AKG Q460

The presence of music mogul Quincy Jones’ photograph on the box of the AKG Q460 earphones lets you know that you’re looking at an aspirational set of buds. Fortunately, the AKG Q460s from AKG’s Quincy Jones Signature line more than live up to those aims, by being a great set of headphones for a decent price.

Designed to be used with an iPod touch or iPhone, the AKG Q460s are a small set of on-ear headphones that can be folded up flat. The single cable (which attaches separately to the main unit) has in-line remote control and also acts as a mic.

We tested the white set that sports a hard-to-miss neon-green cable; although a pair in more subdued black are available if you don’t want to tote the ‘sporty’ look (though they still have the green cable). If you really want to go all out try the pair of eye-punching all neon-green Q460s.

Despite the somewhat lairy looks, the AKG Q460s produce strikingly clean and balanced audio with clear midtones providing great sound quality; enabling you to pick out and listen to a wide range of the audio spectrum.

In terms of bass the Q460s produce good thumping sound without overdoing things to the detriment of the wider audio range (a problem we’ve found with a lot of earphones aimed at a younger market). Given the striking appearance of the earphones, the well-balanced bass came as a glorious relief. Although they aren’t exactly cheap, we have seen earphones costing more that don’t offer anywhere near this level of audio quality.

Along with the earphones you get a nice carry case, plus two cables of different lengths (with or without iPhone controls) and an adaptor that can be used to connect a standard 3.5in cable to the on-ear units (one odditiy is that the cable uses a smaller 2.5in jack adaptor to connect to the headset). You also get a 6.3mm jack adaptor in case you want to plug the Q460s into a larger entertainment system.