The Moondrop Chu III is a great first IEM, but it’s not the upgrade I expected

The Moondrop Chu and Chu II are about as close as budget audio gets to a default answer. Ask anyone where to start with in-ear monitors (IEMs, the wired earbuds long favored by musicians and audio fans), and there’s a good chance you’ll hear “get the Chu II.” It costs under $30, and honestly, I’d tell you the same thing.

So when Moondrop released the Chu III, my first question was whether it even needed to exist. I tested it with music and competitive shooters, then put it head-to-head with the Chu II to find out.

Small, metal, and it actually stays put

Despite the budget price, the Chu III is built entirely from metal. It’s also on the small side for an IEM, so it never felt heavy in my ears.

One thing it gives up compared to the Chu II is an easily removable nozzle filter. The nozzle is the little tube that sits in your ear canal, and a removable filter is handy if your ears build up wax quickly: you can pop it off and clean it without soaking the whole earbud. On the Chu III, you’ll have to be a little more careful about keeping the nozzle clear.

The cable is straight, flexible, and free of kinks, and it stays soft over time. There’s no slider to cinch the cable together below where it splits toward each ear, though, so you’ll have to rig one up yourself if you like a snugger fit.

Those are small gripes, because the fit is great. The Chu III doesn’t have memory wire (a bendable section of cable that molds around your ear), but unlike most IEMs I’ve tried, it stays in place. That’s mostly because the ear hooks aren’t oversized for my ears, so they don’t slip off when I turn my head. I’ve worn the Chu III for over eight hours straight with no issues.

If the Chu II always felt like it went a bit too deep into your ears, the Chu III might suit you better. The nozzle is the same width but a little shorter.

You’ll probably need an adapter for your phone

The Chu III plugs in with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack. That’s no problem with a desktop, laptop, or dedicated music player, but most modern phones don’t have a headphone jack anymore. And unlike the Chu II, the Chu III doesn’t currently come in a USB-C version.

To use it with most phones, you’ll need either a dongle DAC (a small adapter that converts your phone’s digital audio into a signal your headphones can play, plugging into your phone’s USB-C port) or a Bluetooth adapter that turns wired headphones wireless.

There’s a small bonus for Chu II owners: the Chu III’s cable is removable and uses the common 0.78mm two-pin connector, so the cables are interchangeable between the two.

How does the Moondrop Chu III sound?

We already know the Chu II sounds good, especially for the price. Did Moondrop mess with a good thing? Not really. Overall, the Chu III sounds good, though it isn’t tuned exactly the way I’d prefer. To my ears, the bass and treble aren’t noticeably overemphasized, but the mids (where most of a voice lives) come across slightly underemphasized.

I found the bass strength a little lacking for my taste. Kick drums are still there, but they’re light on sub-bass, the lowest bass notes that you feel more than hear. There’s still enough to notice in tracks like Babylon Fall by Nina Chuba, where the female vocals have strong presence and the bass plays a supporting role rather than taking over.

Those prominent female vocals come from a slight overemphasis in the upper mids. The flip side is that the lower mids are slightly underemphasized, and you can hear it with deeper voices. On Erase Me by Make Them Suffer, the male vocals didn’t stand out as much as I’d like, and the kick drums actually sounded more prominent than the singer.

Up top, the highest treble notes are slightly underemphasized. On The World Is Still Beautiful by Ichika Nito, the cymbals and strings sounded a little distant and not quite natural. The lower treble keeps enough treble strength that those metallic notes don’t get lost in the background, though.

Objective measurements

In our lab, the Chu III’s frequency response (a chart of how loudly it plays each part of the audio range) isn’t far from the SoundGuys preference curve, our target for the kind of sound most people enjoy. The bass is slightly overemphasized, which adds a little more of that pressure feeling from kick drums. That’s a touch more bass than I heard in my own listening, so your fit and taste may land you somewhere in between.

The biggest departure from our curve is a dip in the mids around 500Hz. That dip can make lower-pitched voices sound slightly underemphasized, especially next to the slight boost in bass and treble.

The treble closely follows our curve with a slight overemphasis. There’s an extra bump around 11kHz, which makes “s” sounds in vocals (sibilants) and the shimmer of cymbals and other high-pitched instruments (sibilance) a little more noticeable.

Is the Moondrop Chu III good for gaming?

For general gaming, the Chu III does a great job. Competitive shooters are a tougher test. In Apex Legends, I could pick out footsteps amid the gunfire and abilities, but it took a little effort to separate those important cues from all the noise.

Pinpointing where sounds came from was harder. Spatial depth felt shallow, so I had a tough time judging how far away an enemy was. Direction was similar: I could tell the general side a sound came from, but not precisely enough to react quickly. That limited localisability makes the Chu III a so-so pick for competitive shooters, but it’s well suited to dialogue-heavy story games, where those forward vocals help.

Should you buy the Moondrop Chu III?

If you already own the Chu II, the Chu III is a slight upgrade at best, and even that depends on your taste. The Chu II has a little more bass, but that comes at the cost of both male and female vocals sounding slightly underemphasized compared to the Chu III.

So if you want vocals a touch more front and center, you’ll prefer the Chu III. If you like a slightly bass-heavy sound, the Chu II will be closer to what you want.

For an IEM under $30, the Chu III is worth grabbing if you’re curious about IEMs. It’s comfortable, well-built, and sounds good, which makes it a great starting point if you want to try IEMs without spending much.