuated for a little bit. In balanced mode it provides good clarity without making the recording sound too bright. Obviously, the headphones themselves can’t be called very bright. Such presentation provides something that is usually lacked in all budget models. They try to put the level of details up front. Of course we can’t say that they are extremely precise in reproducing all the nuances, but there are enough abilities in them and also tuning to play all the main parties well without pointing out disadvantages.
Soundstage
The soundstage is average in all dimensions. The headphones tend to play wide, but are not so good in depth. I can call soundstage typical but it’s nothing to complain for in this budget. The layering, positioning of instruments and the reproduction of soloing party are good.
Conclusions
Can we say that these are killers of the killers? Probably no. But they are good in their budget and probably sound more expensive. If their presentation suits you and you have a good budget player with needed output — the combination can be great. Even more, the headphones are not picky to output power and you can use them both with player, smartphone and even with some small DAP. There are many variants, just don’t forget about music.
Translated by: Vadim Kolchev
