AKG K 309 In-Ear Bud Headphone - Cocoa Brown

So after my great experience with the K518DJ model, I thought, well, AKG's in-ear headphones must be amazing as well.

Wrong.

Sound quality - good. good bass. nice sound. I don't have much against the sound besides that it didn't meet my expectations (it was only slightly better than the $10 philips headphones i got to replace the k309).

Similar to other reviews, it was the comfort of the k309 that was subpar. Maybe I just have small ears, but these headphones did not stay put. Not even on my hour ride on the metro. I always had to readjust it to get the best sound and to have it stay in. The constant readjusting was tolerable...

...the fact that a rubbery piece that covered the headphones fell off was not.

In summary, buy at your own risk.

If you're paying full retail, I'd rate these 4 stars, but for the price they're awfully good.

The sound is surprisingly like AKG's open air headphones (K240s etc). Smooth strong midrange extending into the high frequencies smoothly (but without a whole lot of airiness), and the bass extends to very low frequencies but drops off quickly. The imaging in the mids is quite amazing, the highs feel attenuated, and the bass extends fairly low, but rolls off aggressively in a way that for some reason doesn't make you feel like you got cheated out of the bass. Basically, if you own a pair of AKG headphones, you already know what they sound like.

They are not for active sports, or even too much moving around. The "open air" fit means you don't shove them into your ears, they just sort of perch in the outer canal at an angle. This makes for a very comfortable fit, but not the most secure one! And if your ears are too big or small they probably will fall out or not...Read more

The sound quality of these headphones are good but they are too big to fit in the ears and if you do get them to stay they end up hurting your ears.