I'll say it right off the bat: The reason this is getting the value award is because it's done well enough to be a first set of decently tuned IEMs for most people, and appealing enough to the mainstream audience, who isn't going to care much about the technical drawbacks. My current inexperience with budget IEMs is also contributing here, which I hope to rectify courtesy a small collection of KZ/CCA IEMs I have on hand waiting for review. I chose to go with the FiiO x JadeAudio JD3 first because I was curious about the Jade Audio brand, and it's quite a recent release as of the time of writing.

Having just come off testing a few ~$500–2000 IEMs, this is certainly a change and then some. I had to make sure I spend enough time with it to avoid any higher expectations I might have had from before, and the first thing I noticed was the tuning. It clearly appeals to a more mainstream audience given the low price point, but is balanced well enough to satisfy many audiophiles, if not outright please. The more I listened to it, the more I began to appreciate the simpler aspects of this set compared to the typical IEM, but did have growing concerns about the lack of a carry case and cable clip for daily use. The bigger issue was that the tuning seemed more of a balloon filled with air—shapely on the outside, mostly empty inside.

It would be easy to say FiiO might have seen the likes of the MOONDROP Quarks and Tanchjim Tanya being recommended before deciding to compete in this market, but it's more likely the JD3 has been in development for longer than that. Jade Audio as a sub-brand has also been around for over two years now, so the JD3 releasing alongside the JH3 hybrid IEMs and KA3 USB DAC/amp was part of the roadmap surely. Know also that the JD3 is not going to compete with even some $50 IEMs tested previously, although it certainly bested another $50 IEM, so take it for what it is. If you want inexpensive IEMs to take on a roadtrip or to gift to friends and family, you could do much worse than the FiiO x JadeAudio JD3.