Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “AirPods Max Review: Luxury Listening!”.
So hey what’s up mkbhd here i figured it out. I got it. I understand airpods max now now it took me a couple days of listening and comparing and taking notes, but i got it so. The original question when these headphones were surprise announced was: why is apple, making 550 dollar wireless noise canceling headphones? They better either sound incredible or have some kind of unreal feature to be worth that much over all the other headphones that we already know are good right. Well, here’s my take on where these fall so there’s actually two types of high-end headphones right. The first would be like reference type like studio grade actual production headphones, so these are going to be lightweight they’re, going to have a super flat, sound signature, you’re going to wear them for hours and hours on end, and you often need extra hardware like a mini Preamp or something like that to drive them, they are geared for production and then, on the other side, there’s just luxury listening, there’s just nice, headphones that sound great for music and and podcasts and movies and and all kinds of consumer oriented features. So you might have noise cancellation, they might be wireless, that’s the other type they’re geared for consumption.
So now this new pair of very expensive headphones, i’m glad they didn’t call them airpods studio because they land squarely in that second section of luxury listening and it was kind of confusing to pin them there at first, because they do have a bunch of features and A bunch of really weird quirks that actually kind of resemble the other world i’ll talk about those in a minute, but fact is these headphones check, a set of boxes that no other set of headphones i’ve ever tested can claim to check it’s a really odd combination Of pieces here, but let’s just start with the design right off the bat it’s metal, so these headphones have aluminum, ear cups that get cold to the touch when you’re outside in the winter and stainless steel headband frame here and so right away. They’Ve already started to differentiate themselves because virtually every other pair of high-end headphones or really any headphones out. There are made of plastic, but this metal build is dope. It’S got super tight tolerances.
The ear cups are even this like satin finish, which i think would look even better as matte black apple why’d. You send me the green one and the telescoping headband doesn’t have notches, but it’s really smooth and it takes a lot of pull to move. So it feels high quality too, and the button and the digital crown up top are super nice. They feel really high quality. So if the metal build is so great, why are these like the only pair of headphones, doing the metal thing? Why are the rest of them? All plastic. Well turns out the reason you don’t see, metal headphones.
Very much is because all these other headphone companies have done the research and one of the primary factors for comfort for wearing headphones for a long time is their weight and metal is heavy much heavier than plastic. So they’ve all realized that and they’ve all done plastic headphones because that’s so much more comfortable to wear for a long time. So this is something airpods macs have to work around, so they do their best. With this really thin flexible mesh in the top band. That’S supposed to sort of evenly distribute some of the weight on top of your head, but there’s no getting around that. These are heavy headphones, it’s kind of like driving an electric car. If you keep it in a straight line, you can forget that it’s heavy, but as soon as you hit a corner, you remember it’s a heavy car and so for me, if i sit still with these headphones for a while, i totally forget the weight they just Kind of sit on my head like a pillow but the second i nod my head or stand up to look at something or look up. I remember they’re quite heavy for the numbers people about 380 – something grams versus 250 ish grams.
But you know what these do: a pretty great job with the metal compared to how it could have been. I have exactly one other pair of headphones. That’S made completely of metal, and it’s these remember these. These are the beats pros.
400 bucks all metal headphones and they bragged about how they’re all metal – and these did a terrible job with it. These weigh 450 grams or something like that. They’Re way heavier and they’re about the least comfortable pair of headphones. I’Ve ever worn. They pinch you right on the right, underneath your ear they’re on ear for some reason. Instead of over ear harsh they’re brutal, they squeeze your head like a lot.
Unless your head is shaped like this, which it’s not so yeah, it could have been a lot worse, but then some other quick design notes. There is no apple logo anywhere on these headphones, so the design is actually it’s actually kind of grown on me. Over the past few days it looks pretty clean and, like i said, matte black would look pretty sweet and also, you should know, there’s no sweat or water resistance here. So if you’re an athlete or if you’re, looking to make these your gym headphones, you want to walk around the city while it’s raining or snowing, or something like that.
Probably reconsider apple went with over-ear headphones here instead of on-ear, and i definitely prefer this. The mesh ear cups with memory foam are nice and soft and very comfortable, and through long listening sessions, they’ve actually done better than leather. I listen to more than two three hours in a row before my ears start to get hot and i needed a break which is pretty great and the ear cups are removable easily with magnets. Now this is a quirk you pretty much, never see in consumer headphones, but the fact is, you really should be somewhat regularly replacing the actual ear cup part of your headphones that you keep for a long time, but most people never do, but here it makes sense. You know these are going to be metal headphones. That will hopefully last you a long time many many years of use, but this piece that you want to stay the same will eventually compress and start to crack and get old and faded. You get a new pair. It keeps the driver the same distance from your ear, all that good stuff.
Just by replacing it now apple’s going to sell you replacements for 69 bucks, which is definitely overpriced, there’s no way they’re worth that much money, but i got to give them credit for the system here at least they’re easy to replace and you can mix and match. Colors, if you want to the lack of touch controls, i think were a good call here on the airpods max apple added, a larger version of that digital crown from the apple watch up top. But basically it’s just a fancy knob that you rotate for volume and press for media controls and it works great. It’S got really satisfying clicks and you can reverse the direction of the spin in ios software. If you want to, but alright marquez, they cost 550. They better sound, like god, himself, whispering in my ear for that much money. How do they sound? Well, they sound like luxury listening, which is to say really really good. Now, listen, i’m gon na preface this by saying: i’m not an audiophile, like probably every other review at this time, but i’ve listened to a lot of headphones at this point.
I know what i like, and these sound really good. Airpods macs have these big 40 millimeter drivers behind those earcups and they sound excellent super clear at all volumes. I was impressed by the ultra low distortion at high volumes too, and they do get loud enough that i should never need to listen at 100 volume. I max out at probably 75 to 85 percent. You obviously approach the limits of how good things can sound over wireless when you’re, just listening to streaming, services and bluetooth, but with high quality spotify streaming quality. I’M loving this solid punchy bass and even a little deep sub bass once in a while.
The instrument separation is great, and the clarity through mids and highs in a variety of genres is great, not fatiguing at all to listen to now, if you’re sitting and watching this video and thinking well. Okay, what about some nice higher bitrate local files? These headphones already aren’t for you like at that level that you’re talking about you probably want you. You end up getting some extra hardware, so a nice preamp with some nice clean gain to power, some wired headphones, probably open back and some nice single source, audio files with high bit rate and by the time you get through. All of that that’s a very different level of commitment and work than someone who just wants to grab some wireless headphones. So you would be getting some extra quality that you could hear out of that setup sure, but people listening these headphones are i’m gon na be totally honest, listening to spotify and apple music and maybe title, but also some soundcloud and youtube, and some some podcasts and Watching some movies, so the sound quality is fantastic for that the noise cancellation is also excellent.
Now this i kind of saw coming, but these nine microphones on here do a fantastic job with white noise and with a surprisingly natural sound to it. Sometimes noise-canceling headphones can feel like there’s a bit of a pressure and they sound a little bit unnatural with it on. I found that these didn’t do much of that, whether it’s because of the mesh or the pass-throughs or the mics, whatever it’s all awesome, and obviously i haven’t gotten to fly with these yet, but it absolutely cancelled out a vacuum cleaner, like three feet away from my Head so i’m gon na put these right up as matching the sony xm4s as kings of noise cancellation, and they should be great on a plane, and these headphones also have the best transparency mode.
I’Ve ever heard – and you know obviously other noise canceling headphones – will do. This they’ll have a mode where you can let ambient sound through. So you can hear your environment, someone calls you or someone your bus, stop, gets read out loud or something like that. But these, for whatever reason, are incredible.
I can hear everything, but not just what things are being said, but where they’re coming from or some things to my right to my left in front of me behind me, a lot of other headphones have an ambient mode. These are the king of that. So all of that translates to these being fun to listen to there’s no latency or range issues anywhere with bluetooth.
So i’m able to walk around corners and even up and down stairs away from my device without a drop connection, and also you might be wondering how the audio would sound with these nine microphones, picking up your voice and cancelling out the background noise. So this is how it would sound. It’S fine, there’s not a lot of background noise even this time, but if you’re on a zoom call or a facetime – and these are your microphone – is what you’re gon na get all right. We got ta talk about this case. This stupid case, i hate everything about this.
I hate the way it looks. I hate these sloppy kind of pointless slots across the bottom. I hate that the lightning port doesn’t quite line up at the bottom. In that notch cutout.
I hate that they’re annoying to take the headphones out of quickly and they’re annoying to put the headphones back into. I hate that the magnet is kind of small in the lip and it’s kind of easy to miss sometimes, and it’s not as satisfying to slap. It shut, i hate that it doesn’t protect easily the most delicate part of the headphones that needs protection, that mesh headband. I hate that it looks like a mini purse and i hate that i know apple thoroughly considered all this stuff. I hate that there’s no off button on these headphones and that it requires you to put them in this stupid case, to trigger the low power mode, so it doesn’t just burn through battery all the time. Now.
Don’T get me wrong. The battery life on these headphones is fine. They do reach the advertised, i would say, 16 to 20 hours, even with noise cancellation on and you can plug them in for five minutes and get an hour and a half of extra listening. So the battery is not a problem, but this case is so stupid. It’S just this. It’S just a weird choice: very apple-like, choice to to lock you into their magical solution, for they turn on and they just work when you want them to, because now you have to use this case like if i don’t want to use this case when they sit Out they drain battery at about the same rate as when they’re on and playing music, whether they are playing or not, even though they know they’re not on your head and they’ll. Do that for about two hours staying ready to go until they automatically go into low power mode? But aside from that dumb case, there’s plenty of smart features built in here. The sensors inside will know if they’re on your head or not and will auto play pause when you take them off and put them back on. You can hold that digital crown. You can talk to siri all you want she’ll, read out your text messages and talk to you and, of course, all the awesomeness of airpods pairing to every apple device.
You have instantly is still pretty sweet, so you can quickly switch between your mac, your iphone and your ipad. If you have one solid and then some last little housekeeping stuff from those of you who left comments on the impressions, video, what you wanted to know uh, can you use these with android just as normal bluetooth headphones? Yes, you can, but at this point you’re cutting off a lot of the smart features so seems not worth it how’s the bleed they do bleed a little bit. So if you’ve got these up at say 75 85 volume or higher people around, you can actually hear what you’re listening to and do they still work when the battery is dead, if they’re plugged in yes, they do, but at the end of the day, this all Comes down to what you want headphones to do so, like i mentioned at the beginning of this video there’s a separate section of high-end headphones that are reference grade, professional production headphones and you could use these for that. But i personally, wouldn’t i mean these are not flat uh, you can’t turn adaptive eq off.
You can’t turn the colorful sound off and it just doesn’t have the production stuff built in they’re, not wired, they’re, not open back they’re, just they’re, not really for that. But what these are meant to do is deliver a great listening experience and, with their awesome, sound quality they do and with their sweet noise cancellation, they do with their pretty cool spatial audio experience, which only works with iphones and ipads for now, but is basically the Same as uh airpods, pro it’ll pick up on 7.1 and dolby atmos sound sources and will sort of respond to your head placement based on where you’re at it’s awesome for movies. That is so great as a listening experience, the wireless connection, great for listening, i mean all the stuff that they’ve built in the the play pause stuff. All the volume controls it’s so that it’s a better listening experience and they do all this stuff with just a few gigantic quirks sort of like a top three giant quirks, which are the stupid case, the metal build which is a bit heavy and that price tag. But if you are okay with those three things, and especially if you’re in apple’s ecosystem, like we’ve, talked about so many times well then these are pretty dope. Headphones sounds kind of like a lot of other apple products right either way, that’s been it airpods max review.
Hope you enjoyed it’s kind of tech sember at this rate, isn’t it lots of stuff coming up lots of stuff in the back burners catch you guys very soon in the next article peace .