The latest expansion of Apple, AirPods max, looks great, sounds great, and is quite comfortable despite their heavyweight. They are priced $549 and give you what you pay for. The Build quality of the wireless earphones is unmatched at any price, and there is some clever design layout. If you are looking for honest apple airpods max review then keep reading the article.
Detailed Airpods Max Review
Here is the detailed review of Airpods Max with its features and specifications
Price and availability
As mentioned the Apple AirPods max cost $549 and come in five colours such as Space grey, silver, sky blue, green and pink. The ear cushions are magnetic and easily swappable, with replacement pairs that cost about $69.
In the box, along with the headphones, you will get a carrying Smart Case and Lightning-to-USB-C cable, but unfortunately, there is no power adapter. This pair of AirPods has also skipped on the Lightning-to-3.5mm audio cable, which you will need to pick up for $35 if you want a non-Bluetooth listening option.
An important aspect of the earphones is the availability: While you can buy them from Apple at any time, it could take up to 10 weeks for them to reach you.
Design
The apple airpods come in a fun colour range that lends itself well to a retro aesthetic. The pivoting ear cups are covered by oval pillows that create a spongy, secure seal around our ears.
They are connected by a 7.4 x 6.6 x 3.3 inch, stainless steel frame with the slim, telescoping arms that expand at the top for a mesh headband. The AirPods Max is noticeably heavier than the 8.96 ounces weighing Sony WH-1000XM4 and Bose 700 headphones.
The company has made a very clever move to borrow and enlarge the Apple Watch’s Digital Crown feature for the newly launched earphones. The crown on the apple AirPods Max is used for controlling volume, skipping tracks and playing or pausing the audio.
The other button that is available on the right earcup is a switch for noise cancellation and transparency mode. So you might ask where is the power button? Well, there is not one, which is quite odd no matter how you frame it.
Audio performance
Talking about the audio performance, the sound starts with a custom-built, 40mm dynamic driver in each cup, which are created in a way to deliver deep bass, accurate mid-range sounds level and clean high-frequencies. There is also a dual neodymium ring magnet motor that restricts harmonic distortion to less than 1%, even at max volume.
The company leverages an H1 chip in each ear, that is a custom acoustic design, and advanced software to achieve amazing audio performance. Each of the H1 chips has 10 audio cores that can perform about 9 billion operations per second that supports Adaptive EQ for tailored listening and adjusting sound appropriately on the fly.
Being honest, the apple airPods aren’t likely the choice for the true audiophiles or audio professionals who require lossless playback.
The Spatial Audio feature, which Apple introduced with the AirPods Pro, is a game-changing listening feature. The Spatial Audio is basically for surrounding sound but a headset. 5.1, 7.1 and Dolby Atmos content is supported by it, and uses built-in head tracking means to make sound relative to what you are seeing on the screen while watching video on your apple phone or iPad.
Noise cancellation and transparency mode
Although Apple’s newly launched headphones have only one level of noise cancellation, it’s excellent. The common theme for them is that more options are not necessarily better. In the side-by-side testing, these headphones are neck-and-neck with the two best noise-cancelling headphones in the game.
Moreover, if you are keen on customizing your sound quality, then the Apple AirPods Max headphones might not be your ideal headset. But if you’re okay with giving up control to Apple’s computational performance powers, you would not get disappointed.
Setup, Siri and phone call quality
It is no surprise that those who have other Apple devices will be able to make the most of their AirPods Max experience. When you pull out these headphones from the case, the H1 chip will initiate instantaneous pairing with your iPhone, and soon you can control your headphones from your Apple Watch or the handoff playback between your iPad or HomePod mini.
Along with this, you will also get Siri. You can take the help of using Apple’s AI assistant to control the best HomeKit devices via the AirPods Max, too.
Smart case
We can not quite call the AirPods Max case a design triumph. The “Smart Case” as called by apple is neither smart nor a case. It is Ill-conceived and poorly executed, it is in the running for the worst accessory Apple’s ever shipped.
These headphones do not fold up at all because of their sleek metal construction. It’s very hard to turn the headphones sideways, and that’s it. The new apple headphone’s Smart Case is a single piece of flimsy plastic material that has been folded up to create little pockets in which you can slip the earcups into.
To sum up the Smart Case:
- Does not protect your headphones.
- Does not make a meaningful difference in battery drain.
- Does not hold any accessories that you need when you travel.
AirPods Max review: Battery life
In our testing, we found that the new headphones live up to Apple’s claimed 20 hours of battery life, no matter how much time we spent on listening, talking or quieting the world around us.
Apple has planned out this no-power-button move pretty nicely. The low power modes in the headphones are effective enough that most people should get several days of battery life out of AirPods Max with normal use.
AirPods Max review: The Final Verdict
The AirPods Max are one of the best Apple headphones, so it is a shame that they’re not in a more palatable price range. But these headphones round out Apple’s ecosystem in a way we didn’t think we cared about, and now that they’re here, we are having a hard time desiring any other over-ear headphones right now. The perfect combination of cushy comfort, pristine audio quality and killer functions like spatial audio is hard to beat.
Besides the fact that they are more compatible with the Android users, the Bose 700 and Sony WH-1000XM4 headphones both cost around the hundreds of dollars less and offer comparable noise cancellation.
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