AKG N400

Audiophile True Wireless Earbuds for less than $50?

I heard about these on Crinacle’s video on the best true wireless earbuds. The AKG N400 were his pick for best sounding and, as he pointed out, they are also only $48 when ordering directly from AKG. For $48 (with free shipping in the US), I had to get them even though I already have true wireless earbuds: the Bose Sport Earbuds.

The box the AKG N400 arrived in is pretty nice and opens up like a book with everything easily accessible.

These have an amazing build quality as they are metal and feel really solid. They also fit great in my ears. I had to switch to the larger ear tips in order to get the bass up to acceptable levels for me, and I’m not a bass head. I also switched to the large wing tips to ensure stability in the ear. With this setup, they are super-comfortable and it doesn’t seem like they would fall out at all.

There are 3 sizes of ear tips and wing tips, plus a set of Comply True Grip ear tips, which I found rather uncomfortable.

As far as sounds goes, these are bright. There is prominent high-end, at least for me. The bass is there, but it is not thumping by any means. In this respect, they don’t sound at all like the Bose Sport Earbuds, which are much warmer and overall easier to listen to.

Regarding extra features, the charging case is metal and a bit tall. Its lid does not like to stay open and it can be tricky to fit the earbuds in so that they charge properly. There is not much room for error. Weirder still, the left earbud goes on the right side of the case and the right earbud goes on the left. I still haven’t gotten used to that. It charges with USB-C, which is expected for premium earbuds at this point. You can also charge it wirelessly, a nice feature, but it does seem to get pretty warm when you do that.

The N400 have a few other extra features such as ANC, which works OK. My Bose earbuds do not have ANC at all, but the ANC on these doesn’t seem to do much beyond what having them in your ears already does.

There is also an ambiant mode, which is fine and a talk mode that allows you to hold a conversation without taking them out of your ear. They both are OK, but since the Bose Sport Earbuds don’t actually go into your ear canal, they also essentially let you hold a conversation or hear background noises while wearing them.

There is a companion app that you’ll need to have full access to the ANC, Talk and Ambiance modes. In addition there is an EQ you can adjust. There are no presets, but it does have 10 adjustment frequencies, much better than the 3 offered by the Bose. With the EQ, it is possible to significantly boost the bass. You can save your own EQ settings as presets to make it easy to switch between them. I ended up making an “extra bass” EQ preset which gets these more to my liking.

These earbuds have touch controls for nearly everything, mostly on the right earbud. There, it’s one tap to play/pause, two taps to skip forward and three to skip back. In the app you can enable swipe up/down for volume, but that’s been a bit flaky for me as it often instead registers as a single tap. On the left ear bud you can have a swipe do only one thing. It can turn Talk or Ambiance ON/OFF, but that’s also not been reliable for me. You can configure most of these settings in the app. The app also lets you adjust the ANC tuning down, but considering how weak it is, I’m not sure why you’d want to do that. There is also a Find My Buds feature that allows you to play a high-pitched tone on either earbud to help you find it. It works well. I like that the buds pause music when you take them out and continue playing when you put them back in

Battery life seems reasonable. AKG says about 5 hours of continous use, which is more than I would use at one time anyway. Less reasonable is that the charging case can only do one additional full charge.

Overall, for under $50 these are a great value. I paid a little over $100 for the Bose Sport Earbuds (refurb) and the AKG have better overall sound and more adjustable features. I’m not sure that means I’ll use them more, though. The Bose have a smoother, more casual sound that I prefer most of the time and work more reliably.

Here is a pic of the EQ setting I have been using: