It’s the time of year for saving money!
As I write this I’m listening to the wonderful Peter Cooper
release Opening Day through a pair of “refurbished” AKG K701 headphones that I bought for
$190. New ones have a list price of $539, but new ones can be had for $278.30. That’s quite a discount.
So, what’s the deal? AKG K701 certainly don’t suck,
and it’s not like their performance has been vastly overshadowed by newer
models. The question is why are they being discounted a whopping 48% off of
list?
In the AKG K701’s case, the primary reason for the deep
discounting is that they have been “on the market” for quite some time and
other newer models, including the AKG K702 which has the same list price, similar design, AND a removable cable instead
of the permanently-attached cable of the K701, have been released. On Amazon you’ll pay slightly
more than a $50 upcharge for the K702 over the K701.
Competition from other AKG models forced AKG to effectively
lower the K701’s price, not by lowering it’s list price, but by decreasing its
wholesale price to retailers so they can more deeply discount it. Is the AKG K701 a better value than the newer K702? Not really, especially if you are the
kind of person who trips over, stomps on, and generally abuses headphone
cables. Or if you need a headphone that can support both standard and balanced
headphone connections, the K702 would be a far more valuable and flexible
choice than the K701, and certainly worth the extra money.
Occasionally even a good product needs some discounting to
make it fly off dealer’s shelves. The AKG K 701 is a case in point.
