Tangzu WAN ER SG Review – Don’t Be A Wanker!

The Tangzu WAN ER SG is a well-made, well-tuned budget earphone with middling technicalities.

The Tanzu WAN ER SG was kindly provided by LINSOUL for my analysis and I thank them for that. You get it currently for around $20 from them.

Introduction

When I started as a “reviewer”, I owned about 150 iems, most of them between $5 and $20. At the time, the golden age of ultra-budget single-dynamic drivers gave way to the age of the multidrivers as the price of BAs had come down substantially.

Blogs such as www.audiobudget.com and the now defunct Asian Provocative Ear fed the thrill seekers with cheap recommendations. Companies such as Knowledge Zenith and NiceHCK fuelled the gold rush for finding premium quality in the budget segment with countless models [here a very informative article on the early KZ earphones by the Contraptionist].

Loomis (who we inherited from Asian Provocative Ear) and I held stubbornly on to a $12 single dynamic driver model, the Senfer UEs (also known as NiceHCK BRO) as we did not appreciate the rather artificial timbre of the “BA sound” in budget models. On the downside, these early Chifi iems were not tuned well, they were typically strongly V-shaped with too much bass and too hot in the mids.

In the meantime, technology has progressed, our blog has grown, our knowledge has improved, our activities have diversified, and our expectations have become bigger. We have moved out of this budget territory a long time ago and handed it over to the newbies. After all, everybody has to go through elementary school first.

For this review, however, I am diving back into the world of ultra budget, hoping to escape it forever thereafter.

You may have never heard of Tangzu, but surely of the company’s former identity “TForce Audio”. They are from Dongguan and supply drivers to other companies, for example SeeAudio. The earphone examined for this article itself is named after Shangguan Wan’er (664-710), the first female prime minister under Empress Wu…and not named after what you think.

Specifications

Physical Things and Usability

In the oversized box are the two earpieces, a oxygen-free copper cable, 2 sets of silicone eartips, and a cleaning cloth. A relatively small content out of relatively large boxes…the packaging is outright wasteful in my eyes.

The earpieces are made of that resin we have seen hundreds of times in <$30 items. Same with the cable that is thin, stiff, hard with a forceful memory wire aiming to cut your ears off – or at least strangle them. It is haptically and in terms of comfort terrible. Such a cable is the reason why third-party ones are offered.

The earpieces itself are small and light enough to provide me with good comfort and fit. Isolation depends on eartips used…

Tonality and Technicalities

The Tangzu WA NER is a surprisingly well-tuned, V-shaped iem with an agreeable slightly warm tonality but middling technicalities. It could deserve a bit more sheen. Overall a reasonably pleasant listening experience despite its low price.

The low end may be its best part: good extension, good rumble, with a punchy mid-bass. Punchy enough not to be annoying. Mids are, you may have guessed it, somewhat back and therefore a bit lean, but with good definition. I never got the impression vocals are overrun by the bass.

Another positive surprise is the lack of upper midrange glare. Midrange lacks a bit of sheen, possibly from the lower-treble rolloff that moves cymbals into the background. Upper treble is well present in results in some tizzyness in the very high notes. Yahoo, no shoutiness.

Technicalities are ok but nothing to write home about. Stage is rather narrow, but it is tall and deep enough to work for me. Resolution, separation and layering are…ok, not more. Overall, the WA NER is lacking is sparkle, the overall sonic impression is a bit dry.

Concluding Remarks

The Tangzu WAN ER SG are a strangely named $20 single dynamic driver earphone that tag onto the tradition of classic ultra-budget models, hoping to stick out of the crowd – which they do not. Time has moved on, buyers have become more critical, which is expressed in the WAN ER SG’s advanced tuning.

But the driver quality is limited at this price, which is reflected in the iem’s middling technicalities. It all comes down to pairing. If you use an iem with a $1000 phone or at least a $200 dap, the Tangzu WAN ER SG may be an understatement. In this case, even $20 is too much a price to pay.

But if you have some budget source, the Tangzu WAN ER SG may work well. In this hobby, the same rules apply as in real life: you get what you pay for! Don’t be a wanker…

Until next time…keep on listening!