I hate expensive headphones — but after years of testing, I’ve finally found a pair I can’t live without

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I hate expensive headphones — but after years of testing, I’ve finally found a pair I can’t live without

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Many people look at technology so they can test new fancy and expensive gadgets, but I love cheap products; affordable but competitive technology that most consumers In fact buy, which offers you really interesting value for money.

For this reason, I have always had an aversion to expensive audio products. Sure, the best headphones might sound amazing, but if they cost more than a month’s worth of groceries, I’m not convinced.

AKGee, the genius

The AKG N9 on a wooden floor.

(Image credit: Future)

As smart readers will have gathered from the headlines, the AKG N9 is two things: a) headphones and b) expensive, retailing at $399 / £299 / AU$499 at the time of release, rarely getting discounts from that retail price.

The image above shows you what they look like; they have a premium finish, comfortable ear cushions, and a pretty reasonable weight for what they contain. I know many audiophiles lament the free-to-own days of AKG before Harman/Samsung, but I still really like what’s been created since then.

One of their best features is the battery life, which reaches an incredible 100 hours with ANC turned off (55 hours when it’s on, which is another two days of listening then most of the time). Lord of the Rings). That’s a fantastic number that allows the forgetful (two thumbs pointing at me) to avoid charging them for weeks.

Despite my distaste for expensive technology (and despite the existence of sophisticated headphones worth several thousand dollars), these remain are dear), I gave the AKG N9 four and a half stars out of five in my review, which was a lot for someone as cynical as me. And it’s all due to the killer feature that made it my favorite headset.

A dongle that breaks my heart

The AKG N9 on a wooden floor.

(Image credit: Future)

Tucked inside one of the cups of the AKG N9 is a small USB-C dongle. If you plug it into a device, it will override that device’s audio output so that the sound comes out of the AKG N9 instead.

This has three advantages. Firstly, for headphones, it allows you to quickly connect them to the device you want to use, without the tedious Bluetooth pairing game, or for work devices where that may not be an option. Second, for a device, it allows you to easily switch from your current speaker or earphone to AKGs.

Finally, the connection is also of better quality and with lower latency than Bluetooth, which is always welcome.

It’s a new feature, one that the N9 shares with its sibling headphones, the AKG N5 and just a handful of gaming headphones, and I waxed lyrical in my review about how cool it was. I talked about how being able to easily switch between your different gadgets or borrow other people’s could be incredibly convenient.

A year later, I come back with concrete experience of all this. Not only did the AKG N9 prove itself for even more practical use cases, but I’ve probably used them every day since.

The scourge of roommates

The AKG N9 on a wooden floor.

(Image credit: Future)

I’m using the Creative Pebble Nova on my PC: I like the sound of them, I like the way they look, and I may have “forgotten” to return them to TechRadar after posting my review. However, they are not used as much as they deserve, because of the AKG.

The N9’s dongle now takes up a near-permanent place in my computer’s USB-C port, so I can pull it out if I want to use the speakers or push it in when I want the headphones. And most of the time I want to use the headphones.

I have a roommate and I don’t want to annoy him by using the loud and bass speakers; when I hear it coming home, I can slide in the dongle and play games or watch a movie with the headphones instead. Likewise, when he leaves, I only have a few seconds before listening to my videos with the speakers.

It helps that the AKG sounds incredible and has robust noise cancellation, which helps me forget that my house borders a train line and is under a flight path. I find it easier to listen to videos and immerse myself in games when I’m using them.

The AKG N9 on a man's head.

(Image credit: Future)

For various tasks, I also have my iPad, laptop, and phone, so if I need to, I can start using the N9 on those devices as well without having to reconnect; Likewise, my partner can borrow them for her tablet without problem. I’ve taken them on vacation, on work trips to a coffee shop, and to friends’ houses.

As I use them more practical use cases for the AKG N9 emerge; just the other day I used them (along with a converter) with a field audio recorder to verify that a mic was working. I could have spent hours looking for my wired headphones, or seconds with the N9.

The only thing I can’t use them for is exercise, but luckily I test many open-back headphones for that.

If I calculated the price of individual headphones or earbuds for the various tasks I use the AKG N9 for, it would definitely be more than the cost of the cans themselves. I may hate expensive headphones and still consider the vast majority useless, but versatile headphones like these will save the right buyer a lot of money.