Sony MDR-ZX310 (2014) vs AKG K72 (2016)

The Sony MDR-ZX310 (2014) was well-received by reviewers at Expert Reviews, a trustworthy source that performs unbiased hands-on testing. It did great in their "Best cheap headphones 2023: The best budget earphones, earbuds, on-ear and over-ear headphones" roundup - they named it their "Best cheap wired headphones", which, by itself, suggests that it's a noteworthy product.

Moving on to the AKG K72 (2016): it was loved by What Hi-Fi? and musicradar.com - two reliable sources that conduct their own in-depth testing. In fact, it was named "The best budget over-ear wired headphones, period." and "Ranked 2 out of 8" in their respective roundups, which points to it being a product worthy of consideration.

As for a direct Sony MDR-ZX310 (2014) vs. AKG K72 (2016) comparison of their review performance, we examined sources that tested and rated both products, like TrustedReviews. It turns out that all such sources consider the AKG K72 (2016) to be the superior product.

We also looked at the available data to find which sources liked each of them best and learned that the Sony MDR-ZX310 (2014) most impressed reviewers at TrustedReviews - they gave it a score of 7, whereas the AKG K72 (2016) got rated best by What Hi-Fi? - 10.

Lastly, we averaged out all of their review data to compare them to their competitors. We found that the AKG K72 (2016), with its 8.0 out of 10 points, got reviewed noticeably better than most of its competitors - the average Over-Ear Headphone score being 7.5 - whereas the Sony MDR-ZX310 (2014) performed worse, with an average of merely 7.0.