Living with Big Monster Block Bluetooth Earphones D36

A while back I was listening to a podcast from Aifou, and one line stuck with me:

“I think the most impressive thing about Lei Jun is that he can push prices down so low that nobody else can match him.”

In that context, judging by the standard of “pushing prices down,” Lei Jun really is impressive. Whether it’s Xiaomi or Redmi, they’ve definitely driven down the price of a lot of things.

But is that what “impressive” really means—driving down the price of something expensive so it sells cheap? Shouldn’t it be the opposite?

Isn’t it far more impressive to take something worthless and sell it at a very high price?

By that standard, the “Big Monster Block Bluetooth Earphones” are a very “impressive” product.

The reason I bought these earphones was simple: I wanted a Bluetooth pair I could use at work to listen to music and podcasts, connected to my computer. I happened to be browsing Xianyu and Pinduoduo and came across the “Big Monster Block Bluetooth Earphones,” and was immediately drawn to them.

You can see why from the photos. The design and look of these earphones are so clever—the red and blue color scheme reminds you of the Switch, and plenty of people do in fact buy them to pair with their Switch. The way the earphones store is also very nice. At least in terms of appearance, there’s absolutely no problem.

But they were selling for just a few dozen yuan on Xianyu, which made me wonder if they were fakes. Still, the price was so cheap—under 50 yuan, shipping included—that I bought one to take a chance.

Once they arrived I could basically confirm these were genuine, because the packaging was really quite nice and had a lot of design thought put into it. The earphones themselves indeed look just like the pictures—genuinely attractive. They’re the same half-in-ear style as AirPods, and the red and blue scheme is eye-catching. It even came with a nicely made lanyard you can loop onto the case to keep from dropping them—a thoughtful touch.

So my first impression of these earphones was very good. That good impression lasted right up until I put them on, hit play on the first song, and it vanished instantly.

If the old Beats headphones got mocked as an overpriced “smart tax” for their heavy bass and bad sound, then next to these earphones, I can only say Beats are HiFi. The sound is so muddy, all mashed together into a single lump—forget about any talk of “resolution.” Even for podcasts it’s unbearable. I took them off after two minutes and didn’t want to put them back on.

Oh, right—these earphones have a pairing app, but it’s not on any app store. You have to download and install an APK from some unknown source. The interface is extremely crude. It supports several of the company’s earphone products by default, and maybe the others look feature-rich, but for this D36 block model the features are very basic. You can adjust the EQ, but it can’t be saved, and adjusting the EQ can’t save this garbage sound quality anyway. The app has no practical value at all—I looked at it and uninstalled it.

That’s my experience with the “Big Monster Block Bluetooth Earphones.” I used them for less than half an hour and didn’t want to touch them again. No matter how good they look, the sound quality is just too terrible—basically unusable—so I’ve put them on my desk as a display piece. At least they look nice.

Thinking about their roughly 50-yuan price tag, I understand why the sound quality is so bad. This product probably wasn’t designed as earphones at all, but as a good-looking trendy toy, with the earphone function as an add-on—as long as it makes sound, quality doesn’t matter. And with a limited budget, there’s no need to improve the sound. As long as it looks good, people will buy it.

Judging purely by sound quality, the “Big Monster Block Bluetooth Earphones” aren’t even as good as those 9.9-yuan ones—there’s a clear gap. But despite that, they sold on the strength of their looks, and at one point even sold at high prices. I have to admire how precisely the designer read the market.

As earphones, they fail. As a product, these earphones deserve to be called a success story.