AKG - N5 Hybrid

AKG N5 HYBRID!!! They’re on MAJOR sale right now, MRSP $329, right now on Harman’s website they are $99, they have been knocking off an additional $20 once they’re in your cart - I just got them for 80 bucks and they have become my new sound quality top pick out of the 30+ pairs I own. Seriously, they are amazing…check out some reviews. They’re such a steal right now!!!

I’ve got a pair right in front of me, and a whole lot of others to compare it to. What would you like to know? EDIT: My subsequent comments aren’t showing up. Here’s this: Sound quality is bass-boosted Harman tuned out of the box. It’s pretty much standard AKG/ Samsung tuning, including the usual shortcomings like thin lower mids. The AKG app EQ is alright — it’s visual but provides a decent bit of control so you can tweak the sound pretty decently. I have an EQ I can share if anyone is interested. ANC is good, not great. I wouldn’t use them as my primary plane travel earbuds but I hate engine noise. Basically the same ANC as you’d get from modern galaxy buds. I haven’t used them for calls but a quick recording test shows the recording quality as mediocre — definitely worse than my AirPods Pro 2. No idea about reliability, sadly, as I haven’t had them a super long time.

The dongle does indeed provide good latency compared to Bluetooth. It’s not *quite* as zero-latency as my soundcore p10, but it’s still good.

This I do agree with. At $80 they’re a great value buy — I’d almost say unmatched. At $330 you’d be out of your mind to pick these over AirPods Pro 2 (especially when those go for like $180) and pocket the difference.

Thanks for sharing! Just picked them up for 85 bucks total from Harman Audio's website. I figure that's pretty good considering Bose and Sony are around 220; can't imagine those are 3x better. This'll be my first pair of earbuds; have a pair of Sony XM5 headphones where one of the sound drivers failed, which is pretty disappointing after only 1-2 years of use. We'll see how they perform!

Best I can find is $99 on the AKG website.

Thanks. Saved $20, I’ll grab them for when my Jabras finally give up. Do they have a decent app that lets you locate them if you lose them? I thought that was always nice to have.

I mean this seems like quite the steal for these. Already have APP2 but figured why not try these out. Seems people enjoy the sound quality quite a bit

AKG N5 are really good, probably among the best

Tried all the above minus the Sennhesier and JBL, I have an S24 Ultra. My personal daily driver is the Samsung buds 3 pro, ANC is up there but a bit behind Sony and Bose, if you are on a newer Samsung you get their decent codec, a bunch of features for example I used mine to translate recently was great, they sound alright out of the box but EQ well if you search for some on here, there are some great EQ takes and I find them the most comfortable on that list which is Subjective. These I feel image as well as the AZ100, I honestly prefer them, but at the flagship level of buds the differences are so fine, I would accept general opinion the AZ100 sound better. Bose are king of ANC, but without a dongle you miss out on HD codecs as Samsung dont carry Aptx lossless/adaptive. They sound kinda ok, not the best, but no complaints either. Very comfy for me personally, sit in the ear even power walking down a hill. Great buds just not ones I reach for unless I need the best ANC (AuDHD so it does happen). Being on AAC codec isnt that big a deal, but if you are spending flagship money, losing a big feature doesnt make sense to me. Sony are top of the list from reviewers even this year. They are the absolute all around gods if you dont have an eco system to jump into like Samsung or say Apple. The foam tips are love or hate, I love, many hate, but what they do do, is help with the already decent ANC and make them up there with Bose. They are only comfy if you can deal with foam, if you dont like foam, do not buy them, they lose a lot of ANC with silicon tips. Waste of money in that case. Sound however, they sound great, highly recommend their "find my EQ" feature in the app, its quite interesting to see how you prefer sound, made me realise I quite like a bright sound when I thought I liked more dark or warm. These are the second choice for me regardless of order. Technics AZ100. Best bud I have heard personally up until the premium stuff like Gemini 2 etc. The 100 ANC far better than the 80, its up there now maybe above Samsung a hair, but just under the 2 top dogs Sony and Bose. They are comfy in the ear in fairness, look nice, LDAC supported by Samsung like the Sony buds, app is decent, they EQ well. This is the joint top pick for me as long as you are not sensitive to in ear pressure like me. So of those, my personal rec, Buds 3 pro if Samsung features and aesthetic appeal, AZ100 if not. WF1000XM5 if ANC takes priority more but a balance with good features ONLY if you can use the foam tips, ANC different is minimal at the top. Bose if ANC is the absolute most important to you. The JBL are reviwed really well, so as much as I cant comment, I also dont think you'd miss out on anything with them from the above. Seem to be very similar to the AKG N5 which I do have and adore. Worth also waiting for sales, I got my buds on a heavy discount. Also if you can get from a place you can definitely return, like Amazon, also do that just incase.

Yeah thats the weakness of them sadly, even humming, they have/had a sensitivity feature that was next to useless as any lower sensitivity it just didnt activate for me, high and if I start humming or singing it stops the music, highly annoying! So if you are a hummer or a singer might be worth skipping and just going for physical touch to mute. Only buds out of say a dozen I have tried that beter Sonys talk to listen is Samsungs Buds 3 pro, but I highly do not recommend them on anything but a Samsung device. I tried some others like AKG N5, but they even activated off other people talking or a TV playing. The Sony at least only react to your voice. Even if that voice is sometimes a cough even.

Yes, you can use just one AKG N5 earbud or both.

The sound volume is so low when I connect the dongle to my PS5 Pro. Even after I crank the PS5 volume levels to the max. What a bummer.

I contacted HK, and they sent me a replacement. I know very well there is nothing with my set. I can't believe their tech support is inefficient. But, this low volume issue using the dongle in my PS5 Pro is frustrating.

Oh, shit. It works!!! Thank you! You need to be patient while pressing once at a time. You're a Rockstar!

I wanted to do a quick review on these buds. They came out a year ago retailing for $330. Recently they have been on sale for $100 or less and available in the US. What interests me in these is the fact that they are AKG and they come with a usb-c dongle. I would say earbuds is one of my hobbies. I've bought, sold, traded, tested maybe 30+ buds over the past 7 years. I started with the Anker Liberty Zolo Plus in 2018. Thought others might want to hear my thoughts on it. Sound - The sound on these are awesome! They are definitely an S tier. Previously the best sounding earbuds I've heard are the AKG N400NC which I still have but plan to sell since I no longer need them. Out of the box, these are really good. They get even better once you tweak the EQ and play with the settings, and add your own Personi-Fi setting. they are very detailed I would say with some great sub bass. Probably the best sounding earbuds I've heard, almost make me want to cry during some songs. In some situations, sound is even better with the dongle connected. Earbud Design - stem style design. They have LEDs built into what looks like a bigger mic on the outside. They flash blue sometimes although I'm not sure why, maybe if they're on standby or if the mic is muted. and flash white when put in the case for charging. Stem isn't too long. Main bud isn't too big. Medium to larger ears will love these. If you have extra small ears I'm not sure if these will fit. The ear tips use a similar design to that of the original Galaxy Buds Pro. Where the nozzle is an oval shape with sort of a lock notch on the top and bottom for the oval ear tip to stay in place. Case - the case feels lighter than it should. It's a bigger case. Roughly 2.2 x 1.3 x 1.1 inches. Small LED on the front of it displays low, medium, and high battery life. Usb-c on the back. Wireless charging. The dongle stays put pretty good with a magnet inside the case. Battery life - haven't run these down completely yet. Seems on average about 10 hours of battery life with no sound controls. 8 hours of battery life with ANC or transparency on. And probably 4.5 hours on call with voice aware on. Turn voice aware off and it's more closer to 5.5 hours. Using the dongle, it's about the same. Ambient settings - won't get too much into it. ANC is pretty great. It's not going to be the best of the best but it's no slouch either. Ambient mode is good, it's better than most. Not S tier or anything, maybe A tier. Bluetooth / dongle connection - let's talk about distances. Bluetooth feels shorter than others. I feel like inside of a house, these have a maximum Bluetooth range of maybe 60 feet where I have had other earbuds go maybe 80 to 100 feet or more. So they are on the shorter side of Bluetooth range. Same can be said for the dongle. Dongle is Maybe 30 to 40 ft through a wall and then it starts to cut out. So not so good on the range side I would think. You're going to want to keep your phone or device close to these. Dongle - speaking of dongle it's one of the best I've used. P10, Jlab Epic Lab, Sony Inzone, Steelseries gamer buds. It's the type of bud I'm into these days since I am on my computer and Steamdeck a lot more often. It is case friendly, but maybe not as much as the Steelseries, it does stick out maybe 1.5mm. cool feature with the dongle button is one press mutes the mic, and two clicks of the button switches between Bluetooth and USB mode. In the US, there's no software for it on the PC side. I heard there is in other countries though. Doesn't matter though, most settings can be changed using the mobile app and they are applied to the buds when using them with the dongle. Special Features - I'd say the dongle with the different commands for its button is nice as well as it's led light that changes for different actions, red for mute, white for connected, flashes for Bluetooth. There is a whisper mode where you can pick a side during a call, and it'll amplify that Mic so you can hold it up to your mouth and whisper in it. A Silent Now feature that helps you sleep, it will turn on the ANC after a certain time and keep it turned on for up to 8 hours. Then it will wake you up with a quiet notification sound sent through the earbuds. Personi-Fi is a hearing test that will customize your EQ for both left and right sides. This works pretty well, and you can even go back and fine-tune it a little bit if it sounds off. Low dynamic EQ option will boost lows and high at quieter listening volumes which is kind of cool. Last one I can think of is the mic settings. You can change how you sound during calls, and you can also change how the person sounds during calls that you're calling, kind of like having an EQ for your mic. So there's different settings like normal, bright, natural and powerful. What's missing / Issues - I wish playback control could be customized a little more. Right now it's defaulted to either play controls, sound controls, or volume controls that can be set for each side. What I mean by I wish I could customize it, is if I'm using one earbud with play controls, I can't have sound controls. Would be nice to make one tap pause/play/answer, two taps skip, three taps mute mic, and long press for ambient sound controls, but this isn't possible. Maybe with a future software update these could do that, but they're probably done updating these. Another issue I have is when I use transparency mode and put them back into the case, sometimes the earbuds make a screeching sound for another 3 to 8 seconds. I thought I had a bad pair with my white ones, so I exchange them for some black ones and they still did the same thing. The other issues I have could be a deal breaker for some. When initially playing sound, these buds always cut out the first almost full second after being in "standby" mode. Start a YouTube video up and you won't hear the first second. Pause your earbuds for more than 5 minutes, go back to listening to a song, and the first second you hear will be clipped out. Maybe I'll change the standby mode see if that helps. The other sound clipping issue comes with movie mode. Movie mode is a feature that cuts down on input lag when using Bluetooth. I would say it goes from normally 250ms down to around 160ms. But when you have this feature enabled, sometimes it needs to catch up or slow down, and there will be a slight pause and sound every once in awhile that gets annoying. So I turn this feature off. If you need minimal lag when playing games on your phone through Bluetooth, just use the dongle instead. I had these issues on both my white pair in my black pair. One more thing I noticed. Voice Aware is a setting that bumps up the ambient sound and I love that, it works great. But the problem with Voice Aware is it only works for voice calls, and if it is turned on when listening to music, the music is silent and won't transfer over. Wish they had an update to fix that. Overall - with impressive sound, a great battery life, some pretty cool features, a usb-c dongle, and currently on sale for $100 or less ($80 on Harmon Kardon at checkout this week), these get my recommendation. I'm willing to sell my AKG N400 NC, Jlab Epic Lab, and Airpod Pro 2's and replace them all with these. Dispite the minor sound clipping issues I have when they start up for the first time when using them, these are still amazing. Final score: 9/10.

My favorite higher end for sound quality, build quality, ANC/transparency, features, and mic quality? AKG N5 Hybrid. My favorite mid-range all around? Probably Steelseries Gamer Buds Artic X. Another good all-around are the Jlab Epic Lab. Let me know if you want them, I'm trying to sell them and I can post them on hardware swap. Best deal? Sony Inzone buds. I think you can still find these used for under $60, sometimes under $50. I wouldn't spend a full $200 price for brand new though. Best budget? Anker P10. New they are around $60, used they are around $30.