JLab Jbuds Air Executive vs AKG N40 (2016)

The JLab Jbuds Air Executive makes for a good, if unremarkable, Canal Earphone for people with a $50 budget.

The AKG N40 (2016), however, is merely mediocre at its $519 asking price, when compared to similarly priced products, and won't satisfy the needs of most people.

In either case, we suggest that you first take a look at some other options at the $50 and $200 price points before committing to one of these - it's likely that you'll be able to find some better alternatives.

If you're still interested in learning more about the JLab Jbuds Air Executive and AKG N40 (2016), however, we wrote a summary of what we could find about them:

While the JLab Jbuds Air Executive wasn't able to make it to the very top of any roundups from sources that perform quality hands-on testing, it still got featured in a large number of them. Techradar, Rtings, SoundGuys, Android Authority, PCmag, and Wirecutter (NYTimes) have all deemed it worthy of a place on their respective shortlists.

As for our analysis of the AKG N40 (2016) - it's considered to be a great product by two reliable sources that do their own hands-on testing - it earned the "Customisable in-ear headphones make the most of high-quality tracks." award from What Hi-Fi? and "Ranked 3 out of 5" from Gear Patrol, which is no small feat.

We couldn't find any sources that tested both of these Canal Earphones, so we only analyzed how they performed in reviews from different sites.

We first examined which sources rated each of these best and found that the JLab Jbuds Air Executive got its highest, 8, rating from Techradar, while the AKG N40 (2016) earned its best, 10, score from What Hi-Fi?.

Lastly, in order to better compare them to the rest of their competition, we averaged out their review scores. The AKG N40 (2016) managed to get 9.5 out of 10 - considerably better than the 7.4 review average of Canal Earphones in general - whereas the JLab Jbuds Air Executive earned 7.0 points.

It should be said that doing a direct JLab Jbuds Air Executive vs. AKG N40 (2016) comparison might not be entirely fair due to the difference in their prices - some sources don't put much weight on value for money and thus tend to give better review scores to more expensive products.