Tag Archives: AKG; K551; AKG K551; review; headphones; neutral; smooth; flat

Review of the AKG K545 Headphones – A worthy upgrade over its brother the K551

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Pros: Neutral/flat response, soundstage, design and looks, lightweight, removable wire
Cons: Highs are rolled off, benefits from an amp

Packaging & Accessories: 6/10
Build Quality: 10/10
Design & Look: 10/10
Isolation: 7/10
Comfort: 9/10
Audio Quality: 9.5/10
Value: 8/10
My final Rating: 10/10

Purchase Date: June 2013
Purchase Price: £230

AKG K545 - Looks

First of all I would like Sam, from AKG’s PR agency, for sending these out to review to me!
The AKG K545’s can be bought on Amazon UK & AmazonUSA, and other resellers worldwide. The review will be conducted at the £230 price tag, even though they can be bought at around £200 from certain places.

I was very lucky in receiving the AKG K545’s after being selected as an AKG Insider before the IFA 2013 event in Berlin. The K545’s allude greatly to the K551’s I had previously reviewed and thus in this review I will be alluding back to the K551 review with comparisons and thoughts to its younger brother.
The AKG K545 is seen as a revision model that arrived, in order to address some issues the K550/K551’s had.

The AKG K545’s also come in four different finishes:
–White
–Black
–Black with Turquoise
–Black with Orange

Before getting into the written review, I should state that I have a video review of these up on YouTube too:

Now let’s get unto the full written review of these headphones!

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Review of the AKG K551 Headphones – Neutral and Smooth Sounding

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Pros: Neutral/flat response, soundstage, design and looks, lightweight
Cons: Poor/weak bass extension, highs are slightly rolled off, benefits from an amp, cable thickness, lack of Android compatibility, cable is on left side only

Packaging & Accessories: 2/10
Build Quality: 8/10
Design & Look: 8/10
Isolation: 6/10
Comfort: 8/10
Audio Quality: 9/10
Value: 10/10
My final Rating: 9/10

Purchase Date: June 2013
Purchase Price: £150

AKG K551 - Looks

 

First of all I would like Sam, from AKG’s PR agency, for sending these out to review to me!
The AKG K551’s can be bought on Amazon UK, AmazonUSA and other resellers worldwide. The review will be conducted at the £150 price tag, even though they can be now bought at around £130 from certain places.

The AKG K551, is identical to its identical twin, the AKG K550, however rather than having a thicker, non-mic cable, it has a thinner cable with mic controls on it. That’s the only difference I was able to notice from reading other reviews online of the K550 and furthermore seeing the K550’s in-store.
Thus the K551’s are designed with Apple users in mind, and for those that don’t want to get their players out to play/pause, increase/decrease the volume. With that in mind, I’m an Android user, and despite testing this on Apple products, where the product worked as expected, I was again disappointed that the K551’s didn’t work on Android, like a lot of audio gear that has “mic controls” advertised on it. I can confirm that on my S3 running Android 4.2.2 leak, the mic controls didn’t work at all.

Now unto the full review of these headphones:

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