MoondropQuark 2 in-Ear Headphone USB-C LCP Dome Composite Flexible Suspension Dynamic-Driver Diaphragm

Sounds good, especially at $15, mics built into these cables never seem to work that well but should do ok for chatting. The DAC inside of the cable can actually do 32bit/384khz according to my PC. Can't really go wrong with it at this price point.

Where these as bad as everyone says they are? For me.. They just weren't exactly the Quarks again, they kind of felt like a remake of them but not as good.Sure the usb c is a bit convenient, but honestly it doesn't seem to make that much of a difference. If anything the size of the buds are what really tick me off because I can't really wear these over the ear any more because of that fact.Obviously they make noise. But they're not as good as the original Quarks which you can thankfully still buy. If you're Hell-bent on getting these, they won't make you puke, but they won't make you feel good either.

I probably own about 10 Quarks gen 1. Not even the dsp. They are so good. Convenient enough to put in a pocket, not a deep insertion or wide that hurts your ears, they go in easily, and are some of the more balanced sounding tools i've used in my many years of trial and error. I sold all my over the ear headphones some of which were 100x the price of these because I don't have to fiddle with seal loss on a headphone due to glasses/hair breaking the seal and making the bass department go defunct.I figured, even if the quarks are cheap junk that break every 6 months it'd:1) still be cheaper then the way over the ear headphones2) it'd still sound better then virtually every over the ear i've tried outside of maybe sound staging3) the isolation is so much better and I can play at lower volume and still get a better overall soundI went all in on IEMs and tried a bunch vowing never to spend more then $100 for one, and been pleasantly surprised to say that none of my Quarks have broken in the 2 years of ownership since I had them. I even got crazy glue in case I had to help seal the wire connection to the IEM to make sure the weak point didn't cause an issue.When the Quarks 2 came out, it was probably the only thing I had been excited for in a long while for audio and sadly they fall short. The IEM is much longer not blending around the ear as well and for whatever reason don't have the same balance i've come to expect on the gen 1s. I've tried most the recommendations in the $10-$20 segment and I think I will just be staying with the Quark 1s until I see something else that matches their price, convenience, and ergonomics. Until then, I still feel liberated from the sinkhole that is headphone audio and GASing over something better when the gen 1s just cover most the bases for me already.The only thing I think i'd be missing at this point is wireless since functionally IEMs still have a way of pulling themselves out of your ear often due to cable length.If I was Moondrop and designing the gen 3 Quarks, i'd keep the Gen 1 size/shape as much as possible, make sure the cable stays durable for not being detachable, and only change out the drive if one truly is better. Until then, my recommendation is obvious.

Travel and work

What complete garbage. Out of the box the multi function switch would switch between max/min vol, mute/on to off, rendering them un-usable. No volume control at all. Clearly the manufacturer has been overloaded with demand from Wirecutter review readers buying them. Clearly no QC at all.Don't recommend.

Four stars for price and comfort, minus one star for really wimpy bass.

Nice balanced sound

Fyi it doesn’t work with USBC Iphone for amazon music, it will crash the app