AKG K182 Studio Headphones Review

Whether you are listening to music, editing videos, or working within any audio environment, hearing audio exactly as it was intended is crucial, which means you want reference audio equipment. What I have on the review table today is AKG’s latest closed-back monitoring headphones: The K182. This is an outstanding pair if you are looking for audio monitoring. They are built to withstand studio lifestyle, are incredibly comfortable, and also sound fantastic. Let’s dive into the details and see if this is the right pair for you.

Build Quality

Now design wise it’s a very basic headphone with a mainly plastic build and some metal joints. There are some rubber pieces on the headband, but I’m not sure what that’s about. There is some simple AKG branding on each ear cup, plus on the top of the headband. There is some creaking going on when stretching the headphone, but the entire frame feels pretty solid and I’m confident that this will behave well in a studio environment. The head band is size adjustable, as we have come to expect.

Great Ear Cups

The ear cups have almost full 360° rotation and that’s awesome for a low profile fit when they are on your neck. However, I found rotating the ear cups facing you is also awesome to be able to hear what you are listening to if you just want to take a little break. The ear cups can also be folded inside for a slightly smaller footprint during travel and that’s pretty awesome. It is a much stiffer rotation joint, which is perfect to avoid them folding or unintentionally collapsing until you intentionally push them in.

One Indoor Cable

The cable is removable using the mini-XLR 3-pin connection, so replacing the cable is not an issue and AKG sells plenty of additional cables. The cable included here is not coiled and it’s a standard 3 meters in length, which is fine for studio space but unfortunately no shorter cable is included in the package. Therefore if you want to use them on the go you will have to buy an additional cable yourself. AKG have included a 3.5mm to 6.3mm adapter, which is perfect since lots of professional equipment uses the larger jack size.

Comfort

Let’s talk comfort now. The K182 is the most comfortable studio headphone that I have tried so far. The leather cushions are super deep and soft enough to relieve any pressure. The clamping is very minimal and I did not notice any heat accumulation inside the ear cups, which by the way are conveniently labeled left and right for that visual aid. There is very little padding on the headband and that I thought might be an issue, but it wasn’t. At 255 grams without the cable the K182 offers lightweight design and also an outstanding fit.

Sound Quality

I fired up some music and did some video editing because I was interested to find out if this new pair was going to replace my HD8 DJ from Sennheiser. What I can say is that simply because of the awesome fit this pair will definitely be the first to sit on my headphones stand. I have the O2+ODAC headphone amplifier and based on what I heard this is an outstanding monitor headphone. The lows come through with power, it’s not a flat headphone by any means, and there is a fine sparkle in the high-end that reveals plenty of detail out of any audio source, without being too harsh. Compared to my HD8 DJ they are a lot more revealing and offer a surprisingly wide soundstage for a closed-back headphone, which is super nice.

Conclusion

A very important element that everybody will appreciate for a studio headphone is sound isolation. They block out pretty much 100% of the exterior sound, which is great. They also leak zero sound, so when they are on you you can blast out the volume to the highest levels without disturbing anybody in your surroundings. To conclude, if you are in the market for a new monitor headphone the AKG K182 is a fantastic pair to consider and we are giving you Hardware Canucks Dam Good award.