Things people look at headphones are price, quality and design. In this review, we’re going to tackle all three with our SoundMagic ES18. Just a brief background of the company featured, SoundMagic has been around the industry since 2005, a very young company compared to other top competitors. It is a Chinese brand, I know you read it, a Chinese brand would often have a reputation, but hear me when I say SoundMagic creates excellent earphones, at least for the price. Often stereotype tied with Chinese brands are cheap, and SoundMagic is not an exception to rule.

But cheap equates to poor quality, right? Wrong, quite a few number of the Chinese brands offer cheap products but for the better quality, and SoundMagic belongs to the elite few that offer just that.

Now the review product we have right now is the SoundMagic ES18. I’m not going to do the typical blog and review style cause I’m gonna merge it. So I’m sorry if this read more of blog than a review or the vice versa and I have sort of an off topic near the end. Okay let’s get started.

Unboxing this tiny beast is like taming a kitty. Fairly easy just slit through the protective tape that keeps the box from opening and you’ll quickly access the unit. It has two free rubber tips both in small and big sizes. I chose the color orange because I hated the cliché black. The built quality is fairly okay, it’s not like its gonna break easily but it just gives me the connotation that I should handle it with care, but shouldn’t all things be handled with care? Anyways on with built, the ES18 supports a 3.5mm jack, it bends 90 degrees for protective reasons. Good UX design, cause a lot of headphones in the past just have this straight to wire and it breaks easily. With the main drivers, the in-ears are really small. This is a clear example that big things come in small packages cause these in-ear monitors (IEM) pack a punch.

The SoundMagic ES18 is really loud, but not bad loud.

The sound stage is really small, but these are IEMs so I guess it’s okay. The mids are good and the lows are okay. But man the bass is like a monster thumping at your ear canal. My typical review usually runs in a series of genres. The first thing I check is the subtle music because I had a feeling these are bass heavy headphones, we got to save the best for last. Well they were good honestly, the words were really clear and you could hear the instruments. They aren’t as washy as my expectations. Of course I would never leave out jazz music so I pop some jazz. I have a Kenny G CD so I played it, the sax really sounds like Kenny’s right in your ears but I guess that’s the power of IEMs. Next would be some bass heavy and party ones, and these sounded great. Like I said the bass are thumping your ear canals. I guess the trend of now a days are really bass heavy headphones.

Now for the cost, Chinese company = cheap; simple formula. These heavy punchers cost Php 700-850 ($15-$20) based on online sellers and SoundMagic distribution. I bought mine around Php 680.

As I wrapped up, some few thoughts. I sort of held this review because I took my time in juggling school and other personal stuff, I also thought about not doing this review and writing something about tech trends, I had articles held up as of the moment so watch out for that. I also took my time in narrowing the market and focusing solely, for now, on Philippine market on all my content.

Back to the review, as a conclusion,

the SoundMagic ES18 is what you call the bang-for-the-buck.

Cheap yes, but also good quality and definitely worth the click, well if you’re reading this. For my Philippine readers, you can get this right now on Lazada around Php 600-700; watch out for the promo codes on their app. You can also check other SoundMagic products if you want something more high quality. I’ve known SoundMagic for quite sometime but I never really got to hold one until recently. Well, SoundMagic isn’t an industry shaker like what OnePlus did 2 years ago, but it is one those Chinese brands where they put deliverance above cost. I really recommend you to check out SoundMagic ES18 and other SoundMagic products.