20 hours is low in this category. The Sony XM6s are 30h, the Bose QCs are ~24h. Sennheisers can do 40-50h. All with ANC on, the numbers are slightly higher with ANC off.
There’s been a lot of grumbling about RTO at my work, and if it happens, these will be a day one purchase. I used to have some Bowers and Wilkins PX headphones that I liked, and my wife really loves her Bose QuietComfort, but the weird thing I detested about both of those is how seemingly every headphone manufacturer except Apple feels the needs to add voice feedback to your device? “Headphones connected” and whatnot. It just really messes with my vibes, man.
Also quite frankly I’d rather just not have to buy them and keep working from home. Listening to music using good speakers is an objectively superior experience.
My number two complaint about AirPods Pro is that decreasing the volume of system sounds doesn’t seem to do much. Every time the low battery message makes me jolt and is a bit deafening. It is nice that it’s has no vocal component, but it’s still quite annoying. Curious if anyone compared them to Max in this regard.
New AirPods Max finally have lossless wired audio, which is pretty nice and makes them finally catch up with the Pros.
Does anyone have experience with obtaining a flatter frequency response from any AirPods, though? While maintaining the full power of noise cancellation.
My experience with Pros has always been that they exaggerate the bass. EQ settings available in Music are coarse, and I don’t know of any other way to control frequency response independently of the app that plays the sound.
I know they are not really best for critical audio work, but they are damn convenient.
I see, I remember checking that they didn’t support high definition wireless codec but missed the part where they could do lossless over the wire last year.
Why can’t they squeeze in that codec, considering Pros have it for years and are a lot smaller?
Edit: apparently I was confusing AirPods Pros with Sony WH models, which have LDAC. I guess there is no chance Apple adopts LDAC, even in their large heavy cans.
> My experience with Pros has always been that they exaggerate the bass
Based on my experience, almost all consumer-grade headphones (in ear and headphones) seem to suffer from this, I'm guessing people tend to prefer bass-heavy over "not enough bass". Not until you start looking at headphones meant for studio-use does it seem to get closer to expected when it comes to the bass.
Research by Harmon suggests almost everyone, musicians and pros included, prefers exaggerated lows and highs over flat response. Check the "Harmon Curve"
And there is certainly a way for you to set system wide eq, see what AutoEq recommends.
If you're using Android there's global eq available (mostly). I use an app called wavelet that lets you search for your headphone model and download a pre-made profile.
iPhone users are kinda out of luck, but the autoeq database can show you how to set Music's equalizer to approximate a flat response
My AirPods Max 1 left a headband dent in my skull from how poor the quality of the headband was after more than a year of daily use. They also are super heavy and don't travel well at all.
Apple deciding that, on their 2nd refresh of these (after usb-c), they still aren't going to fix those fundamental issues is very frustrating for what feels like a very disproportionately expensive product (even by Apple standards).
I'm now a very happy QC Ultra 2 user. Can't recommend enough.
It literally gives me a headache after more than an hour of wearing it. This never happens with may AKG that has a very utilitarian and simple headband—a flat piece of plastic. It’s not pretty but I can wear AKG for a whole day and enjoy every minute of it while I’m phisically sick after an hour of AirPods Pro.
You're joking, right? There are many high quality competitors in that price range. I'm holding a pair (Sennheiser HDB 630). They are significantly lighter weight, better comfort and sound quality.
Another poster here - I can confirm, have the same thing. I don’t worry too much about it though, I assume it will fade if I ever switch to other headphones.
You shouldn't need a medical background to know that having something press on a spot for a couple of hours will leave a depression in your skin.
You have probably fallen asleep on something patterned or folded and have it leave an impression on your skin before: This is no different.
Other places it happens: Watches that are slightly too tight or have ridden up an arm. Glasses arms pressing against your temple or behind the ear. Tight socks after a day wearing them.
It's not a medical problem. It's just general physics.
What he's saying though is that the original poster is vastly overstating the effect the headphone had on his head. There was no dent in his skull, just skin deformation that happens with literally every headphone.
Not the skull, but probably the scalp. Our scalp is made up of skin, fat, and muscle. When you press a rigid object against it for hours every day, that soft tissue temporarily compresses. It happens to my kid who wears headphones for gaming. It's the same mechanism that leaves red marks on your nose after wearing glasses, or grooves on your ankles after wearing tight socks. Wash your hair, give up on the headphones, and it'll return to normal.
The QC2 are about half the weight of the AirPods Max, and apparently the mesh in the AirPods Max band sags, and allows the metal bars to "dig in" to your scalp. Enough to cause irritation, but 400 or 500 grams resting on your head can't mess with an adult, developed skull.
It took Apple realizing that putting fashion so far out ahead of function on Vision Pro was costing it usage to see the dual strap. The ergonomics of the first strap were dog shit, and everyone, certainly Apple, knew years before Vision Pro launched that a dual strap was the only way to make longer sessions viable. But a dual strap was also uglier, and Vision Pro already had acceptability problems.
Look at the marketing materials for Vision Pro using the single strap. Next, look at the marketing materials with the dual strap. Which one of those would sell better into an office context where at least half the population spends considerable time fixing their hair. Which one looks slightly futuristic and which looks like a CPAP headset.
"How it looks" led Apple to ship a deficient strap, one that made the device actually hurt to use. And how it looks is why Apple stuck with that garbage strap for 18 months despite knowing from extensive user research that the dual strap was superior ergonomically, and despite having already done the R&D for the dual strap.
It was only when Apple had mostly given up on Vision Pro, understanding that the user base wasn't going to hockey stick, that fashion was already a complete failure, that they began offering the sillier looking but infinitely more functional dual strap. After 18 months, all Apple had was its existing user base, selling only a few thousand devices a month, so it shifted from growth to sustaining and that's what the dual strap and M5 logic board swap was for, holding onto the few users it has until it could figure out how or if to proceed with the product line.
That's not the case with Apple's headphones. That strap could easily be a lot higher quality without being a lot less fashionable.
I've traveled extensively with my AirPods Max. I just toss them in my backpack with whatever else is there and move on. They travel a lot better than my Bose ones did with the bulky case. I much prefer Apple's approach here.
I thought that any headphones would leave a dent in your head? At least that's been my experience, and I don't think my headphones are nearly as heavy as these things.
I hope that commenter was being hyperbolic. I have heard of headphones making visible impressions or “dents” in the soft tissue and msucle after long periods of use (Google Tyler1 headphone dent if you don’t believe me), but such a dent would disappear within minutes or hours. An actual deformation of the skull due to headphone-wearing would definitely be strange.
I'm also a Bose QC user and I can't speak highly enough about them. Best piece of tech that I ever bought. Going on three years now and they are still like new. I have three very loud, rambunctious kids and they are a life-saver.
I wrapped my headband in some macrame yarn and it resolved all of the discomfort. I can’t say it’s exactly stylish, but I do get a lot of comments on it.
I only really wear them at home or when traveling though, so they’re not a fashion accessory for me.
Still wish they would have improved the headband, but if anyone else is struggling with discomfort, I’d recommend wrapping it in yarn XD
Depends on your use case, I need exceptional noise cancellation. These and Sony XM6's are top tier in that department. I would wait until they're $100 or more off on Amazon.
I maintain a fork of this app, which allows you to quickly set and lock your audio input device, so that they don't switch your audio input device to bluetooth as soon as you turn them on. Mostly because of the first gen of these headphones. They LOVED to keep the mic on at all times with no way to disable that behavior.
Oh I wish I knew about this before buying SoundSource. SoundSource is a decent app when it works but it causes my mic audio goes in an out with it and people complain.
I really don't understand how these are $549. As others have pointed out, some people say the head band is not great. Others say the sound is solid but not exceptional. What makes these worth that much when there are so many options?
I think people are mainly confused because the AirPod Pros are quite competitively priced compared to other higher end offerings. The Max are so far off the market that it doesn't seem to make any sense and it seems unlikely that apple couldn't make up for lost margins with higher volume. Maybe they just literally can't/don't want to produce many of the Max and price them accordingly.
I say this as someone who uses many Apple products, but still can't justify buying this. (I do have AirPods but have wanted headphones so I don't have to stick something into my ears)
If you try to understand this stuff outside the context of fashion, you'll go around in circles (as I did).
If you see this through the lens of "people will pay anything to signal various things to others" and "you can charge whatever the market will bear" then it all adds up.
I assume Apple ecosystem integration and also they give off that "I bought an expensive Apple product" vibe that an iPhone or Macbook no longer do IMO.
As someone with an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and a Macbook, I never got into Apple's headphones. My Sony WH-something-4 that I bought refurbished 4 years ago are more than enough for me.
The AirPods Pro are the best earpods I've ever had for everyday use, and I've had a lot. I like some of the old beats headphones, but I also haven't had to replace the ones I bought ~5 or 10 years ago. The Sony WH-whatever I have are probably my favorite and most comfortable.
They are a luxury item, you are paying for the privilege of signaling you can afford $550 headphones. Generic black over-ear headphones could be $800, could be $80, useless for signaling. Doubly true in the context of a gift.
>They are a luxury item, you are paying for the privilege of signaling you can afford $550 headphones.
Plus they give juuuust enough features to cover for the true purpose and give you plausible deniability. Same as most luxury items. None truly give the value of the cost (Is a Ferrari 10x as fast as a GR86? Carry 10x as much stuff? Go 10x as far on the same gas load? Etc etc etc)
"Oh but there's nothing like the experience of driving a Ferrari!"
I don't think this is the right analysis, pretty much all products follow an ever steepening curve of price to get to the highest quality. The general sentiment on HN, of which I count myself among, is that you stop before the curve gets too steep. You can stop at Oreos you don't have to pay Stella Parks to make you hers. You get the highest quality thing that isn't commanding crazy premium prices.
But the market for that last 10% 1% 0.1% does exist. Like yes it's funny to make fun of middle aged guys who buy extremely expensive cars and who if actually tested couldn't tell the difference between a $60k sports car and a $160k sports car and there are plenty of businesses that prey on that lack of discerning taste to take advantage but it doesn't mean the difference isn't there at all.
Maybe for some people. For me, they work perfectly and integrate with all my other Apple stuff (MBP, iphone, TV, iPad), everything just works. My stress levels demand it.
Indeed, like MagSafe charging—they simplify. Simplicity has a premium.
That said, my first pair failed out of Apple Care and resulted in a full cost replacement. The APM sub is littered with stories of the BT module failing.
I’m sure it is ludicrous to some but I often measure value by utility and I go through entire workdays wearing this product.
Well, if you buy only one pair it does work really nicely with all Apple kit. So you get really nice cinematic sound from Apple TV (for my non-prosumer ears), and effortlessly can switch between phone, laptop etc. The sound is really good for video calls.
They just work.
I mean there are other pieces of kit that probably just work as well but with these you don't need to do market research.
It's surprising how non-trivial even _adequate_ sound is still in 2026 and that's what these are guaranteed to give in any situation IMHO.
If you have only one Apple device probably no selling point as such.
Yeah I basically don’t trust anyone but Apple for wireless audio because every time I’ve tried allegedly-good non-Apple Bluetooth audio devices, they’ve been a ton worse, so bad I ended up barely using them.
In this case these are more expensive than I’d pay for headphones, but that just means I won’t have any Bluetooth headphones in this form factor. Been down that road before, non-Apple was a frustrating waste of money.
I mean FFS my AirPods are worse on Windows and Linux than in the Apple ecosystem, but are still better than the non-Apple ones I’ve tried, even there. It’s not even just the home-field advantage.
Windows and bluetooth is a really difficult combination. The problem is that for some reason if Windows detects a microphone on the Bluetooth headphone, it switches to a transport mode that a) allows the mic through b) makes the sound sound horrible. So disabling mics sometimes helps there.
The Apple Beats Studio Pro should meet this reasoning for $170 (on Amazon, $350 on apple.com - guess that explains the AirPods Max pricing) & the battery lasts twice as long. I have 2 near my Apple TV just so everything plays nice together.
If your gen 1 are already excellent for you, there’s no reason to upgrade, same as there’s no reason to get a new phone or laptop every year. My wired headphones are ten plus years old and will be fine for a couple more decades; my gen1 Max, at a fifth the price, are also fine and will be fine until their Bluetooth becomes too old (which may be ten or twenty years these days). Both benefit from earcup swaps occasionally (but gen1 lightning needs them more often than usb-c.)
If you’re unsatisfied with Transparency mode on your gen1 then the gen2 will give you Adaptive which is a big improvement (especially so if you wear them outdoors or around other people). Same improvement that the AirPods had, if you’re familiar with that.
If you use them for videoconferencing, the lower latency and higher quality headset codec may be worth upgrading. They retain value on the used market so long as you unpair them from Find My an hour before you sell them and have a purchase receipt.
I suspect there might be some slight power savings for your transmitting devices if both sides support Bluetooth 5.3, but I would not expect that to be significant or advertised.
There are two kinds of Apple products - those they make for the mass market and those that are for Apple "enthusiasts".
Mass market Apple products may be expensive but they are still great value. Look at the $499/$599 Macbook Neo for a recent example, but this generally covers iPhones and other Macs, as well as Airpods, Apple Watch etc.
Then there are the $550 Airpods Max, $3500 Vision Pro, $600 storage upgrades, $700 CPU wheels, $230 "iPhone Pocket", $20 polishing cloth...
In the latter category there is no effort to actually compete on price or value, because it is made for people who will blindly buy anything with an Apple logo on it.
They just work. The integrated mic is clear and easy to use for daily standups. They connect to my work and personal laptop in a few seconds every time - I’m never left panicking right before a big meeting. Of course the audio quality, noise canceling, and battery life are world class, but that’s the case for their competitors too - the reason I coughed up the extra $150 for Apple headphones is because I know they’re going to fucking work exactly as advertised, no glitches or gimmicks.
They sound incredible (with Apple products), feel super premium, excel at noise cancelling and have really good mics.
I've tried Bose and Sony; in fact, I have two pairs of QC Ultras sitting in their boxes waiting to be sold. Neither sound as good, even after EQing them as close to the Harman curve as their software allows (with Apple products; I haven't tried them with AptX streaming) and both were slower at cancelling noise. The Bose headphones I tried got decent mics after an update, but they are still unreliable at times.
The Maxes are also heavy, but you don't feel it due to its being very nicely distributed across the head. I've seen scores of people run, walk, and work out in these. I even saw a child using them!
I can't stress how premium the Maxes feel. The cups, for example, don't deform even after hours and hours of wear (and sweat). Replacing them is trivial and they attach with magnets instead of adhesive and/or clips. The headphone band is also extremely strong; much stronger than it looks. They feel like $549. Meanwhile, Bose charges $499 for their QuietComfort Ultras with their slow noise cancelling processors (AirPods use Apple Silicon, which is unbeatable atm) and cheap, plastic body (though part of the headphone band has a chrome finish --- premium!)
All this said, Bose and Sony headphones are significantly easier to travel with, and they have power buttons. This was why I sold my AirPods Maxes the first go around (though I went back to them a year later for the reasons stated previously).
I’m always surprised at how people seem to assign zero value to seamless switching of headphones between iPhones, MacBooks, Vision Pros etc. Only those who haven’t been spoiled by the luxury of not having to even think before just starting to play music from a laptop when music on your phone was already playing into your headphones could think this way…
More than, considering Apple is willing to openly advertise Neo at $499 for education. The minimum-advertised-price on these won't ever drop below ~$529 for a hot minute.
Does anyone ever actually pay that for them, tho? I've got the QC Ultras; looks like they cost me 331 euro _with VAT_. Apple's RRP is usually the actual sale price, but IME the RRP for Bose stuff at least is generally pure fantasy, with actual prices being significantly lower.
EDIT: Currently they seem to be 350EUR inc VAT on Irish Amazon; Amazon is making it difficult for me to see the US price and I'm not interested enough to fight with it, but I'm guessing that there's a similar level of discount.
The first thing I checked was if there's a better case. At this point I'm assuming it's a marketing move to have people just carry them openly on their neck at all times.
It's quite telling how dumb even Apple thinks the case is when you have to scroll pretty far down on the page and then pretty far to the right to see the so-called "Smart Case". It remains a pretty horrendous "case".
My AirPods Max headphones are incredible. They sound amazing. They also squeeze my head so much that they hurt so I don't use them. Kinda sad, really. I'd use them at my desk every day if they were comfortable to wear.
I've had some headphones in the past where I stuck them over a slightly-bigger-than-my-head object when not wearing them to stretch them out over some time to alleviate this problem.
Do they brick less? I bought a pair for my husband and after a year they were bricked, apple support basically told him to buy a new one. I will never waste my money on the max line ever again.
"...the thin wires carrying power can crack over time, specifically after hundreds or thousands of swivels of the earcups (since they turn 90 degrees to fit flat into their case). That microscopic crack can cause issues with the connection.
By freezing the AirPods, the cold can cause the lining around the wires to contract, temporarily bringing the cracked sections together."
No wireless lossless audio means these are a hard pass for me. I really expected Apple of all folks to figure that out since they engineer their entire stack, hardware to software, but they’re still just pushing the same bluetooth audio that my Airpods Pro 2’s consume (which are half the price and incredibly excellent). Sony’s LDAC is niche, but sounds objectively better to my ears than the AAC used on Apple’s kit when I opt to use my Walkman+XM4s.
As for wired listening? My XM4s sound okay wired in, and at home I’ve got critical-listening kit already. Adding a USB-C cable to the Max is not appealing given that 3.5mm already exists, USB-C cables are heavier than analog audio wires, and more corps block USB ports in general or mess with them in ways that corrupts the audio stack.
Give me wireless CD-quality audio and I’ll be a happy dinosaur. Until then, I have zero reason to upgrade what I currently have.
The H2 enables lossless audio over wireless. So this reads like a temporary limitation that software might solve down the road. But knowing Apple's track record for enabling features in partially dormant hardware ... I wouldn't buy these expecting that.
Given Apple's very recent track record on promising things and then watching them vanish into the ether - not to mention a lifetime being burned buying into future promises that never materialize ("MCE is the future of the entertainment experience!" (RIP in Win7), "CableCARD will free you from the tyranny of locked down hardware!" (RIP from the get-go), "Unfolded Circle 3 will finally support serial from the dock!") - means I don't buy on what it could do tomorrow, but what's on offer out of the box from day one.
Tired of accumulating scar tissue and burn marks in the name of shareholder value.
Could you point to where Apple claims that H2 enables lossless audio over wireless for the AirPods Max 2? I don’t see that claim on the spec sheet. What I see is this note:
“Ultra-low latency audio and Lossless Audio listening requires a wired USB‑C connection and compatible content from supported apps and services.”
So it doesn’t appear that lossless wireless is supported at all, even with Vision Pro.
Yeah, at least for certain kinds of music. Don't get me wrong, I'm not soapboxing out here against folks who enjoy lossy music (my flatmates enjoy our local library transcoded to MP3s), nor am I going to praise-be the "high-res" audio movement. I just happened to have someone sit me down for a critical listening session on quality kit with a CD I had ripped before and my iPod with the MP3, and it was night and day to my ears.
Am I some golden-eared savant? Heck nah. I still listen to electronic mixes in shitty YouTube audio, because a lot of it isn't mastered in CD quality anyhow; I also enjoy leaning back with a good CD rip of classic rock or orchestral jams on my HD800s or my B&W 684s. I like the different experiences these setups offer, but my preference is always for lossless just as a matter of preservation regardless of whether I can hear it or not.
But have you tried the ABX test I linked to with a proper set up, e.g. your HD800?
If you compare a CD on a proper system with an MP3 on an iPod, you're really comparing Apples to oranges. Also depending on with which encoded the MP3 was created. The iTunes encoder for example was infamous for rather bad quality.
While you nailed me on the subjectively vs objectively (early morning flub on my part), I'm going to respectfully push back on the "no audible difference between lossy and lossless" with a huge asterisk: it depends on the content, it depends on the mastering techniques, and it depends on the equipment, but there is a discernible difference in a lot of media between lossy and lossless audio, and that difference is easier to pick out by folks who take care of their hearing and listen on quality kit.
Which excludes 90% of the populace by default, and thus I never bought into the whole audiophile hype anyway. Let folks enjoy what they like, on the equipment they like. I ain't here to judge, just share.
Passive noise cancellation beats active hands down. (no weird air pressure, reliable, no need for batteries, less expensive)
Analog and wired beats bluetooth if you care for sound quality, portable DACs are very good in 2026.
Professionals are using BeyerDynamics and Sony headphones made for studios and almost unchanged since the 90s for good reasons.
The only good reason to opt for wireless is for practical reasons when you are running, and you want smaller models.
I have used Soundcore q20i for more than a year, and I'm sure the AirPods have a better sound and have a better noise cancelling, but the difference in price $549 and 30€ (as I bought them) is pretty insane, also my Soundcore q20i last much longer than 20h and the noise cancelling is already quite good.
The screech is produced by feedback in the noise canceling I think, happens if you lay on a pillow at the wrong angle also, never had it due to moisture myself.
I owned a pair of the first gen AirPods Max. After a couple of months of usage, I began noticing a rattling inside the right earcup. I had never dropped them or exposed them to any sort of physical damage that could knock something loose. The rattling would happen every time I tilted my head in any direction. I had taken them to Apple Genius support in store 3 different times and 2 of those times the onsite tech agreed that there was a rattling sound. All 3 times they were sent to an Apple repair facility and they always came back with "cannot reproduce". I sold them on FB Marketplace for a deep discount, having alerted the potential buyer to the issue before I sold them to him. Never again will I purchase a set of AirPods.
Yes, my AirPod Pros do this too, and I've found that the issue is due to a problem with the external microphones which are involved in active noise cancelling. In order to fix the problem I had to disable ANC, and use them like a pair of basic wireless headphones, which has been quite disappointing. I've found that basically any instance of dropping the headphones on a solid floor, even while in the case, will result in this rattling sound occurring.
I had this exact problem on my AirPod pros too! It is the internal mic, but if you forcefully suck the air out from the black mesh microphone openings, it gets rid of it.
There’s some random form of someone out there who figured this out, so credit to them, but this fixed mine (I couldn’t bear transparency mode for the longest time lol)
Funny that something similar swore me off another brand’s headphones. The noise cancelling would amplify mechanical vibrations of the headphones, so much so that even eating with them on would cause a deafening bass. Walking with them on was also incredibly loud.
I sent them to support with a very good description of the problem, came back the same, “cannot reproduce”.
It seems support workers for both companies just connect them to an audio source and check if sound comes out relatively alright.
Prior to the third time going to Genius Bar, I was able to reach a senior manager for Apple repairs in a phone call to Apple Support. And even after asking him to take down a note on my incident to have the repair tech physically open the right ear can, they still came back with "cannot reproduce". There was either a screw loose in my brain or the headphones. Guess we'll never know which.
Servicing is not done by Apple, it's 3rd party contractors. They have a rubric of possible issues from Apple and their profit margins are thin. I suspect contacting Apple support about Apple support issues would have resulted in a swift replacement of the item.
I bought the AirPods Max 1 but had to return them because they felt like a vice and were too heavy. I ended up going with the Sony wh-1000xm5, which are much lighter. My only complaint on the Sony is the earcups are not deep enough for my big ears.
It's amusing to me how personal all this stuff is.
The XM5s were super uncomfortable to me (to the point I was relieved when they got stolen) and I ended up going back to Bose even though I liked the sound quality on the Sonys better.
Same experience. Everyone raved about the Sonys and so when my Bose died, I tried them out. I can't stand them! They're way less comfortable and have worse noise cancellation. The lack of buttons drives me crazy. And worst of all - when on flights, the noise cancellation will randomly stop working. Despite flights being one of the main reasons I purchase noise cancelling headphones.
I have the same issue with the shape of my ears not fitting any ANC headphones (and many larger over-ear ones). The only alternative to the APM I found that doesn't hurt after a few hours was the Sonos Ace. Which also have a price that hurts but at least they haven't broken yet while my APM kept breaking (and they're one of the few products where you can't infinitely renew Apple Care).
... and a $25 pair of junk earbuds will do better in terms of "pairing and staying paired" if you are using iOS, Android, MacOS, Windows, Steam Deck, whatever.
Crazy to think Apple is now pricing their consumer headphones in the same segment as serious professional gear, they seems to cost more or less the same I paid for my "studio-grade" DT 1770 Pro.
Typical studio grade cans need studio grade equipment to drive them. No surprise if decently sounding headphones that already ship with tailored DAC, amplifier, ANC cost more than decent headphones for which you need to buy all that (and lug around if you travel).
Yet, with that taken into account, today the latest
DT 1770 Pro still cost over 20% more than the latest AirPods Max.
Considering Apple markets Max for audio work, they compete on the same turf. This makes Apple’s offer unusually cost effective, not the other way around. I think this can be attributed to their fragility and inferior sound quality relative to DT 1770 Pro (at the end of a decent signal chain).
> Yet, with that taken into account, today the latest DT 1770 Pro still cost over 20% more than the latest AirPods Max.
Not sure where you're looking, but seems I paid 535 EUR for my beyerdynamics (and that's what Amazon sells them for right now too), meanwhile these Apple headphones cost 579 EUR, so seems it's opposite really, studio-grade headphones being cheaper than the consumer-grade hardware Apple sells.
> Considering Apple markets Max for audio work
They might be marketed like that, because it influences what wealthy consumers chose to buy, but AFAIK, no one is sitting with AirPods Max in their studios for work, at least from what I've been able to tell.
Both products in US on the site of respective manufacturer. Maybe you bought the older model (which by the way has higher impedance, so dedicated amplifier is a must, take it into account when you calculate the price).
> no one is sitting with AirPods Max in their studios for work
People absolutely use them for serious work. They are much more of a personal product though, and there are other factors that would make an average studio disinclined to invest in them, like fragility and cost of repair and a whole bunch of unnecessary for a studio features.
Of course, when the studio already has all the rest of the hardware, soundproofed room, etc., it could actually be cheaper to buy cans that do not in fact include ANC, DAC, Dolby, amplifier, etc., and maybe even enjoy a bump in audio quality while at that. For someone who does not have that, it is often simply not a practical choice.
I have a pair (gen 1). Sound good with my MBP, but with my phone (16 Pro Max), I've had intermittent skipping of the audio signal, which just shouldn't happen at that premium level.
The Bluetooth chip & version in these won’t be the same one you have today, so there’s no guarantee that present experience will inform future experience (better or worse).
These earphones are not for people who appreciate good audio. They are for people who want more products in the Apple ecosystem and have lots of money to spend.
Apple headphones have better audio fidelity than you are giving them credit for. I have several different pairs of high-end studio headphones and expensive amps to drive them. The Apple Max, which I also own, frankly provides a cleaner reference than some of the classics. They are perfectly usable as reference headphones.
The built-in Apple audio DSP, amps, etc have surprisingly good fidelity. Much higher quality than you would expect from consumer hardware. They even provide high-impedance headphone jacks on their recent computers.
If you have multiple apple devices, the seamless switching is the killer feature, for me anyway. My Bose headphones were absolutely abysmal at this, and it drove me mad.
My Pixel buds from Google have been pretty good since they support Bluetooth multipoint. I'd love to find some good headphones like Beats or the airpods, but Apple doesn't seem to support those standards, it only works with other Apple devices.
XM6 does not support audio over USB-C (The USB-C port on the XM6 is only for charging)
QC Ultra 2 does, but the headphones turn off when plugged in and have to be turned back on while charging
AirPods Max with USB-C and AirPods Max 2 appear to be the only headphones among this group (XM6, QCUltra2, AirPods Max with USB-C, AirPods Max 2) that support both Audio over USB-C and automatic charging while in use.
That surprised me... I buy every in-ear AirPods Pro without much deliberation, even the Pro 3 which measurably regressed on sound. The heart rate sensor and ANC bump were enough.
I say that to clarify: I wanted to want these.
But it's death by a thousand cuts. The weight alone I'd live with. The case I'd accept. No IP rating on something I'd like to wear outside.. fuck.. fine, annoying, moving on. But all of it together, at that price, with that much time to fix any of it? Hard pass.
I've gone for the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 instead. More expensive, noticeably worse ANC. But you can hear where the money went. The drivers, the feel, the fact that four hours in you've stopped thinking about them. It sounds like it was made by people who find audio interesting.
Apple used to feel like that.
Embarrassingly, it also has no IP rating: somewhat hilarious from a company in West Sussex, where "unexpected sunshine" makes the local news. And the ANC versus Sony is less a gap than a... uh "chasm".
The question I'd put to anyone in this thread still weighing it up: are you buying the best headphone, or the most convenient one? For in-ears those are the same answer. For over-ears, I'm not sure they are.
I feel like a salesman now, but yeah you can... they come with a straight through USB-C:USB-C cable (though it's super thick and seems rated to carry 60w and USB2.0 speeds according to my Treedix.. weird choice) and a USB-C to 3.5MM jack cable.
Well, in the market segment of Bluetooth ANC headphones, there's not that much. Bowers & Wilkins and Focal come to mind, both audiophile luxury brands and similarily overpriced.
On the other hand, the flagship Sony is quite a bit less than AirPods Max.
Doesn’t Sony have the best codec on Bluetooth? It definitely has worse noise cancellation than my AirPod, but afaik it should have better audio quality on paper.
Yeah, but if you're using Apple phones/tablet/computers they only support AAC Bluetooth anyway unless you add a Bluetooth dongle, which kinda defeats the purpose of ever using Airpods.
As a (sane) audiophile, I happily use Apple devices for enjoyable listening. Their headphones have amazing clarity and soundstage for their size. If you keep in mind that AirPods are calibrated to your ears with your iPhone's FaceID camera, they provide nice, tailored sound.
I also have nice, but not over the top equipment. Yes, some of them sound nicer and more detailed (you can't compare large, 100W/channel bookshelf speakers with headphones, can you?), but for getting 95% of what they provide without any effort is pretty worth it.
Last, but not the least, Apple used Wolfson DACs in their iPods for most of their lifetime. Their replacement DACs are not worse than the Wolfsons, but probably even better.
I love this “oxymoron” label slapped on me, without knowing what audiophile actually means.
Its meaning has distorted as much as how the word hacker is distorted.
Yes, I love listening to music and quality audio, but don’t have a soundtrack to benchmark systems. My bar is simple: Do I enjoy what I hear? It doesn’t have to fit into a recipe. It should be enjoyable, period.
A pair of Apple AirPods can be as enjoyable as two $10K speakers powered by a separate stack costing $20K. It’s akin to loving that hole in the wall restaurant as well as that Michelin rated one. Both are enjoyable in its own sense.
Well, I use the same amp, turntable and tuner for the last 30 years, and the same CD player and speakers for the last 10 years.
Changed the speakers since I had no space for the older Akai set, and replaced the CD player since the older one was acting up.
Replaced the Logitech Bluetooth receiver for a Fiio DAC last week since I found one for a bargain.
Everything is connected with high quality yet 30 year old cables.
I believe that’s a pretty sane evolution for someone who grown up with music, and performed some.
Oh there is a difference. but I strongly suspect its not as pronounced as you think it is.
THe biggest difference that most people hear is EQ. (oh these are very bassy, or too clean, etc, etc)
The people that have external DACs are almost certainly hearing a difference in EQ rather than _quality_. Is that a problem? for me I couldn't care less. However when that starts bleeding into advice or gatekeeping, then it becomes an issue.
(I am a former sound technician for both recording studio (analogue and digital) theatre and TV)
That’s what Apple states, yes, but I suspect that it’s also used for calibrating the inner microphones of newer AirPods which is used for the “live eq” which works by listening the feedback inside the ear.
From my experience, Apple can sometimes “forget” to tell things.
Modern Apple gives you control over everything by hiding it in Accessibility settings. You can control almost everything about AirPods and give them custom EQ there. But it doesn't have that.
I'm a slight audiophile, enough to own a Schitt stack and lower-end planar magnetics, overall cost would be slightly more than the AirPods Max 2. I did try the previous generation and walked away with no emotional response either way to the quality of the sound.
The Apple tax makes me extremely skeptical that I would get $500+ worth of sound quality, however ANC upsets that equation quite a bit. For around the same cost I could get a much better set of DAC+Amp+Headphones but it would sound objectively worse in a noisy environment.
You also can't experience true lossless on any bluetooth audio output device, for what that's worth (many "true" audiophiles would fail an A/B test for AAC).
The previous generation were also REALLY bassy, and there's nothing wrong with that, bassy headphones are how to make things sound "fun" and that's why the likes of Beats make so much money. That categorically makes it not audiophile, though, because it just takes an EQ/pre-amp to achieve the same effect (which can be toggled on and off).
Ultimately, my most basic issue with these is that if you're willing to blow 500 bucks on headphones, then going modular (DAC+Amp+Headphones) will give you more room to explore something that you apparently really enjoy.
That is through a ADC then DAC, at least for the previous iteration, analog direct to the drivers was not supported. You would be compounding distortion, and largely throwing away what the external DAC+Amp had on offer.
> You also can't experience true lossless on any bluetooth audio output device
Pretty sure you can... there's no technical reason you cannot use BT purely as a digital-only lossless data carrier. Whether or not current devices exist that work this way may be another story though.
I have a nontrivial listening rig in my house. I've spent thousands in headphones over the years (which happens quickly at $300-500 a pop). The finest ones I've owned MIGHT edge the Max out in certain conditions, but
- The Max add ANC
- The Max are wireless
- The Max are seamlessly integrated with the rest of my Apple gear
so to me that makes them the go-to -- so much so that I actually sold off the other headphones when we moved last year. I just wasn't using them.
The tl;dr is that the Max -- even the first gen -- do indeed perform very, very well.
As said, different markets. If you look from the same perspective, the last iPhone I ordered is 3x the price of a last generation MacBook Air.
$549 is pretty reasonable if the headphone has the sound detail it's advertising. Given how AirPods Gen 3 sounds, I'm sure that thing sounds pretty amazing.
Or Sennheiser momentum 4, 150 bucks and sound at least as good if not better, have absolutely huge battery compared to tiny apple one, more comfortable and generally work much better with non-apple ecosystem (also apparently they support multi-device pairing but I haven't used that one).
Don't pay the novelty price shortly after release, these go down quite a bit after introduction, ie last year Sony are basically the same device.
Weird response. He said "I don't understand how a pair of headphones can be $549" and you responded "here are some headphones that are priced at $549".
Yeah. We know. It's just hard to understand how anyone can value headphones at this price. It's lunacy.
My Sony XM3's still going something like 8 years now. Incredible value.
I have a lot of Apple gear, these would be obvious next choice because of integration, but I struggle to justify why otherwise. They heavy, going to pain to repair and cost much more.
It costs that much because people are willing to pay more for better sound, better noise cancelling, etc, even if the returns are diminishing. Perhaps a $500 pair of headphones only sounds 3% better than a $200 pair. But people will still shell out for better headphones. Sometimes they just think it is better even if it isn't actually measurably better. The existence of numerous successful products on the market is evidence that this is a niche where people are willing to pay for such products.
It's kinda like, who decided that TVs and phones should cost the same? Or who decided that a khinkali should cost 3 times as much as a xiaolongbao?
Reading your parent comment and the responses, I feel be missing the point others are trying to make. There's much less technology, components, and material in a headphone compared to laptops. The circuitry in the headphones is closer in complexity to a charger than a laptop.
The cost of something doesn't always correlate with the technology, components, and material. A Hermes bag doesn't even have a single circuit in it compared to headphones and laptops. Yet it costs more.
You just casually threw in these claims without backing them up, when it has been proven that the Sony model (and even the others) you listed outperformed the Airpods pro in those exact departments at the time of its launch.
My comment literally also says "Sometimes they just think it is better even if it isn't actually measurably better."
I also have "etc" in my first sentence, which may include such things as: a stylish aluminum exterior, bells and whistles such as spatial audio, a more seamless bluetooth connecting experience with Apple devices, and so forth. These do not matter for everyone, but some people clearly care about that.
It seems that you are quite belligerent and trying to pick a fight across many of my comments. Why?
> It seems that you are quite belligerent and trying to pick a fight across many of my comments. Why?
Sorry, this is not the case at all, I am just trying to understand the justification for your original comment on the justification of the price (and quality).
How much is your house worth? Whatever someone is willing to pay for it today. That's it. There's no right price. If they can cover costs and make a profit (or better yet a huge profit), then they're pricing it right. Sure, it doesn't work for you. It doesn't work for me either, which is why I don't have a pair. But they seem to be profitable, so there are enough people out there that want them. I just got off a plane a couple days ago and three people within one row around me each had AirPods Max on. Go figure. They're the new status symbol, I guess.
I mean, if we're talking any pair of headphones... a good Television certainly costs more than that, why should good sound be less worthy if investment?
That's not what they were saying and the same can be said for those listed. But that they can cost the same as a Macbook Neo which arguably has significantly more technology in it.
A Moto G also has more technology than a Nakajima WPT-160 typewriter (which is still in production) but the latter costs more. Comparing "technology for the buck" across totally different kinds of products and markets sometimes just doesn't make any sense.
First off, $150 more isn't a small amount to be considered "in-line" with the others. That's roughly 40% more.
The difference is also Apple neither has the audio legacy of those companies nor the quality of those products to warrant that kind of premium. To Apple, it is just another market they can go after, but a lot of those companies built their entire foundations on audio. You are not going to convince me Apple is in the same category as the company that invented the Walkman and CDs.
Also, if you look into the teardown videos, it's really a cheap driver from China - all plastic, not even using aluminium for the basket, just literally hard-glued onto the body. It's not repairable nor eco-friendly. It's anti-consumer. Sony uses Aluminium housing for their drivers and they are the cheapest in the lot.
Ex studio tech here. Legacy doesn't cover contracted manufacturing.
I'm not defending apple here, but using chinese drivers (which I assume is a synonym for poor quality) is fine so long as they are binned for performance, and matched/tuned to housing. I'm assuming the mic inside the ear cup is there to do dynamic EQ.
Also the drivers are screwed into a solid aluminium housing, so they aren't glued.
NS10s which are the standard reference mixing speakers were chosen not because they were high quality, but because they were average. If you could get your mix to sound good on those, it'd sound great anywhere.
So yeah, they are expensive. Would I buy them? probably not. I'm reasonably happy with my plantronic jobbies. Are they perfect? no, are they comfortable? yes. Is the active noise cancelling actually effective? also no, but then ANC is only really useful for a small subset of noises types. (even on Sonys. )
Sennheiser HD 800 S is $1700 and has been around for years. Or the Meze Elite Tungsten at $4,000 - if Apple can get 80/90% of the way there at $549, they'd be a steal for the right customer.
The quality x price curve is not linear. Expensive materials and engineering often produce only incremental quality improvements, if any. Sometimes the improvements are only cosmetic. So Apple's headphones would need to be a lot closer to the best of the best than 80-90% in order to justify their price.
The feature that applies a hearing test as an equalizer setting make the APM sound pretty damn good, so much so it ended my 20 year long headphone-collecting hobby.
Before hearing-tuned EQ became a thing, trying headphones was like trying food. No matter what someone else said it was no guarantee you'd like the sound. Conversely, you might find a cheap pair that sounded spectacular to you. The APM will sound very good to just about anyone, with the hearing test EQ applied.
I think every headphone maker (or better yet, DAC maker) should have this feature. Audiophiles are often old, a hearing test EQ can make them hear music like they're 20 again, and they'll pay for it.
Peripheral tech must have absurdly lucrative margins. I see it in my niche interests too. Cycling or golf gps are like hundreds of dollars. They are the same products they were 15 years ago: cheap lcd screen with a cheap gps radio and some severely underpowered cpu with noticable input lag. Designed to fall apart in a few years. Still same prices they always were, maybe they get away adding another $50 a year to the price on occasion. It is like they hit their price point and margin number and are perfectly happy making probably >60% markup on us who have no option otherwise. Yes we could potentially order prototypes trivially for cents a unit from same places in china the first party manufacturers go to, but minimum order is probably 1000 units.
That is literally the sole moat of these companies: minimum orders from china and the fact we can't spend the ad money they can to move that volume quickly. Not tech or offering a good deal. Just being there already with money and doing the inevitable. Being the more productive drug dealer quicker to move the kilo to the captured audience and bankrolled to get the next several and scale.
For cycling tech, if you're outside the US, check out Chinese manufacturers like iGPSport and Magene.
Picked up a spider-based power meter for around £290 and a big computer for £150. Both are great, and work just as well as their western counterparts costing significantly more.
If you don’t understand then you should invest some time learning microeconomics, marketing, and moats. Principles from (at least) those 3 areas are involved here.
To give 3 examples:
1. The marginal value of these products is in the mind of the individual buyer. No individual is buying both the AirPods Max 2 AND the MacBook Neo for personal use. You can’t compare marginal value across two different individuals.
2. The MacBook Neo has a different set of substitutable goods vs the AirPods Max 2. This affects margin. AirPods Max 2 buyers are likely heavily bought into the Apple ecosystem already.
3. With the Neo, Apple are in some sense subsidising entry into the Apple Ecosystem and ‘getting them young’. Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s zero or negative margin. With the AirPods Max 2 they are exploiting people who are already bought into the ecosystem. Margins will be high.
They're priced vs. peer closed-ear headphones, not the rest of the Mac line. They perform accordingly, at least once you factor in a mild Apple premium (say, 15-20%).
I say this because I was able to compare them to my own $400 Sennheisers (which are somewhat awkward because they're wired, and really require a headphone amp to shine), and found the Max to be just as good.
There are also a number of online reviewers who've said the same thing, among them developer, Tumblr millionaire, and headphone addict Marco Arment. He famously described the Max as his favorite closed-back headphone.
It just sits there, with no one touching it. Suddenly, music randomly starts and stops playing. Take it into the Apple Store, they acknowledge it’s a known hardware defect to start registering non-existent touches, and they refuse to fix it. Offer to replace it with a refurb unit for like ~$20 less than a brand new unit.
FWIW we use the minis all over our place and love'em. But we pretty much only ask basic questions or use them for airplay. Sounds quality is impressive imo.
I can't believe they finally refreshed this after I just churned (after owning the v1 since launch), always happens! The old Airpods Max had an issue of these giant booms when it was going low power that just wrecked my eardrums - I feel like the apple ecosystem pull is pretty compelling, but I think torturing your users for enough time will get even the most loyal customers churn.
I've been enjoying the nothing headphones, I enjoy having an off button and ability to connect via wire to the device.
i'm sort of done with apple products for awhile. aside from apple silicon, the quality of hardware and software decisions seems to have been consistently dropping for quite some time. i regret buying the new iphone. i regret buying the new air pods. i don't regret buying a mac mini recently, but only because it's got an apple silicon processor.
Guess I'll be the contrarian on this one - I've got a pair of the Max's and love them. I use them primarily for watching movies and TV (I live in an apartment and am not a sociopath), and the "spatial audio" is incredibly good. Apple's got a "Sound" to their products that isn't neutral, but is very detailed and tends to disappear pretty quickly. Both the noise cancellation and the "transparent" mode are phenomenal. They're a bit buggy, yes, but not tangibly worse than any other bluetooth headphones I've owned. They're heavy, but I don't wear them outside - they're solely for home use. I'm personally excited to see these get a refresh.
Wild. I have been eagerly awaiting this refresh, but this doesn't address either of the main issues with the original AirPods Max:
1. Still just as heavy. The AirPods Max sound quite good, but they are very heavy, to the point of being fairly uncomfortable after listening for any longer amount of time. This release as the exact same weight as the originals (13.6 oz).
2. Still no off button/position. They stay partially on unless you put them in the awkward and useless "case", which means they're constantly out of power when you want to use them. There's even an obvious fix: the ear cups swivel flat, they could just make this the "power off" position. Solved. But they didn't, so presumably these still have the same problem. There's also no mention of magnetic charging via stand, which would be another way to help alleviate this problem.
If these were even a few ounces lighter and powered off properly, I would buy them for sure. Given this announcement, I guess I will look for something else to replace the old AirPods Max.
I’ve been using AirPods Max since they first launched, and over the years I’ve tried several times to switch to Bose.
However, the Bose headphones just haven’t worked as smoothly for me from a software and integration standpoint. I tend to run into more glitches and small issues compared to the AirPods Max. I’m not sure whether that’s primarily a Bose issue or something related to Apple’s ecosystem, but my guess is that other high-end headphones probably face similar integration challenges when paired with an iPhone.
I also have the AirPods Max and had the Bose QuietComfort Ultra, and it is hard to convey how effortless the Max are in comparison. The switching between devices is so seamless (if you are in the Apple ecosystem). The controls are also much easier to find and use.
Are you sure your AirPods Max have the latest firmware? This issue was addressed in an update right after the first version came out and people reported the issue you're describing:
If you set your AirPods Max down and leave them stationary for 5 minutes, they go into a low power mode to preserve battery charge. After 72 stationary hours out of the Smart Case, your AirPods Max go into a lower power mode that turns off Bluetooth and Find My to preserve battery charge further
[Archive link, as the latest Support doc doesn't have this wording any longer]
What does “down” and “stationary” mean? I put my Sony to random paces, mainly just throwing it into my backpack. Would that be considered as down and stationary? Would it be turned off if I’m on the move? In a car? On a bus?
I mean, I regularly leave them on a shelf in my apartment and they apparently do not consider that "down" or "stationary" enough to not just drain the battery completely. Truly a bafflingly bad design from the company that is (was) known for great hardware design.
I got excited there for a second — free fix for the most annoying problem with my headphones! But no, my AirPods Max have the latest firmware and still have this issue. Any time I leave them for more than a day, the battery is drained.
I know I have had this issue and did not have it after reset. Though I do have another annoying, and seemingly unique issue: sometimes, when adjusting the position of the headphone, they do a “click” (and a loud one), and just shut down. After a few seconds, they boot up again.
The farthest from the last reset, the more often it happens. I have no idea why.
I noticed that behavior as well, but whenever I speak loudly with the headphones on. One remark to myself that's too loud, and suddenly pop and the noise cancellation is gone for like 10 seconds. Super annoying.
I don't have Max, but something similar happens with the AirPods Pro. See if you have "conversation awareness" and "hearing protection" turned on (both are on by default.) They're in the AirPods settings screen accessed via the bluetooth menu.
I'd suggest experimenting by disabling both and trying to repro. Then re-enabling the features one at a time.
I've never triggered it on the Pro by merely speaking loudly, but they're earbuds and farther from my mouth. What does trigger it for me reliably, is sneezing.
That doesn't sound right. I have them on my desk. Don't even know where the bra case is. I use and charge them only once in a blue moon, perhaps every 2 months, and the battery does not die. I don't lay them flat or anything either.
Have you reset your AirPods Max by holding down the non circular button until it starts blinking white and then reconnecting?
There have been times where the AirPods Max have sort of crashed, and I cannot get them to connect properly. I find that forgetting the AirPods in the phone/computer and then resetting them by holding down the button allows them to start fresh with a new state. Maybe that can help resolve the issue for you. But Im constantly switching them between three nearby devices so maybe thats why I have this problem. Just throwing it out there in case you haven't tried a reset.
They must have been utterly unusable on release then.
I have latest firmware and if I forget to place my Max's in their case they are at half power or less within a few days.
As such they get used a lot less than I would otherwise. One of my more wasteful purchases in the past few years.
That and the super annoying behavior where two floors away they decide to randomly pair with my Mac Studio when someone Slack Huddles me or whatever, then I need to fiddle with settings to get my airpods pro to connect instead.
This is coming from someone who thinks the Airpods Pro are downright magical in how well they work.
Could be because I also pair them with regular old Bluetooth from a PC in addition to the Apple ecosystem. The earbuds likely don't have the same issue because they inside a case and are fully turned off when not in use.
Sound quality honestly isn't that great either, but I suppose that's more inherent in headphones in general vs. speakers than anything to do with them specifically.
I’ve been using my AirPod Max for hours for the past 2 years and never noticed they were “heavy”. I’m wondering now as I’ve never researched on headphones (I just buy simplicity from Apple, I’m not an audio sophisticated costumer) that was never brought out to me, so I haven’t even noticed.
The AirPods Max are excessively comfortable, even though they are heavy. Some (most?) lighter headphones are actually less comfortable because they do not “fit the head” so well (at least for me).
Caveat: after a while the mesh at the top starts to stretch, and then you get the two metal bands going straight into the head, and that hurts. And the worst part is: this mesh is not replaceable :( There are silicone band-aids that can be bought, but I would have very much preferred for a possibility of repair to exist…
I tested Apple, Sony and Bose and found the AirPods Max to be the most comfortable for long periods of time, for me. It depends on how well you adjust them and what bothers you the most about headphones.
It's kind of like standing desks; some people are able to go all day with it with the right setup and feel better than if they had sat. Others feel miserable after a few hours. Neither is wrong but they may not understand the other's experience, or what they might be doing differently that affects their results.
Yeah despite being heavier I find the Airpods Max more comfortable to wear than my Sonys. Sony has shockingly shallow ear cups and do get much warmer and the headband is very narrow and barely padded. The Airpods Max ear cups are better and the headband is wide and mesh so spreads out the weight and it breathes too.
The one major downside to the Airpods Max is that they do not have an off button and the case is useless for throwing them in a duffel / backpack, as it doesn't protect the headband mesh at all. I have a 3rd party hardshell case for them but it is very unreliable in actually putting them in "ultralow power mode", so the battery drains.
The AirPods Max are the most comfortable headphones I've ever worn. My head and my ears are both significantly larger than average and they are the only ones that don't squash my ears. I keep the Apple bra on it, inside a 3rd-party hard case, and it never runs down on its own. The battery is still healthy five years later. It's the last surviving Lightning connector in our household, and I might keep them for another five years.
As someone who has never seen these or paid attention to them I was thinking "how heavy could they possibly be?" Then I saw 13.6 oz and I was blown away. That's actually really heavy for headphones!
It was Beats. At first it was found in counterfeit Beats, but later the same was found in genuine Beats. And then guess who bought Beats for their exquisite metal weight technology? That's right, it was Apple.
> And then guess who bought Beats for their exquisite metal weight technology? That's right, it was Apple.
It's self-evidently extremely disingenuous to claim that Apple bought Beats for their "exquisite metal weight technology", so I thought I'd double check your claim that there are "metal weights" inside Beats headphones.
All of this appears to stem from two blog posts, written by the same VC.[^1] The first time they accidentally tore down counterfeit Beats, and when they managed to repeat the process, they "stuck by [their] claim" that:
> "…these metal parts are there to add a bit of weight and increase perceived quality with a nice look."
The BOM estimate they provide lists the following metal parts:
* Inner cast metal separator
* Springs
* Torx screw
* Self tapping screw
* Cast metal supports
* Stamped metal ear cup
None of these are extraneous weights not serving a purpose. The claim of the author might be better presented as:
"Beats headphones use heavier metal components instead of plastic ones, and I think it's because they add weight."
There are a lot of very good reasons to use materials that dampen unwanted interference like parasitic vibrations. Stiffer materials such as metal parts typically flex less, and have fewer (but usually more pronounced) resonances than plastic parts, which have intrinsic damping but might distort.
A good example of this is that the driver in your headphones is moving. Therefore the housing it is placed in must consider sprung/unsprung mass. Adding metal components increases the mechanical impedance.
So:
1. It is entirely possible that your claim about the weights is correct, and Beats chose to use metal components rather than plastic purely to add weight to the product.
2. There are a great many other possible explanations for using metal rather than plastic, and I don't think that you're likely to be party to them. For example: maybe they had the parts in-chain already and didn't want to have to tie up hardware engineering or supplier quality engineering for a new plastic part.
The Beats brand was a great entrée to an entire market segment that Apple was trying to better access. I'd say it was a masterful acquisition (and integration).
Exactly. Look at something like the Sony XM5s that have a defective design that breaks in a light wind. There a class action against them for the crap they pulled and refusal to warranty. Not that I’m bitter at them or anything.
Nothing new here then. Back when I used to DJ some 20+ years ago, people would complain back then that Sony headphones would constantly break on them.
Meanwhile I had Sennheisers and they could take an absolute beating and still work fine. While also being plastic and cheap looking in comparison to other brands in the same price packet.
All genuine Beats as far I know come with the H1 chips and pair just like AirPods - even my cheap $60 Beats Flex I use on planes since I don’t have to worry about them falling out - they just fall around my neck
People wear them at work daily and it doesn’t seem to be a problem. One guy looks likes he’s Tier 3 support and uses them 8 hours a day 5 days a week for years.
People compliment my Jabra’s voice quality otherwise I would’ve switched already.
Sure, plenty of people also wear a 14 oz hard hat strapped to their head all day with no negative health impacts. Doesn't mean it's enjoyable or comfortable for everyone.
I have a pair and they’re fine for wearing when sat down. In fact they’re my preferred headphones for airplane journeys and noisy offices because the noise cancelling is top notch.
However I tried to wear them one on a train commute and it was horrid. Walking around with them really isn’t fun precisely because of their weight.
Every head movement feels like hard work and the headphones don’t even feel stable on your head during any movement due to the weight.
So I end up owned two headphones (well, technically 3):
1. AirPod Max for focus time
2. Sennheiser earphones (in ear) for commuting / exercise workouts.
3. Sennheiser DJ cans for DJing, video streaming and other times when I need wired, zero latency, audio.
I know my way around premium wireless headphones and I'd wager most of them within that price range are somewhere between 250 and 320 grams (like 8.8 oz to 11 oz).
Putting it in or out of the case is not that big of deal (for me). However, once you take them out of the case you need to put that case somewhere, and you can't use headphone stand that was just holding them. So now I need a space for them when I don't use them and when I do use them, and it can't be the same space (in my scenario).
I leave my AirPods Max sitting on my desk for weeks at a time outside of the case and the battery never drains. I just put mine on today after sitting on my desk for a week and they still had 99% charge.
Strange. Are they first gen or later? I did get the absolute first gen of these, so maybe it's a problem they couldn't fix in firmware? Or I just have a defective pair?
Same. I rarely use mine and find that they just about always still have battery. And even when they don't I'll just plug them in and go find something else to do for a few minutes and by the time I come back they are usable for hours. The talk about the power button is super strange to me.
Might as well be 3862 grams considering how much they hurt to wear for any length of time. I was also hoping this update would improve the ergonomics, but no. Still too heavy and no mention of any improvements to the headband.
I had the same reaction to the originals. They just hurt! One of my kids swiped them and I never used them again: I wanted to like them but they were almost as uncomfortable as my Vision Pro
I have a pair of the first generation AirPods Max. They leave dents in my scalp if I wear them for any real amount of time. I've been an Apple person since the 1980s. This is one of the most disappointing Apple products for me ever, and I really don't want to know how much $$$$$ lifetime customer value I've contributed to Apple's bottom line.
386 grams, the extra 0.2 grams is not only irrelevant it's non existent because the process of converting from one measurement standard to another never increases the precision of the measurement.
Using 3 digits of precision also avoids being temped to use the rather niche ,2 convention when claiming to embrace a region as large as the rest of the world.
By convention if it was 13.600 they would present it as 13.600 not 13.6. If I remember correctly Everest was first surveyed as 29000 feet tall and they changed it arbitrarily to 29002 to avoid the apparent imprecision!
Absolutely! I have both the AirPods Max and the Bose QC Ultra and even though my whole ecosystem is Apple, the QC Ultra is a lot more comfortable reliable on day to day usage. Comfort is due to weight, and reliability is the batter is predictably on the QC Ultra, but on the Max I never know if the battery went all down because I can't turn it off.
They have direct feedback that many people return them bc they’re too heavy, and yet… It’s just Apple being stubborn. I guess it’s not a big enough problem for them, and they don’t care about losing the market. One must laugh.
That being said, AirPods use a steel frame construction to get the weight up for the same reason. There's a whole thing with weight in neuromarketing for luxury and luxury-adjacent products. There's fringe benefits acoustically to using it, around resonance mainly, but mostly it's to get weight and influence perception. Same reason as the knock-offs, different mechanism.
That being said, AirPods use a steel frame construction to get the weight up for the same reason.
Noting that you have no way of knowing that. Not that you’re necessarily wrong. I just read some reviews on the Beats Studio Pros and…the reviewer noted the amount of plastic used in the construction, while complimenting the light weight. Pick a lane, folks.
Reading #2 makes me sad. I had a pair of Bose for probably a decade and tried out Sony and the biggest complaint I have is the lack of a physical off button. The Sony have a known issue where it don’t detect that it’s off of your head and it’s not that obvious that the headphones are on or off. At least a few times a week I put them on in the morning and they have been on all night.
Sony WH 1000 XM4 and WH 1000 XM6 both have physical off buttons and I've also never had a problem with them not turning off due to inactivity. If I take my XM6 off and put them on the desk, they pause music/podcasts and will fully turn off after some minutes (like 15 minutes? not sure, but it's short enough that if I go eat lunch and come back, they turned off automatically).
XM5, it does not have a physical dedicated on/off button it has a multipurpose where function is determined by how long you hold down the button. It’s not optimal design for me. I am sure a number of brands have moved towards this.
Second the sensor on the XM5 is known to be flaky. These are about a year old and already acting up.
It’s just a poorly built and poorly designed headset for me. I cannot even count the number of times I don’t notice they are on until the next day and they are dead.
> Sony WH 1000 XM4 and WH 1000 XM6 both have physical off buttons
Currently wearing my XM4s and was really confused by the "physical off button" because ... I'm looking at them and they just don't? Where is it? What?
Then I realised that I'm old and, to me, "physical off button" means a sliding switch, a hardware disconnect, etc. (such as exists on my pair of Plantronics BackBeat PRO 2), not a pushbutton that triggers a software power-down (which the XM4s most certainly do have.)
I had that problem pop up with my Sony xm4s after a couple of years of use. Cleaned the lens on the inside of the left ear cup and they work perfectly again. Go to sleep, pause music, etc when I remove them.
Perception is at odds with quality sometimes. For headphones, lighter is better even though people often perceive denser objects as being of higher quality. This is why high-end headphones often contain a fair bit of plastic, but also make sparing use of light-weight metals such as magnesium in the places where strength is especially important.
These Airpods appear to have ear-cups made entirely of aluminum, which is an odd choice. Plastic cups are typically more than strong enough and aluminum is actually a fair bit denser than magnesium. That's a lot of weight for no good reason. Aluminum is a great material for some things, but Apple seems to be using it for everything even when its not appropriate.
The 400g don’t bother me personally. I agree not being able to turn it off sucks, I switched to android for some time and it would just leave the pair on until the battery died. I think it’s basically a feature to force users to stay within the iOS ecosystem
Personally the thing that really surprised me about mine was the amount of condense water builds up under the pads when I'm wearing it over a workday.
My noise cancelling started to go flaky until I stumbled upon that - after I've dried it off after every use and stopped using the "case" /store pads separately from headphone things improved a lot again.
It feels like a serious design issue, I'm really confused why so few people talk about it, but I guess it's because most are just casual users of the headphones with people only wearing it a few minutes a day... And the water only really build up when you're wearing it several hours without taking it off
Yeah, between the weight, no real power‑off, they feel like way too much hassle for something this expensive.
Kinda wild that this "refresh" doesn’t really fix any of that
Yeah, the condensation issue was a problem for me too. I ended up having to take them in for repair to Apple several times.
The noise cancellation went flakey, the auto-switching went flakey, they would crash [1] if lifted one cup from the side of my head. Apple ended up replacing them completely, but then the new pair eventually developed all the same faults.
I hope some of these are addressed in the new models, because despite all this I really enjoy them as headphones.
> to the point of being fairly uncomfortable after listening for any longer amount of time.
#1 reason I use the Sony XM4/XM6. Sometimes I wonder if they intentionally do this to appeal to a younger crowd cause as an older person with neck issues it’s just not a very good product.
The audio quality of the Sonys is just as good but the comfort is a much better. I think I like the mic on the AirPods Max better but the mic on the MacBook I use in meetings works as well for meetings.
I've worn these for multiple cross-country and transatlantic flights, and have not noticed them being too heavy for comfort, but that's definitely gonna be a personal thing.
>which means they're constantly out of power when you want to use them.
I have not found this to be a serious problem, assuming you put them in the case. Even out of the case, though, they keep a charge a while -- which I unfortunately know b/c I lost my case on a plane a while back.
I have the original model. I haven't seen a huge need to upgrade so far -- mine still work great, have excellent battery life, and so replacing them isn't on my radar. Honestly there's a real chance mine will hang on long enough be the last remaining Lightning-connector thing in our house.
I'm not buying another expensive AirPods from Apple until they have their story straight w.r.t battery health and battery repair that is cost-effective. I'm done wasting money on these only to have battery issues, clicking noises etc in less than 2 years of continuous use.
Irritating thing is how Apple hides bluetooth headphones pairing 2-3 clicks deeper than AirPods pairing – on iPhones and Apple TV.
Replacing the batteries on the Maxes is actually a fairly straightforward process (no adhesive melting required, just a screwdriver and a pry bar), and spare batteries can be purchased on Amazon or Ebay for around 50 USD. It's one of the better Apple products in that regard, very unlike the in-ear models.
Did that change with the Air Pod Max USB-C, because iFixit says you have to get past adhesive to get to the batteries, after you turn the specialized screws only a quarter turn, and then use a dental pick to separate the pieces after you heat the adhesive being careful not to melt other parts?
>The next round of frustration: adhesive. That's right, releasing the locks and/or removing the screws isn't enough. Out comes the heat gun, which must be wielded very carefully to avoid melting all this plastic.
> Irritating thing is how Apple hides bluetooth headphones pairing 2-3 clicks deeper than AirPods pairing – on iPhones and Apple TV.
Can't you just create a Shortcut on the iPhone to pair with whatever you want via bluetooth in a single tap? Or just edit the control center menu itself and add the Bluetooth button directly to the control center?
4 clicks from control centre on stock settings.
Two if you add the Bluetooth widget into control centre.
Swipe down control centre > Bluetooth > hey presto
I'll briefly join the chorus: AirPods Max were the worst value for money I've ever spent on a tech product.
But more interestingly: what happens at a company like Apple that leads them to not cancel this product and come up with something totally new? Is it that the success of their other products pulls this along so well that they are numb to this product being a dog? AirPods Pro (the earbuds) are a great product, so perhaps the headphones org just doesn't have to face the music?
> so perhaps the headphones org just doesn't have to face the music?
Some people don't like anything in their ears. Some people have ear canals that don't work/aren't comfortable with "standard" tips. This is why headphones will always exist.
I agree it seems terrible value, but I see plenty of people wearing them on the street so it’s probably a commercial success just as a luxury product for people to flex with. While everyone else gets the AirPod pros.
> what happens at a company like Apple that leads them to not cancel this product and come up with something totally new
I'm in the suburbs of a middling Australian city, nothing special and not in particularly high socioeconomic areas
There is at least two people per bus wearing them (or at least very good comps), they're as common as Sony XM5 or XM6's and while they're not Airpods penetration, they're wildly popular for their pricepoint
A tangential question: What are the best bang per buck headphones these days (preferably wireless)? Not earbuds, but over-the-head headphones. Tell me your favorites.
(The internet is so polluted that I cannot find any reliable recommendation today so I'm doing a mini "ask HN" here.)
I don't know exactly how to measure bang for buck, but my Sony XM4s have been holding up well, sound good, are decently comfortable for a day's work, the battery life is good, etc.
They do have some annoyances like not always sleeping correctly when left connected to my laptop, but overall they are easy to recommend
Those are definitely not what you want for anything other than actual music production - they're designed for a flat frequency response which is really useful when mixing music, but awful for anything else.
I found this forum last year https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php which opens the door up to a high number of lower cost manufacturers making very high quality products. although the forum audience (audiophiles) generally eschew wireless products and prefer open backed (loud for everyone else and no noise cancelling) headphones, there are all kinds of products discussed.
Audio Science Review is a tremendous resource. But dangerous from a time resource perspective. I choose my headphone amp (JDS Labs) after spending much time on that site.
My personal best bang-for-the-buck are the Yamaha Orthodynamic HP-1 headphones that I bought at an estate sale last year for $10 and paired with a JDS Labs amp for $100.
Audiophile headphones in the '70s cost $100-$200. That's like $600-$1200 in today's dollars. Are the AirPods "audiophile" level? Many people think so.
The two sibling comments were good suggestions. I have Sony XM3s that have been going strong for 6 years, sound superb, and have IMHO better noise cancellation than Bose.
For my kids I got Anker Soundcores, and for the price they are astonishingly good.
Ignore the thing about open-backs though, I have some extremely high end Grado open-backs and barely use them. My primary hobby outside of work is making music and I have a dedicated studio at home with expensive sound damping / proofing - the only reason to ever wear the Grados is if I'm going to be wearing them for hours on end. Even then, the Sonys are comfortable enough that I've never reached a fatigue point in them.
If you want to go cheap and don't want ANC (eg. open back headphones) then there's a lot of good reference/studio headphones around. I have a wired Audio Technica M40X for home use and a wireless pair of M20X for travel; both are great in a quieter environment.
Bose Quietcomfort (i have the 2nd gen ultra now but I've owned other models too) live up to their name for comfort. Very lightweight and the earcups are large enough that they don't pinch. They may not have the best ANC or featureset, but I enjoy mine immensely
Best bang for the buck in terms of sound quality is probably the Hifiman HE400SE, which is less than $100, the AKG K701 and Sennheiser HD6XX, which are about $200. The catch is that you need a proper setup to drive them. But to be honest, getting the tuning you like that suits the music is more important.
I’m sure it’s driving issue, 650/6XX’s treble is supposed to be smooth and veiled. I wouldn’t consider the HD6 series at all if you only have an unbalanced setup, the difference on my DAC is night and day.
any ANC soundcore (anker) headphones or TEMU if you fancy rolling the dice.
A colleague got a clone of the Sony 1000xm4, they sounded and look very similar.
For all day online calls, Jabra evolve2 65 are hard to beat for the price.
I have had a pair of the Tozo HT3 for a few months now. Not the most comfortable cans ever, but as low as $30 for wireless + low latency mode + decent ANC is a pretty good deal IMO.
Another vote for the HT3. My wife and I have one each, and we are perfectly content with them — nice battery life, decent build quality, good connection to multiple (two?) sources.
The ANC is not in the same league as a $300 pair, but one certainly would not expect them to.
Senn HD 490 PRO is an amazing and extremely comfortable headphone that has very affordable 1st party replacement parts (pads, cables) to boot. These are the first ones I've been happy with from day one. But they are wired & open back.
The problem I have with these headphones (at least V1) is that the ear cups don't tilt horizontally. Maybe my ears are more angled backwards that most people's ears, but with theses headphones, the headband part sits really far back on my head. This creates a lot of pressure on only the back edge of headband.
Until they make the ear cups tilt horizontally, these will be a no-go for me. My ancient 10+ year old Bose QCs 35s can pivot and are a million times more comfortable.
I'm looking to replace my worn-out Sony XM-3s and am wondering if the AirPods Max 2 could be a better option than the XM-6s. I've always liked Sony's audio quality and ANC, but felt the headphones were not as comfortable to wear while sleeping on airplanes than older Bose models I had prior (like the QC-2s and QC-3s.)
Can anyone with experience with either the AirPods Max 1s or XM-6s tell me what they feel like to sleep with on an airplane (business class with a lie flat bed?) Plane travel is my primary use-case for these type of headphones.
I've been using the AirPods Max 1s for the last five years and you should get the Sony XM-6s. The Apple AirPod Max sound great, bur are heavy and fairly uncomfortable on the head when worn for more than an hour or two. Furthermore, I experienced persistent wireless connectivity problems and eventually sent them back to Apple under warranty. They were replaced successfully, but with a different pair of the same model which had a worn out headband. Overall it's been a bad experience and I wish that I purchased the Sony XM-6s insead.
I absolutely hate noise. And so I loved AirPods Max. It was, I think the best noise cancelling money could buy and I’ve tried several of the Sony and Bose Headphones. Then funnily enough my AirPods Pro 3 completely smokes my AirPods Max. There are times when I literally can’t notice someone calling out my name, when I wear my pro 3 with ambient sounds, this never happened even with over the ear noise cancelling phones in the past. I have no idea what magic Apple used to pull this off and so my usage of AirPods Max has fallen to nil.
Now I wonder if AirPods Max 2 is even better than AirPods Pro 3 but we are soon reaching the point of diminishing returns. So to all kindred souls who hate noise, Pro 3 is probably good enough for your use cases!
Between this and the Apple Vision Pro, does Apple just have one dude in their testing labs with a really really powerful neck? What is Neck Guy’s name and when did he join? Does Neck Guy work in Cupertino or is he contracted?
Does anyone have experience with the Fairbuds and Fairbuds XL? I am DESPERATE to get off this Apple headphone bandwagon but need something reliable that will work with Apple devices. I'm generally extremely happy with Apple products but the headphones have been a money sink.
I’m someone who bought three generations of AirPods Pro, as well as an AirPods Max. All four devices have been absolute headaches.
The first AirPods Pro had the rattle‑gate issue. I was able to get it replaced under warranty, but it was a pain to deal with until the recall program came out.
Ok I chalked it up to a first gen product and I generally liked it when it worked so I decided to upgrade to the second generation because it offered more features and I hoped that it improved reliability.
I upgraded, and I immediately got the rattle‑gate problem again, this time right past the warranty period. There was no recall program for second gens, and when I went to the store they told me the headphones were damaged and I was out of luck.
I try to maintain these devices extremely carefully, but I guess my use of isopropyl alcohol to disinfect and clean them damaged the ANC microphone. I’ve never dropped the AirPods, yet they still failed.
While being super frustrated with the Pro 2 I ended up buying the pro 3 but reconsidered after what I was told about the status of the Pro 2 but I missed the return window by a few days. After these Pro 3 fail, I just don't want to give them any more money for headphones.
I saw the Airpods Max on sale for Black friday a while back so I gave them a try as I was getting ear issues wearing in ear devices for so long each day. While they are very comfortable, the ear caps are a pain to clean.
They absorb sweat and oils over time and do not make it easy for them to get released when cleaning with detergent and water. it’s a massive effort. Im scrubbing with a toothbrush to clean, disinfect and then extensively drying them with a heater. All of this is taking 1+ hour each 1-2 weeks.
I am someone who is trying to maintain all my equipment as much as possible and this "woven texture" feels great but is not great for maintenance lifestyle.
Luckily ive accepted that the cheapo 20$ ear caps on Amazon are good enough and I just toss old ear caps after they become too hard to clean and buy another replacement set. I also have to disassemble the headband and use a special cleaning solution I found on Amazon, which smells like its just laundry detergent to prevent the headband from darkening from regular skin oils.
Now I’m starting to get very occasional "tinny" type of rattling with ANC enabled, as other people have indicated here as well.
These damn things are too expensive to have all these stupid issues. I’m really desperate for something more repairable and maintainable than this junk.
I had a sennheiser wired unit before this and those things lasted years with the only replacement being the ear caps like once a year.
As it stands, I may have spent close to $1,000 on this over the years, and I am just sick and tired of it. They’re not bad products when they work, they’re absolutely GREAT when they work. But man, all this headache when they dont work is just ridiculous at this point.
Surprised to not see others comment on the terrible durability of these. Condensation (from normal use, not outdoor or gym) easily breaks these after a year or two. If not that, the twisting ribbon cable eventually breaks. Repairs are difficult and expensive and uncertain.
Noise canceling headphones are absolutely a game changer. I work from home in a very noisy downtown apartment with poor soundproofing and I’d never get anything done without ANC. I haven’t had the chance to try the AirPods Max yet, but I do wonder how it compares to the Sony headphones.
Unfortunately ANC only works on some sounds. In the suburbs you have leafblowers and cars driving past you on the sidewalk, and ANC removes everything /else/ which makes them stand out even more.
Leaf blowers and cars driving past are exactly the kind of thing that ANC works well on, a fairly constant noise. It doesn’t block out other kinds of things well. At least it always seems to go that way for me, so I can’t relate to your comment at all. My experience seems exactly the opposite and I have trouble imagining it differently for anyone else, because it works well against a constant noise kind of in the bass range.
>Leaf blowers and cars driving past are exactly the kind of thing that ANC works well on, a fairly constant noise.
I can tell you haven't heard a leaf blower in a while, if ever. The revving the operators inevitably do causes it to bounce up and down over the spectrum at completely random-seeming intervals. Punches right through ANC, windows, doors, walls.
As if that's not bad enough they pollute more than a gigantic SUV because of how much oil they burn being a two-stroke.
Is there any info on what codecs these support? They mention “lossless audio” without any extra detail, is this the new Bluetooth LE audio or something proprietary?
That's because old bluetooth has two main modes A2DP which supports one direction high quality audio and HFP which supports microphones but sounds like shit. Bluetooth LE Audio is fairly new and supports high quality audio and mic at the same time. But as far as I'm aware, no Apple product supports it yet.
Not to threadjack, but this is a question that I've had for a while and I've been looking for the right forum to ask: are there any "open source" earbuds? I would like to take a pair of earbuds and invert the noise-cancellation curve: basically, amplify any ambient noise (with filtering of course). My grandma (not in the US or EU) is hard of hearing, and the only options available to her are random Chinese junk. I would like to try this experiment, where I just invert the noise cancellation curve and make the ambient noise louder.
Lots of earbuds have transparency mode. I have Earfun Air Pro 4+ (which were big too big for my ears). They sound very good and have really good transparency mode. The company keeps releasing firmware updates every now and then.
Also got a nothing Ear. They are very comfy, and have very good sound. But transparency mode in those is awful. Other things are bad too.
The later versions of Nothing headphones/buds got pretty good.
I actually have their budget brand CMF Buds 2 plus and they are straight up great even before you consider the price. Pretty good headphones are commodity now, everybody makes them. Apple is just winning the branding game.
For what it's worth, Airpods Pro 2 or 3 have a Hearing Aid mode out of the box, but I understand plenty of other earphones out there these days have something equivalent that just can't call itself that because they don't have the clinical certification Apple got.
You know what would be ground breaking from a company that prides itself on environmental sustainability? A replaceable battery. These headphones are all garbage once the lithium battery reaches end of life.
In fairness, I struggle to understand dB as it’s an exponential measurement and I would be on the extreme end of IT technical. Sound engineers might understand dB but a percentage or multiplier is better for most people.
Comfort issues aside, these are still stupid expensive.
I can buy a laptop for that money.
It’s strange to me that they haven’t introduced a more budget friendly line to serve different segments, like most of their product categories. Headphones aren’t an experimental hobby product.
Forgetting all technical benefits: people will always have opinions on headphones and it's rather fascinating that Apple owns the entire market for fashionable ones, despite there being nothing stopping outside players.
They specifically acquired Beats for this reason to shore up that base, and so far no one has been able to make a dent in the celebrity or influencer space.
The only other pair I've seen treated that way is Nothing's Headphones - although the (maybe niche) musicians I've seen wearing them lean into y2k aesthetics, where Apple's products are more broadly appealing.
Even though my Focal Bathys headphones are more expensive and have worse noise cancellation, I'm still sticking with them because the Airpods Max are so damn uncomfortable.
Interesting: "Why Apple is the best place to buy AirPods." I've never seen them have a section for that.
It's slowly made less sense to buy directly from Apple in recent years. Not a criticism just an observation. I assumed Apple was simply okay with that and decided it was net better for them. Seems reasonable. There was a period not that long ago where you could only buy directly. And there still are some products that are seemingly only on sale at specific retailers—Homepods have for whatever reason never (rarely?) been sold on Amazon, but are at Best Buy. Often you'll see like the latest Airpods for sale cheaper on Amazon/Costco/Target/etc. immediately even before launch day. The whole Apple experience is nice in its own way and sometimes I suppose you get small but nice little dopamine hits buying directly or going to the nice stores and having someone walk you through stuff (if you need/like it) so there's reasons some people go direct. Simply saying there's less reason than before and so I'm surprised and curious as to how this little section of the website came to be.
Do they want that margin back? Do they want to fight a little bit to keep you in more parts of the chain (but I guess not to the point of restricting sales/inventory to themselves)? Is this just like one PM (measured on one KPI) fighting for a little web real estate (presumably against the PMs involved in the retail partner channels)?
i just bought airpods max a few months ago and i wear them constantly (autism), basically only taking them off for sleeping (sometimes i do end up laying in bed with them on). i initially found them uncomfortable after several hours due to my glasses, but it went away after a week. really love these, and my only complaint really has been the lack of adaptive mode (and the ANC was also a bit weak but less of an issue) so am glad to see both of these issues solved. am definitely going to get these and probably give this pair to my girlfriend.
Sorry, Apple audio stuff, while really impressive audio quality has made me deaf. I’ll take bad to no engineered audio quality and keep what I have left of my hearing for conversations and nature. Rapid degradation in my sense of hearing.
For me, I think it has more to do with length of exposure. Certainly my fault. Perhaps analogous to social media use and smart phones. To avoid temptation I try to limit then restrict my usage. It seems that some people “blame” side effects of social media usage on social media companies? Is that different for you? Sometimes, it can take some time to realize you’re dealing with a more potent form of a similar experience.
This is simply supply chain updates marketed as an upgrade, similar to how Apple's Vision Pro "2" was just their current chip line shoved into the same form factor.
It represents the company effectively forgetting about it as as a product line, but leveraging the latest chips to keep them selling, even in small quantities.
If they truly invested any amount into updating these things, they would reflect the many lessons learned from the 1.0 product. To have a 2.0's form be 1:1 with the 1.0 is lazy at best.
“Lossless Audio and ultra‑low latency audio preserve every detail of the original recording when connecting AirPods Max 2 to your device via USB‑C”
Since the AirPods Pro 2 that were released last year got wireless lossless, this surprises me: I would have expected lossless without cable in the AirPods Max 2, to the point that I was waiting to buy them.
That’s a shame, as that would be a real differentiator compared to all other headphone manufacturers, wireless lossless audio.
I wonder if you can buy a replacement headband yet, since they have a lifespan of about a year before the mesh collapses. Which probably happens because they are so god-damn heavy.
I really wish the audio technica headband style was more common, even they use it less now. The two winglets as the head contact are just so much more comfortable than literally any other configuration.
Has anyone done a teardown and figured out where all the gravity in these things comes from?
Most offerings (eg Apple Music) already has lossless audio for a while, as does Spotify, as it has been supported for the previous generation of AirPods Max already (ie this is not a new feature) and wirelessly on the AirPods Pro 2.
Why they don’t support it wirelessly on the AirPods Max 2, which should be a superior product to the AirPods Pro 2, is beyond me.
If I had to guess, I think it’s marketing — just like adding weights to the insides to make them feel more “premium”.
I’d guess that the target audience would argue that real lossless music experience requires high-bandwidth wires, and is not possible over the air without degradation.
But that’s the thing, apparently it’s not using Bluetooth but actually uses their new wireless chips to transmit the data over radio (maybe it uses WiFi, maybe something else). So it’s not using Bluetooth, which doesn’t have enough bandwidth for lossless.
I don’t think “it’s just marketing” is the reason, Apple always positioned themselves as the premium option with these things. Being the only wireless lossless headphone would be right on Apple’s expected feature list.
Why do they refuse to add an auto power-off? Like is there any upside to keeping the headphones draining battery when they can tell it's not being used?
I bought the original AirPods Max when they came out a few years ago. They hurt my ears if I wear them for more than an hour or so and the software is garbage - constantly losing one channel or just failing to connect at all - to Apple devices.
Apple has not done enough to fix glitchy software problems, which continue to occur even on the latest AirPods Pro devices. I won’t touch the Max headphones until I start hearing that the software has been fixed.
So much hate for these, but they do one thing really really well, which is handle a full 14 hour flight with no charge and great noise cancellation. That the noise cancellation on the new model is even better will probably make them a buy for me.
The Original Airpods Max had terrible connectivity. The bluetooth would break down for days, and all instructions on the internet would tell you needed to remove the device and re-add it. This was not just a single incident, but kept on happening to LOTS of users. Frustrated, I went to Apple service to learn that they could not fix it and could only replace it for like 70% of a new one.
So, if Apple keeps on building new features while not fixing major problems, I'm not considering buying these unreliable, expensive products at all ...
I have been waiting to for the next version of the Max for a while and I am disappointed that we still don't have some sort of wireless charging solution for it.
My biggest issue with the Max I have now (and why they just don't get a ton of use) is keeping them charged. I would love for a dock or something. I know there are third party solutions but they require putting a little plug into the plug in the headphones, and it is not hard to find issues that people have had with those so I have not done it.
An official solution from Apple would be amazing, something as simple as what the Astro A50 does.
When the max 1 came out I tried them out in a busy apple store back to back with airpod pro 1 and didn't notice that much of a difference with the active noise cancellation to justify double the price.. Is that something that has improved over time with firmware updates?
I've been waiting for this release for a long time. I lost my first gen Maxes and was expecting for a significant upgrade to get a new pair. This feels like a very minor update to the originals and not really a new product.
Considering the modest update and the fact that they lose many of the quality of life features if outside of the Apple ecosystem, which I am becoming increasingly disenchanted with, I will be looking elsewhere.
mhitza | a day ago
I'll be interested in seeing a review on specialized sites. The 20 hours of battery life is impressive.
simonklitj | a day ago
mhitza | a day ago
Strongly assume most tech marketing is focusing on the newer generations of impresionables.
zamadatix | a day ago
fcarraldo | a day ago
saltcured | 14 hours ago
firecall | 13 hours ago
Wired headphones and earbuds seem to be having a moment as well.
wincy | a day ago
Also quite frankly I’d rather just not have to buy them and keep working from home. Listening to music using good speakers is an objectively superior experience.
goblin89 | a day ago
goblin89 | a day ago
Does anyone have experience with obtaining a flatter frequency response from any AirPods, though? While maintaining the full power of noise cancellation.
My experience with Pros has always been that they exaggerate the bass. EQ settings available in Music are coarse, and I don’t know of any other way to control frequency response independently of the app that plays the sound.
I know they are not really best for critical audio work, but they are damn convenient.
smith7018 | a day ago
goblin89 | a day ago
Why can’t they squeeze in that codec, considering Pros have it for years and are a lot smaller?
Edit: apparently I was confusing AirPods Pros with Sony WH models, which have LDAC. I guess there is no chance Apple adopts LDAC, even in their large heavy cans.
steve1977 | 20 hours ago
goblin89 | 9 hours ago
embedding-shape | 20 hours ago
Based on my experience, almost all consumer-grade headphones (in ear and headphones) seem to suffer from this, I'm guessing people tend to prefer bass-heavy over "not enough bass". Not until you start looking at headphones meant for studio-use does it seem to get closer to expected when it comes to the bass.
hackingonempty | 18 hours ago
And there is certainly a way for you to set system wide eq, see what AutoEq recommends.
zamadatix | 18 hours ago
Really quite annoying from the "damn convenient" aspect as well.
barchar | 15 hours ago
iPhone users are kinda out of luck, but the autoeq database can show you how to set Music's equalizer to approximate a flat response
alstonite | a day ago
Apple deciding that, on their 2nd refresh of these (after usb-c), they still aren't going to fix those fundamental issues is very frustrating for what feels like a very disproportionately expensive product (even by Apple standards).
I'm now a very happy QC Ultra 2 user. Can't recommend enough.
gottagocode | a day ago
the-golden-one | a day ago
secalex | a day ago
pointlessone | a day ago
mrcwinn | 20 hours ago
strongpigeon | 20 hours ago
davkan | 20 hours ago
RankingMember | a day ago
hyperhello | 21 hours ago
jmkni | 20 hours ago
kolinko | 20 hours ago
JumpCrisscross | 17 hours ago
Can anyone with a medical background confirm if this is a thing, or folks are just noticing old undulations in their skulls?
hug | 17 hours ago
You have probably fallen asleep on something patterned or folded and have it leave an impression on your skin before: This is no different.
Other places it happens: Watches that are slightly too tight or have ridden up an arm. Glasses arms pressing against your temple or behind the ear. Tight socks after a day wearing them.
It's not a medical problem. It's just general physics.
JumpCrisscross | 16 hours ago
I read “soft tissue on top of” the skull to mean more than a superficial skin depression.
We have layers of connective tissue between the skin and skull [1]. Their damage usually calls for medical attention.
[1] https://www.earthslab.com/anatomy/scalp/
NewsaHackO | 13 hours ago
alstonite | a day ago
One day I felt my head and decided that I was switching as soon as a competitor refreshed.
wavemode | a day ago
phil21 | 16 hours ago
4fterd4rk | 15 hours ago
quietsegfault | a day ago
The QC2 are about half the weight of the AirPods Max, and apparently the mesh in the AirPods Max band sags, and allows the metal bars to "dig in" to your scalp. Enough to cause irritation, but 400 or 500 grams resting on your head can't mess with an adult, developed skull.
ModernMech | 19 hours ago
thefz | 21 hours ago
SunshineTheCat | 20 hours ago
It isn't perfect, but it makes them wearable.
Pretty incredible oversight by a company that focuses so much on "design."
The bands sell pretty well on Amazon from what I can see so this isn't an isolated issue.
bookofjoe | 20 hours ago
asadotzler | 17 hours ago
Look at the marketing materials for Vision Pro using the single strap. Next, look at the marketing materials with the dual strap. Which one of those would sell better into an office context where at least half the population spends considerable time fixing their hair. Which one looks slightly futuristic and which looks like a CPAP headset.
"How it looks" led Apple to ship a deficient strap, one that made the device actually hurt to use. And how it looks is why Apple stuck with that garbage strap for 18 months despite knowing from extensive user research that the dual strap was superior ergonomically, and despite having already done the R&D for the dual strap.
It was only when Apple had mostly given up on Vision Pro, understanding that the user base wasn't going to hockey stick, that fashion was already a complete failure, that they began offering the sillier looking but infinitely more functional dual strap. After 18 months, all Apple had was its existing user base, selling only a few thousand devices a month, so it shifted from growth to sustaining and that's what the dual strap and M5 logic board swap was for, holding onto the few users it has until it could figure out how or if to proceed with the product line.
That's not the case with Apple's headphones. That strap could easily be a lot higher quality without being a lot less fashionable.
doug_durham | 19 hours ago
LorenDB | 18 hours ago
chollida1 | 17 hours ago
You should get checked out. No adult should have a dent put in their skull by headphones.
draftsman | 11 hours ago
aurareturn | 8 hours ago
It's a horrendous headband design. All the pressure is on two thin bands. The middle fabric doesn't actually do anything.
bredren | 14 hours ago
ramijames | 12 hours ago
throwaway27448 | 10 hours ago
barrell | 6 hours ago
I only really wear them at home or when traveling though, so they’re not a fashion accessory for me.
Still wish they would have improved the headband, but if anyone else is struggling with discomfort, I’d recommend wrapping it in yarn XD
delduca | a day ago
4dm1r4lg3n3r4l | a day ago
asimovDev | a day ago
chaosmikey | a day ago
I had the Sony's but returned them after 3 days. I had this issue: https://corychu.medium.com/sony-wh-1000xm6-sound-terrible-wi... I went back to Apple.
owlbynight | a day ago
I maintain a fork of this app, which allows you to quickly set and lock your audio input device, so that they don't switch your audio input device to bluetooth as soon as you turn them on. Mostly because of the first gen of these headphones. They LOVED to keep the mic on at all times with no way to disable that behavior.
I assume it's the same with the second gen.
fbcpck | a day ago
https://github.com/FabulousCupcake/disable-airpods-mic
dawnerd | 20 hours ago
post_break | 19 hours ago
steinvakt2 | a day ago
HumblyTossed | a day ago
loloquwowndueo | a day ago
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/11/introducing-iphone-po...
That’s all you have to understand.
valzam | a day ago
atonse | a day ago
If you try to understand this stuff outside the context of fashion, you'll go around in circles (as I did).
If you see this through the lens of "people will pay anything to signal various things to others" and "you can charge whatever the market will bear" then it all adds up.
p_ing | 22 hours ago
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/mx572zm/a/apple-mac-pro-w...
PaulHoule | 20 hours ago
frantathefranta | a day ago
As someone with an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and a Macbook, I never got into Apple's headphones. My Sony WH-something-4 that I bought refurbished 4 years ago are more than enough for me.
quietsegfault | a day ago
mcs5280 | a day ago
mbb70 | a day ago
joncrane | a day ago
Plus they give juuuust enough features to cover for the true purpose and give you plausible deniability. Same as most luxury items. None truly give the value of the cost (Is a Ferrari 10x as fast as a GR86? Carry 10x as much stuff? Go 10x as far on the same gas load? Etc etc etc)
"Oh but there's nothing like the experience of driving a Ferrari!"
dylan604 | a day ago
Spivak | 20 hours ago
But the market for that last 10% 1% 0.1% does exist. Like yes it's funny to make fun of middle aged guys who buy extremely expensive cars and who if actually tested couldn't tell the difference between a $60k sports car and a $160k sports car and there are plenty of businesses that prey on that lack of discerning taste to take advantage but it doesn't mean the difference isn't there at all.
ryanjshaw | 19 hours ago
bredren | 13 hours ago
That said, my first pair failed out of Apple Care and resulted in a full cost replacement. The APM sub is littered with stories of the BT module failing.
I’m sure it is ludicrous to some but I often measure value by utility and I go through entire workdays wearing this product.
fsloth | a day ago
They just work.
I mean there are other pieces of kit that probably just work as well but with these you don't need to do market research.
It's surprising how non-trivial even _adequate_ sound is still in 2026 and that's what these are guaranteed to give in any situation IMHO.
If you have only one Apple device probably no selling point as such.
genthree | a day ago
In this case these are more expensive than I’d pay for headphones, but that just means I won’t have any Bluetooth headphones in this form factor. Been down that road before, non-Apple was a frustrating waste of money.
I mean FFS my AirPods are worse on Windows and Linux than in the Apple ecosystem, but are still better than the non-Apple ones I’ve tried, even there. It’s not even just the home-field advantage.
fsloth | 18 hours ago
Windows and bluetooth is a really difficult combination. The problem is that for some reason if Windows detects a microphone on the Bluetooth headphone, it switches to a transport mode that a) allows the mic through b) makes the sound sound horrible. So disabling mics sometimes helps there.
zamadatix | 23 hours ago
wahnfrieden | 17 hours ago
Marsymars | 17 hours ago
46493168 | 22 hours ago
H2 chip enables smart audio switching when paired with Apple account + other Apple products. This is a feature that many people find valuable.
dawnerd | 20 hours ago
squidsoup | 18 hours ago
AzN1337c0d3r | 20 hours ago
My H1-chipped USB-C Airpods Max (OG) seem to switch seamlessly between my iphone, ipad, and macbook pro already.
altairprime | 20 hours ago
If you’re unsatisfied with Transparency mode on your gen1 then the gen2 will give you Adaptive which is a big improvement (especially so if you wear them outdoors or around other people). Same improvement that the AirPods had, if you’re familiar with that.
If you use them for videoconferencing, the lower latency and higher quality headset codec may be worth upgrading. They retain value on the used market so long as you unpair them from Find My an hour before you sell them and have a purchase receipt.
I suspect there might be some slight power savings for your transmitting devices if both sides support Bluetooth 5.3, but I would not expect that to be significant or advertised.
thefz | 21 hours ago
You want to be seen in public wearing this object
paxys | 20 hours ago
Mass market Apple products may be expensive but they are still great value. Look at the $499/$599 Macbook Neo for a recent example, but this generally covers iPhones and other Macs, as well as Airpods, Apple Watch etc.
Then there are the $550 Airpods Max, $3500 Vision Pro, $600 storage upgrades, $700 CPU wheels, $230 "iPhone Pocket", $20 polishing cloth...
In the latter category there is no effort to actually compete on price or value, because it is made for people who will blindly buy anything with an Apple logo on it.
1970-01-01 | 11 hours ago
symlinkk | 11 hours ago
energy123 | 9 hours ago
nunez | 9 hours ago
I've tried Bose and Sony; in fact, I have two pairs of QC Ultras sitting in their boxes waiting to be sold. Neither sound as good, even after EQing them as close to the Harman curve as their software allows (with Apple products; I haven't tried them with AptX streaming) and both were slower at cancelling noise. The Bose headphones I tried got decent mics after an update, but they are still unreliable at times.
The Maxes are also heavy, but you don't feel it due to its being very nicely distributed across the head. I've seen scores of people run, walk, and work out in these. I even saw a child using them!
I can't stress how premium the Maxes feel. The cups, for example, don't deform even after hours and hours of wear (and sweat). Replacing them is trivial and they attach with magnets instead of adhesive and/or clips. The headphone band is also extremely strong; much stronger than it looks. They feel like $549. Meanwhile, Bose charges $499 for their QuietComfort Ultras with their slow noise cancelling processors (AirPods use Apple Silicon, which is unbeatable atm) and cheap, plastic body (though part of the headphone band has a chrome finish --- premium!)
All this said, Bose and Sony headphones are significantly easier to travel with, and they have power buttons. This was why I sold my AirPods Maxes the first go around (though I went back to them a year later for the reasons stated previously).
argee | 4 hours ago
hrmtst93837 | a day ago
kotaKat | a day ago
celltalk | a day ago
mingus88 | a day ago
Bose QC Ultra are $450
That is the market for premium BT headphones. There are way more expensive headphones out there.
But yeah it is notable that the Neo is cutting the legs out of the lower end laptop market to that degree.
yomismoaqui | a day ago
rsynnott | 21 hours ago
EDIT: Currently they seem to be 350EUR inc VAT on Irish Amazon; Amazon is making it difficult for me to see the US price and I'm not interested enough to fight with it, but I'm guessing that there's a similar level of discount.
mingus88 | 16 hours ago
https://a.co/d/0jlMl9RC
I see the QC Ultra (first edition) for $299 USD
steve1977 | 20 hours ago
dewey | a day ago
etothet | a day ago
46493168 | 18 hours ago
dude250711 | a day ago
alsetmusic | a day ago
Marsymars | 20 hours ago
gabeio | a day ago
akmarinov | a day ago
unreal6 | 21 hours ago
46493168 | 20 hours ago
By freezing the AirPods, the cold can cause the lining around the wires to contract, temporarily bringing the cracked sections together."
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/airpods-max-freezer-fix/
neild | 18 hours ago
comrade1234 | 20 hours ago
stego-tech | a day ago
As for wired listening? My XM4s sound okay wired in, and at home I’ve got critical-listening kit already. Adding a USB-C cable to the Max is not appealing given that 3.5mm already exists, USB-C cables are heavier than analog audio wires, and more corps block USB ports in general or mess with them in ways that corrupts the audio stack.
Give me wireless CD-quality audio and I’ll be a happy dinosaur. Until then, I have zero reason to upgrade what I currently have.
F7F7F7 | a day ago
stego-tech | 21 hours ago
Tired of accumulating scar tissue and burn marks in the name of shareholder value.
steve1977 | 20 hours ago
But that's only with the Vision Pro, no?
I.e. very short and more or less consistent distance between transmitter and receiver.
46493168 | 18 hours ago
“Ultra-low latency audio and Lossless Audio listening requires a wired USB‑C connection and compatible content from supported apps and services.”
So it doesn’t appear that lossless wireless is supported at all, even with Vision Pro.
steve1977 | 20 hours ago
https://abx.digitalfeed.net/
stego-tech | 14 hours ago
Am I some golden-eared savant? Heck nah. I still listen to electronic mixes in shitty YouTube audio, because a lot of it isn't mastered in CD quality anyhow; I also enjoy leaning back with a good CD rip of classic rock or orchestral jams on my HD800s or my B&W 684s. I like the different experiences these setups offer, but my preference is always for lossless just as a matter of preservation regardless of whether I can hear it or not.
Let folks enjoy what they like, how they like it.
steve1977 | 7 hours ago
If you compare a CD on a proper system with an MP3 on an iPod, you're really comparing Apples to oranges. Also depending on with which encoded the MP3 was created. The iTunes encoder for example was infamous for rather bad quality.
rokweom | 16 hours ago
Subjectively. Objectively, there's no audible difference between lossy and lossless (at usual bitrates).
stego-tech | 14 hours ago
Which excludes 90% of the populace by default, and thus I never bought into the whole audiophile hype anyway. Let folks enjoy what they like, on the equipment they like. I ain't here to judge, just share.
stephc_int13 | a day ago
Passive noise cancellation beats active hands down. (no weird air pressure, reliable, no need for batteries, less expensive) Analog and wired beats bluetooth if you care for sound quality, portable DACs are very good in 2026. Professionals are using BeyerDynamics and Sony headphones made for studios and almost unchanged since the 90s for good reasons.
The only good reason to opt for wireless is for practical reasons when you are running, and you want smaller models.
Also, this design is kind of ugly and dated.
GaggiX | a day ago
Edit: also has a proper cushion on the headband.
nielsole | a day ago
* occasional deafening screatch when there's too much moisture. I'm surprised they didn't need to recall them over that
* occasional reboots when you move it a bit on your head.
Unfortunately in apple-manner they don't mention if such issues were resolved with this v2
neom | 20 hours ago
zamadatix | 23 hours ago
BoneShard | 22 hours ago
windows_hater_7 | 20 hours ago
BoneShard | 19 hours ago
dc_ist | 20 hours ago
darknavi | 20 hours ago
olelele | 20 hours ago
tchalla | 20 hours ago
sqnfxn | 20 hours ago
Dangeranger | 18 hours ago
Footprint0521 | 12 hours ago
There’s some random form of someone out there who figured this out, so credit to them, but this fixed mine (I couldn’t bear transparency mode for the longest time lol)
BlobberSnobber | 20 hours ago
I sent them to support with a very good description of the problem, came back the same, “cannot reproduce”.
It seems support workers for both companies just connect them to an audio source and check if sound comes out relatively alright.
dc_ist | 20 hours ago
TrainedMonkey | 17 hours ago
proee | 20 hours ago
rkomorn | 20 hours ago
The XM5s were super uncomfortable to me (to the point I was relieved when they got stolen) and I ended up going back to Bose even though I liked the sound quality on the Sonys better.
lurkingllama | 20 hours ago
yokoprime | 19 hours ago
asmor | 17 hours ago
ChrisArchitect | 20 hours ago
PaulHoule | 20 hours ago
paxys | 20 hours ago
embedding-shape | 20 hours ago
goblin89 | 20 hours ago
Yet, with that taken into account, today the latest DT 1770 Pro still cost over 20% more than the latest AirPods Max.
Considering Apple markets Max for audio work, they compete on the same turf. This makes Apple’s offer unusually cost effective, not the other way around. I think this can be attributed to their fragility and inferior sound quality relative to DT 1770 Pro (at the end of a decent signal chain).
embedding-shape | 19 hours ago
Not sure where you're looking, but seems I paid 535 EUR for my beyerdynamics (and that's what Amazon sells them for right now too), meanwhile these Apple headphones cost 579 EUR, so seems it's opposite really, studio-grade headphones being cheaper than the consumer-grade hardware Apple sells.
> Considering Apple markets Max for audio work
They might be marketed like that, because it influences what wealthy consumers chose to buy, but AFAIK, no one is sitting with AirPods Max in their studios for work, at least from what I've been able to tell.
goblin89 | 19 hours ago
Both products in US on the site of respective manufacturer. Maybe you bought the older model (which by the way has higher impedance, so dedicated amplifier is a must, take it into account when you calculate the price).
> no one is sitting with AirPods Max in their studios for work
People absolutely use them for serious work. They are much more of a personal product though, and there are other factors that would make an average studio disinclined to invest in them, like fragility and cost of repair and a whole bunch of unnecessary for a studio features.
Of course, when the studio already has all the rest of the hardware, soundproofed room, etc., it could actually be cheaper to buy cans that do not in fact include ANC, DAC, Dolby, amplifier, etc., and maybe even enjoy a bump in audio quality while at that. For someone who does not have that, it is often simply not a practical choice.
nomel | 19 hours ago
I wouldn't be surprised if Beyerdynamic has similar, if not more, margin.
bdcravens | 20 hours ago
altairprime | 20 hours ago
The Bluetooth chip & version in these won’t be the same one you have today, so there’s no guarantee that present experience will inform future experience (better or worse).
bdcravens | 19 hours ago
BowBun | 20 hours ago
piskov | 20 hours ago
It is unwise to dismiss their prowess
porphyra | 20 hours ago
paxys | 20 hours ago
bayindirh | 20 hours ago
Angostura | 20 hours ago
alt227 | 20 hours ago
wahnfrieden | 17 hours ago
jandrewrogers | 20 hours ago
The built-in Apple audio DSP, amps, etc have surprisingly good fidelity. Much higher quality than you would expect from consumer hardware. They even provide high-impedance headphone jacks on their recent computers.
squidsoup | 18 hours ago
gumby271 | 12 hours ago
astrange | 16 hours ago
thorncorona | 20 hours ago
sony xm6 -- 30h
bose qc ultra -- 24h
would recommend the sony anc headphones, they're quite good.
46493168 | 19 hours ago
AirPods Max with USB-C and AirPods Max 2 appear to be the only headphones among this group (XM6, QCUltra2, AirPods Max with USB-C, AirPods Max 2) that support both Audio over USB-C and automatic charging while in use.
derencius | 5 hours ago
neuroelectron | 13 hours ago
dijit | 20 hours ago
That surprised me... I buy every in-ear AirPods Pro without much deliberation, even the Pro 3 which measurably regressed on sound. The heart rate sensor and ANC bump were enough.
I say that to clarify: I wanted to want these.
But it's death by a thousand cuts. The weight alone I'd live with. The case I'd accept. No IP rating on something I'd like to wear outside.. fuck.. fine, annoying, moving on. But all of it together, at that price, with that much time to fix any of it? Hard pass.
I've gone for the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2 instead. More expensive, noticeably worse ANC. But you can hear where the money went. The drivers, the feel, the fact that four hours in you've stopped thinking about them. It sounds like it was made by people who find audio interesting.
Apple used to feel like that.
Embarrassingly, it also has no IP rating: somewhat hilarious from a company in West Sussex, where "unexpected sunshine" makes the local news. And the ANC versus Sony is less a gap than a... uh "chasm".
The question I'd put to anyone in this thread still weighing it up: are you buying the best headphone, or the most convenient one? For in-ears those are the same answer. For over-ears, I'm not sure they are.
piskov | 20 hours ago
Then
> I decided to buy the Bowers & Wilkins Px8 S2
Have you seen its frequency response?
dijit | 20 hours ago
Much further away from Apples marketing as "best airpods yet" for an all-rounder product.
throwaway290 | 20 hours ago
dijit | 20 hours ago
ex-aws-dude | 20 hours ago
The pricing on these always seemed a bit crazy to me, like the value is way off compared to other Apple products
throwaway290 | 20 hours ago
steve1977 | 20 hours ago
On the other hand, the flagship Sony is quite a bit less than AirPods Max.
ruszki | 19 hours ago
steve1977 | 18 hours ago
Marsymars | 17 hours ago
barchar | 15 hours ago
momoschili | 20 hours ago
Paria_Stark | 18 hours ago
bayindirh | 18 hours ago
I also have nice, but not over the top equipment. Yes, some of them sound nicer and more detailed (you can't compare large, 100W/channel bookshelf speakers with headphones, can you?), but for getting 95% of what they provide without any effort is pretty worth it.
Last, but not the least, Apple used Wolfson DACs in their iPods for most of their lifetime. Their replacement DACs are not worse than the Wolfsons, but probably even better.
skeeter2020 | 16 hours ago
this is something you believe about yourself, but an oxymoron for everyone else.
bayindirh | 16 hours ago
Its meaning has distorted as much as how the word hacker is distorted.
Yes, I love listening to music and quality audio, but don’t have a soundtrack to benchmark systems. My bar is simple: Do I enjoy what I hear? It doesn’t have to fit into a recipe. It should be enjoyable, period.
A pair of Apple AirPods can be as enjoyable as two $10K speakers powered by a separate stack costing $20K. It’s akin to loving that hole in the wall restaurant as well as that Michelin rated one. Both are enjoyable in its own sense.
Well, I use the same amp, turntable and tuner for the last 30 years, and the same CD player and speakers for the last 10 years.
Changed the speakers since I had no space for the older Akai set, and replaced the CD player since the older one was acting up.
Replaced the Logitech Bluetooth receiver for a Fiio DAC last week since I found one for a bargain.
Everything is connected with high quality yet 30 year old cables.
I believe that’s a pretty sane evolution for someone who grown up with music, and performed some.
yunwal | 14 hours ago
KaiserPro | 2 hours ago
THe biggest difference that most people hear is EQ. (oh these are very bassy, or too clean, etc, etc)
The people that have external DACs are almost certainly hearing a difference in EQ rather than _quality_. Is that a problem? for me I couldn't care less. However when that starts bleeding into advice or gatekeeping, then it becomes an issue.
(I am a former sound technician for both recording studio (analogue and digital) theatre and TV)
astrange | 16 hours ago
That's only for spatial audio.
bayindirh | 16 hours ago
From my experience, Apple can sometimes “forget” to tell things.
astrange | 7 hours ago
bayindirh | 7 hours ago
Adaptive EQ? Apple says otherwise [0].
What I was talking about was the "realtime" adaptive EQ tuned by pods' inward facing microphones.
What I argued was, this adaptive EQ also uses the calibration data from personalized spatial audio data.
[0]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/111863
zamalek | 17 hours ago
The Apple tax makes me extremely skeptical that I would get $500+ worth of sound quality, however ANC upsets that equation quite a bit. For around the same cost I could get a much better set of DAC+Amp+Headphones but it would sound objectively worse in a noisy environment.
You also can't experience true lossless on any bluetooth audio output device, for what that's worth (many "true" audiophiles would fail an A/B test for AAC).
The previous generation were also REALLY bassy, and there's nothing wrong with that, bassy headphones are how to make things sound "fun" and that's why the likes of Beats make so much money. That categorically makes it not audiophile, though, because it just takes an EQ/pre-amp to achieve the same effect (which can be toggled on and off).
Ultimately, my most basic issue with these is that if you're willing to blow 500 bucks on headphones, then going modular (DAC+Amp+Headphones) will give you more room to explore something that you apparently really enjoy.
ebb_earl_co | 13 hours ago
zamalek | 11 hours ago
mft_ | 6 hours ago
Leaving the rest of your equipment aside, those would be the first options I'd consider in the Airpods price bracket.
ranger_danger | an hour ago
Pretty sure you can... there's no technical reason you cannot use BT purely as a digital-only lossless data carrier. Whether or not current devices exist that work this way may be another story though.
Aurornis | 14 hours ago
ubermonkey | an hour ago
I have a nontrivial listening rig in my house. I've spent thousands in headphones over the years (which happens quickly at $300-500 a pop). The finest ones I've owned MIGHT edge the Max out in certain conditions, but
- The Max add ANC - The Max are wireless - The Max are seamlessly integrated with the rest of my Apple gear
so to me that makes them the go-to -- so much so that I actually sold off the other headphones when we moved last year. I just wasn't using them.
The tl;dr is that the Max -- even the first gen -- do indeed perform very, very well.
bayindirh | 20 hours ago
$549 is pretty reasonable if the headphone has the sound detail it's advertising. Given how AirPods Gen 3 sounds, I'm sure that thing sounds pretty amazing.
porphyra | 20 hours ago
e.g. Bowers & Wilkins PX8 ($699), Focal Bathys ($849), Sony WH-1000XM6 ($399), Kef Mu7 ($399), Bose QC Ultra ($449)
kakacik | 19 hours ago
Don't pay the novelty price shortly after release, these go down quite a bit after introduction, ie last year Sony are basically the same device.
arccy | 18 hours ago
margalabargala | 18 hours ago
Where do you see these at 150? Lowest I see is 250.
elicash | 17 hours ago
https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B0B6GHW1SX
aram99 | 14 hours ago
mwelpa | an hour ago
mvdtnz | 16 hours ago
Yeah. We know. It's just hard to understand how anyone can value headphones at this price. It's lunacy.
dzhiurgis | 15 hours ago
I have a lot of Apple gear, these would be obvious next choice because of integration, but I struggle to justify why otherwise. They heavy, going to pain to repair and cost much more.
porphyra | 15 hours ago
It's kinda like, who decided that TVs and phones should cost the same? Or who decided that a khinkali should cost 3 times as much as a xiaolongbao?
halayli | 14 hours ago
porphyra | 10 hours ago
neya | 10 hours ago
> The cost of something doesn't always correlate with the technology, components, and material
Doesn't this actually contradict what you claimed originally, though?
neya | 10 hours ago
You just casually threw in these claims without backing them up, when it has been proven that the Sony model (and even the others) you listed outperformed the Airpods pro in those exact departments at the time of its launch.
porphyra | 10 hours ago
I also have "etc" in my first sentence, which may include such things as: a stylish aluminum exterior, bells and whistles such as spatial audio, a more seamless bluetooth connecting experience with Apple devices, and so forth. These do not matter for everyone, but some people clearly care about that.
It seems that you are quite belligerent and trying to pick a fight across many of my comments. Why?
neya | 9 hours ago
Sorry, this is not the case at all, I am just trying to understand the justification for your original comment on the justification of the price (and quality).
Apologies if it came out too aggressive.
drob518 | 15 hours ago
Wowfunhappy | 13 hours ago
ubermonkey | an hour ago
NoPicklez | 15 hours ago
porphyra | 10 hours ago
neya | 11 hours ago
The difference is also Apple neither has the audio legacy of those companies nor the quality of those products to warrant that kind of premium. To Apple, it is just another market they can go after, but a lot of those companies built their entire foundations on audio. You are not going to convince me Apple is in the same category as the company that invented the Walkman and CDs.
Also, if you look into the teardown videos, it's really a cheap driver from China - all plastic, not even using aluminium for the basket, just literally hard-glued onto the body. It's not repairable nor eco-friendly. It's anti-consumer. Sony uses Aluminium housing for their drivers and they are the cheapest in the lot.
KaiserPro | 2 hours ago
Ex studio tech here. Legacy doesn't cover contracted manufacturing.
I'm not defending apple here, but using chinese drivers (which I assume is a synonym for poor quality) is fine so long as they are binned for performance, and matched/tuned to housing. I'm assuming the mic inside the ear cup is there to do dynamic EQ.
Also the drivers are screwed into a solid aluminium housing, so they aren't glued.
NS10s which are the standard reference mixing speakers were chosen not because they were high quality, but because they were average. If you could get your mix to sound good on those, it'd sound great anywhere.
So yeah, they are expensive. Would I buy them? probably not. I'm reasonably happy with my plantronic jobbies. Are they perfect? no, are they comfortable? yes. Is the active noise cancelling actually effective? also no, but then ANC is only really useful for a small subset of noises types. (even on Sonys. )
bombcar | 20 hours ago
Shebanator | 19 hours ago
Kon5ole | 19 hours ago
Before hearing-tuned EQ became a thing, trying headphones was like trying food. No matter what someone else said it was no guarantee you'd like the sound. Conversely, you might find a cheap pair that sounded spectacular to you. The APM will sound very good to just about anyone, with the hearing test EQ applied.
I think every headphone maker (or better yet, DAC maker) should have this feature. Audiophiles are often old, a hearing test EQ can make them hear music like they're 20 again, and they'll pay for it.
hackingonempty | 18 hours ago
Foobar8568 | 8 hours ago
Anyway, I own a Meze 109 pro, and cheap iems with 3M hearing protection that I use when my commute is too noisy. Replace nicely my old ANC headphones.
mft_ | 6 hours ago
Can I ask which, please?
j3k3 | 19 hours ago
As long as a pair exists on the demand curve, Apple can charge that price.
Computer0 | 19 hours ago
butlike | 19 hours ago
asdff | 19 hours ago
That is literally the sole moat of these companies: minimum orders from china and the fact we can't spend the ad money they can to move that volume quickly. Not tech or offering a good deal. Just being there already with money and doing the inevitable. Being the more productive drug dealer quicker to move the kilo to the captured audience and bankrolled to get the next several and scale.
mixmastamyk | 18 hours ago
asdff | 17 hours ago
philjohn | 14 hours ago
Picked up a spider-based power meter for around £290 and a big computer for £150. Both are great, and work just as well as their western counterparts costing significantly more.
interludead | 19 hours ago
ActorNightly | 18 hours ago
Every single one of their products is overpriced to appear premium.
vrosas | 17 hours ago
gehsty | 16 hours ago
tjmc | 14 hours ago
Aurornis | 14 hours ago
Premium products usually have higher margins.
dmazzoni | 13 hours ago
If you want Apple-quality headphones to go with your MacBook Neo, the USB-C Earpods are $19:
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/myqy3am/a/earpods-usb-c
officerk | 5 hours ago
davidhunter | 5 hours ago
To give 3 examples:
1. The marginal value of these products is in the mind of the individual buyer. No individual is buying both the AirPods Max 2 AND the MacBook Neo for personal use. You can’t compare marginal value across two different individuals.
2. The MacBook Neo has a different set of substitutable goods vs the AirPods Max 2. This affects margin. AirPods Max 2 buyers are likely heavily bought into the Apple ecosystem already.
3. With the Neo, Apple are in some sense subsidising entry into the Apple Ecosystem and ‘getting them young’. Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s zero or negative margin. With the AirPods Max 2 they are exploiting people who are already bought into the ecosystem. Margins will be high.
ubermonkey | an hour ago
I say this because I was able to compare them to my own $400 Sennheisers (which are somewhat awkward because they're wired, and really require a headphone amp to shine), and found the Max to be just as good.
There are also a number of online reviewers who've said the same thing, among them developer, Tumblr millionaire, and headphone addict Marco Arment. He famously described the Max as his favorite closed-back headphone.
dav43 | 20 hours ago
Repair bill at Apple was 90% of the cost of a new pair.
Truly the worst built product I’ve bought from Apple.
Never again.
abtinf | 20 hours ago
It just sits there, with no one touching it. Suddenly, music randomly starts and stops playing. Take it into the Apple Store, they acknowledge it’s a known hardware defect to start registering non-existent touches, and they refuse to fix it. Offer to replace it with a refurb unit for like ~$20 less than a brand new unit.
Edit to add: the unit is less than 2 years old.
bombcar | 20 hours ago
thoughtpalette | 17 hours ago
forthwall | 20 hours ago
I've been enjoying the nothing headphones, I enjoy having an off button and ability to connect via wire to the device.
gnarlouse | 20 hours ago
roughly | 20 hours ago
StefanKarpinski | 20 hours ago
1. Still just as heavy. The AirPods Max sound quite good, but they are very heavy, to the point of being fairly uncomfortable after listening for any longer amount of time. This release as the exact same weight as the originals (13.6 oz).
2. Still no off button/position. They stay partially on unless you put them in the awkward and useless "case", which means they're constantly out of power when you want to use them. There's even an obvious fix: the ear cups swivel flat, they could just make this the "power off" position. Solved. But they didn't, so presumably these still have the same problem. There's also no mention of magnetic charging via stand, which would be another way to help alleviate this problem.
If these were even a few ounces lighter and powered off properly, I would buy them for sure. Given this announcement, I guess I will look for something else to replace the old AirPods Max.
infocollector | 20 hours ago
However, the Bose headphones just haven’t worked as smoothly for me from a software and integration standpoint. I tend to run into more glitches and small issues compared to the AirPods Max. I’m not sure whether that’s primarily a Bose issue or something related to Apple’s ecosystem, but my guess is that other high-end headphones probably face similar integration challenges when paired with an iPhone.
On the bright side, Max is very reliable.
microtonal | 18 hours ago
The weight hasn't been an issue for me.
46493168 | 20 hours ago
If you set your AirPods Max down and leave them stationary for 5 minutes, they go into a low power mode to preserve battery charge. After 72 stationary hours out of the Smart Case, your AirPods Max go into a lower power mode that turns off Bluetooth and Find My to preserve battery charge further
[Archive link, as the latest Support doc doesn't have this wording any longer]
[0]https://web.archive.org/web/20210315052229/https://support.a...
femiagbabiaka | 19 hours ago
> When stored in the soft, slim Smart Case, AirPods Max enter an ultra‑low‑power state.
xxpor | 19 hours ago
iAMkenough | 18 hours ago
If for Find My, why stay in "low power" mode for days before moving to "ultralow power" mode? Is silly.
tombot | 18 hours ago
ruszki | 19 hours ago
StefanKarpinski | 19 hours ago
StefanKarpinski | 19 hours ago
frizlab | 18 hours ago
I know I have had this issue and did not have it after reset. Though I do have another annoying, and seemingly unique issue: sometimes, when adjusting the position of the headphone, they do a “click” (and a loud one), and just shut down. After a few seconds, they boot up again.
The farthest from the last reset, the more often it happens. I have no idea why.
LoganDark | 16 hours ago
mh- | 12 hours ago
I'd suggest experimenting by disabling both and trying to repro. Then re-enabling the features one at a time.
I've never triggered it on the Pro by merely speaking loudly, but they're earbuds and farther from my mouth. What does trigger it for me reliably, is sneezing.
Hippocrates | 18 hours ago
nebula8804 | 18 hours ago
There have been times where the AirPods Max have sort of crashed, and I cannot get them to connect properly. I find that forgetting the AirPods in the phone/computer and then resetting them by holding down the button allows them to start fresh with a new state. Maybe that can help resolve the issue for you. But Im constantly switching them between three nearby devices so maybe thats why I have this problem. Just throwing it out there in case you haven't tried a reset.
avalys | 17 hours ago
phil21 | 16 hours ago
I have latest firmware and if I forget to place my Max's in their case they are at half power or less within a few days.
As such they get used a lot less than I would otherwise. One of my more wasteful purchases in the past few years.
That and the super annoying behavior where two floors away they decide to randomly pair with my Mac Studio when someone Slack Huddles me or whatever, then I need to fiddle with settings to get my airpods pro to connect instead.
This is coming from someone who thinks the Airpods Pro are downright magical in how well they work.
Could be because I also pair them with regular old Bluetooth from a PC in addition to the Apple ecosystem. The earbuds likely don't have the same issue because they inside a case and are fully turned off when not in use.
Sound quality honestly isn't that great either, but I suppose that's more inherent in headphones in general vs. speakers than anything to do with them specifically.
drcongo | 19 hours ago
santiagobasulto | 19 hours ago
frizlab | 18 hours ago
Caveat: after a while the mesh at the top starts to stretch, and then you get the two metal bands going straight into the head, and that hurts. And the worst part is: this mesh is not replaceable :( There are silicone band-aids that can be bought, but I would have very much preferred for a possibility of repair to exist…
1123581321 | 15 hours ago
It's kind of like standing desks; some people are able to go all day with it with the right setup and feel better than if they had sat. Others feel miserable after a few hours. Neither is wrong but they may not understand the other's experience, or what they might be doing differently that affects their results.
QuiEgo | 19 hours ago
The killer feature for me is the deep ear cups. All the Sony headphones touch my Dumbo-sized ears and get crazy warm, the APMs don’t.
krferriter | 16 hours ago
The one major downside to the Airpods Max is that they do not have an off button and the case is useless for throwing them in a duffel / backpack, as it doesn't protect the headband mesh at all. I have a 3rd party hardshell case for them but it is very unreliable in actually putting them in "ultralow power mode", so the battery drains.
neonscribe | 14 hours ago
larrik | 19 hours ago
jerlam | 18 hours ago
killingtime74 | 17 hours ago
chihuahua | 17 hours ago
whynotminot | 16 hours ago
tech_hutch | an hour ago
menno-dot-ai | an hour ago
georgespencer | 16 hours ago
It's self-evidently extremely disingenuous to claim that Apple bought Beats for their "exquisite metal weight technology", so I thought I'd double check your claim that there are "metal weights" inside Beats headphones.
All of this appears to stem from two blog posts, written by the same VC.[^1] The first time they accidentally tore down counterfeit Beats, and when they managed to repeat the process, they "stuck by [their] claim" that:
> "…these metal parts are there to add a bit of weight and increase perceived quality with a nice look."
The BOM estimate they provide lists the following metal parts:
* Inner cast metal separator
* Springs
* Torx screw
* Self tapping screw
* Cast metal supports
* Stamped metal ear cup
None of these are extraneous weights not serving a purpose. The claim of the author might be better presented as:
"Beats headphones use heavier metal components instead of plastic ones, and I think it's because they add weight."
There are a lot of very good reasons to use materials that dampen unwanted interference like parasitic vibrations. Stiffer materials such as metal parts typically flex less, and have fewer (but usually more pronounced) resonances than plastic parts, which have intrinsic damping but might distort.
A good example of this is that the driver in your headphones is moving. Therefore the housing it is placed in must consider sprung/unsprung mass. Adding metal components increases the mechanical impedance.
So:
1. It is entirely possible that your claim about the weights is correct, and Beats chose to use metal components rather than plastic purely to add weight to the product.
2. There are a great many other possible explanations for using metal rather than plastic, and I don't think that you're likely to be party to them. For example: maybe they had the parts in-chain already and didn't want to have to tie up hardware engineering or supplier quality engineering for a new plastic part.
[1]: https://beneinstein.com/how-it-s-made-series-yup-our-beats-w... (the one where they tear down real Beats)
UqWBcuFx6NV4r | 15 hours ago
whaleofatw2022 | 14 hours ago
raw_anon_1111 | 12 hours ago
JSR_FDED | 10 hours ago
Cultural cachet of Beats - note how Apple kept the brand.
Jimmy Iovine & Dr Dre showed them how to tap into a new demographic.
It helped Apple get up and running with streaming faster, they needed to compete with Spotify.
AdamN | 4 hours ago
KoolKat23 | 2 hours ago
Beats brand basically disappeared after that or at the least has become "uncool".
Apple had iTunes already, they very well could've acqui-hired and improved their service themselves.
Apple music slowly died and is only becoming resurgent now, many years later.
menno-dot-ai | an hour ago
kevin_thibedeau | 14 hours ago
Seems excessive. They should do something like forged carbon to cut weight and have removable gravity enhancement.
zeagle | 10 hours ago
hnlmorg | 5 hours ago
Meanwhile I had Sennheisers and they could take an absolute beating and still work fine. While also being plastic and cheap looking in comparison to other brands in the same price packet.
cozzyd | 14 hours ago
Waterluvian | 14 hours ago
raw_anon_1111 | 12 hours ago
SanjayMehta | 14 hours ago
But my favourite hack was a Sennheiser model which had foam inserts to dampen the sound. 555 - foam = 595
nickpeterson | 16 hours ago
-Boris the bullet dodger
wil421 | 16 hours ago
People compliment my Jabra’s voice quality otherwise I would’ve switched already.
dandelany | 16 hours ago
vbezhenar | 14 hours ago
hnlmorg | 5 hours ago
However I tried to wear them one on a train commute and it was horrid. Walking around with them really isn’t fun precisely because of their weight.
Every head movement feels like hard work and the headphones don’t even feel stable on your head during any movement due to the weight.
So I end up owned two headphones (well, technically 3):
1. AirPod Max for focus time
2. Sennheiser earphones (in ear) for commuting / exercise workouts.
3. Sennheiser DJ cans for DJing, video streaming and other times when I need wired, zero latency, audio.
jnrk | 44 minutes ago
andrei_says_ | 14 hours ago
ldaw | 11 hours ago
Still though, I think this is just a case of Apple making them heavier purely for a premium feel.
plussed_reader | 11 hours ago
input_sh | 7 hours ago
I know my way around premium wireless headphones and I'd wager most of them within that price range are somewhere between 250 and 320 grams (like 8.8 oz to 11 oz).
steveBK123 | 4 hours ago
Much prefer lighter Sony or Bose top of line
e40 | 4 hours ago
steveBK123 | 3 hours ago
interludead | 19 hours ago
0x457 | 18 hours ago
crimsontech | 17 hours ago
doug_durham | 19 hours ago
StefanKarpinski | 19 hours ago
lanza | 17 hours ago
foxwell_1959 | 19 hours ago
s1mon | 18 hours ago
vessenes | 15 hours ago
joemi | 15 hours ago
s1mon | 13 hours ago
I have a pair of the first generation AirPods Max. They leave dents in my scalp if I wear them for any real amount of time. I've been an Apple person since the 1980s. This is one of the most disappointing Apple products for me ever, and I really don't want to know how much $$$$$ lifetime customer value I've contributed to Apple's bottom line.
billforsternz | 10 hours ago
Using 3 digits of precision also avoids being temped to use the rather niche ,2 convention when claiming to embrace a region as large as the rest of the world.
sashagim | 9 hours ago
billforsternz | 8 hours ago
zarzavat | 4 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#/media/File:...
htk | 19 hours ago
htk | an hour ago
pradn | 18 hours ago
pwatsonwailes | 18 hours ago
mikestew | 18 hours ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47403183
pwatsonwailes | 16 hours ago
That being said, AirPods use a steel frame construction to get the weight up for the same reason. There's a whole thing with weight in neuromarketing for luxury and luxury-adjacent products. There's fringe benefits acoustically to using it, around resonance mainly, but mostly it's to get weight and influence perception. Same reason as the knock-offs, different mechanism.
mikestew | 15 hours ago
Noting that you have no way of knowing that. Not that you’re necessarily wrong. I just read some reviews on the Beats Studio Pros and…the reviewer noted the amount of plastic used in the construction, while complimenting the light weight. Pick a lane, folks.
reaperducer | 18 hours ago
The work-around I use is to plug them in to the charging cable for a couple of seconds. They wake up, the green light comes on and everything is fine.
It's a strange problem, but it's not the specific problem you think it is.
infecto | 16 hours ago
krferriter | 16 hours ago
infecto | 4 hours ago
Second the sensor on the XM5 is known to be flaky. These are about a year old and already acting up.
It’s just a poorly built and poorly designed headset for me. I cannot even count the number of times I don’t notice they are on until the next day and they are dead.
zimpenfish | 2 hours ago
Currently wearing my XM4s and was really confused by the "physical off button" because ... I'm looking at them and they just don't? Where is it? What?
Then I realised that I'm old and, to me, "physical off button" means a sliding switch, a hardware disconnect, etc. (such as exists on my pair of Plantronics BackBeat PRO 2), not a pushbutton that triggers a software power-down (which the XM4s most certainly do have.)
FlyingRobot | 12 hours ago
infecto | 4 hours ago
butterlesstoast | 15 hours ago
aram99 | 15 hours ago
beloch | 13 hours ago
These Airpods appear to have ear-cups made entirely of aluminum, which is an odd choice. Plastic cups are typically more than strong enough and aluminum is actually a fair bit denser than magnesium. That's a lot of weight for no good reason. Aluminum is a great material for some things, but Apple seems to be using it for everything even when its not appropriate.
anthonySs | 13 hours ago
expected way more from a refresh tbh
baby | 11 hours ago
StefanKarpinski | an hour ago
EagnaIonat | 11 hours ago
The noise cancellation was intentionally downgraded at a certain point. Because one pair worked until it also got an update.
Second issue is both stopped working. No idea why and both shortly after AppleCare ran out.
They are very expensive and it’s just not worth the risk.
unselect5917 | 10 hours ago
And then they just won't connect. Requiring searching how to reset them, then doing it, then they still might not connect.
It sucks because they noise cancelling is amazing and they sound fantastic... when they work.
maest | 10 hours ago
ffsm8 | 9 hours ago
My noise cancelling started to go flaky until I stumbled upon that - after I've dried it off after every use and stopped using the "case" /store pads separately from headphone things improved a lot again.
It feels like a serious design issue, I'm really confused why so few people talk about it, but I guess it's because most are just casual users of the headphones with people only wearing it a few minutes a day... And the water only really build up when you're wearing it several hours without taking it off
distartin | 9 hours ago
mikehall314 | 6 hours ago
The noise cancellation went flakey, the auto-switching went flakey, they would crash [1] if lifted one cup from the side of my head. Apple ended up replacing them completely, but then the new pair eventually developed all the same faults.
I hope some of these are addressed in the new models, because despite all this I really enjoy them as headphones.
mikehall314 | 5 hours ago
dubbie99 | 2 hours ago
zer0zzz | 9 hours ago
#1 reason I use the Sony XM4/XM6. Sometimes I wonder if they intentionally do this to appeal to a younger crowd cause as an older person with neck issues it’s just not a very good product.
The audio quality of the Sonys is just as good but the comfort is a much better. I think I like the mic on the AirPods Max better but the mic on the MacBook I use in meetings works as well for meetings.
ubermonkey | an hour ago
I've worn these for multiple cross-country and transatlantic flights, and have not noticed them being too heavy for comfort, but that's definitely gonna be a personal thing.
>which means they're constantly out of power when you want to use them.
I have not found this to be a serious problem, assuming you put them in the case. Even out of the case, though, they keep a charge a while -- which I unfortunately know b/c I lost my case on a plane a while back.
I have the original model. I haven't seen a huge need to upgrade so far -- mine still work great, have excellent battery life, and so replacing them isn't on my radar. Honestly there's a real chance mine will hang on long enough be the last remaining Lightning-connector thing in our house.
vinay_ys | 20 hours ago
Irritating thing is how Apple hides bluetooth headphones pairing 2-3 clicks deeper than AirPods pairing – on iPhones and Apple TV.
_ks3e | 20 hours ago
tempaccount420 | 15 hours ago
hnburnsy | 11 hours ago
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/AirPods+Max+Teardown/139369
>The next round of frustration: adhesive. That's right, releasing the locks and/or removing the screws isn't enough. Out comes the heat gun, which must be wielded very carefully to avoid melting all this plastic.
nozzlegear | 19 hours ago
Can't you just create a Shortcut on the iPhone to pair with whatever you want via bluetooth in a single tap? Or just edit the control center menu itself and add the Bluetooth button directly to the control center?
timothyduong | 19 hours ago
As for ATV, yeah that thing is deep
gib444 | 17 hours ago
My (non apple) Bluetooth devices almost always need a manual connect step
next_xibalba | 20 hours ago
theonemind | 15 hours ago
ModernMech | 20 hours ago
seizethecheese | 20 hours ago
But more interestingly: what happens at a company like Apple that leads them to not cancel this product and come up with something totally new? Is it that the success of their other products pulls this along so well that they are numb to this product being a dog? AirPods Pro (the earbuds) are a great product, so perhaps the headphones org just doesn't have to face the music?
nomel | 19 hours ago
Some people don't like anything in their ears. Some people have ear canals that don't work/aren't comfortable with "standard" tips. This is why headphones will always exist.
rswail | 5 hours ago
I hate normal headphones because they make my ears get sweaty and are heavy and uncomfortable.
Gigachad | 16 hours ago
nielsbot | 14 hours ago
oliyoung | 16 hours ago
I'm in the suburbs of a middling Australian city, nothing special and not in particularly high socioeconomic areas
There is at least two people per bus wearing them (or at least very good comps), they're as common as Sony XM5 or XM6's and while they're not Airpods penetration, they're wildly popular for their pricepoint
sonar_un | 12 hours ago
flakiness | 19 hours ago
(The internet is so polluted that I cannot find any reliable recommendation today so I'm doing a mini "ask HN" here.)
ohmahjong | 19 hours ago
They do have some annoyances like not always sleeping correctly when left connected to my laptop, but overall they are easy to recommend
vorpalhex | 19 hours ago
Conference calls? Get soundcores.
Actual music? Buy proper open backs and a DAC.
adolph | 19 hours ago
https://ploopy.co/headphones/
drcongo | 19 hours ago
bloggie | 19 hours ago
intrasight | 11 hours ago
My personal best bang-for-the-buck are the Yamaha Orthodynamic HP-1 headphones that I bought at an estate sale last year for $10 and paired with a JDS Labs amp for $100.
Audiophile headphones in the '70s cost $100-$200. That's like $600-$1200 in today's dollars. Are the AirPods "audiophile" level? Many people think so.
drcongo | 19 hours ago
For my kids I got Anker Soundcores, and for the price they are astonishingly good.
Ignore the thing about open-backs though, I have some extremely high end Grado open-backs and barely use them. My primary hobby outside of work is making music and I have a dedicated studio at home with expensive sound damping / proofing - the only reason to ever wear the Grados is if I'm going to be wearing them for hours on end. Even then, the Sonys are comfortable enough that I've never reached a fatigue point in them.
bigyabai | 19 hours ago
timothyduong | 19 hours ago
- Top tier general: sennheiser Hbd 630
- good enough: sennheiser momentum 4 (affordable)
- good ANC and “bassy”: Sony xm5/xm6 (‘muddy’ for some)
- I like the Bose ANC profile: Bose QC2
All of them have bad microphones (worse than wired ear pods)
All of them have good to great ANC
All of them are wireless
If you need a good mic then get dedicated headset for calls. Otherwise settle for “ok”
I didn’t include bathys/marklevin cause the new senn 630 outplay them on all fronts.
symlinkk | 11 hours ago
Yeah this is why people just buy AirPods Max.
outlore | 19 hours ago
bwv848 | 19 hours ago
timothyduong | 13 hours ago
Also base DACs from a MBP M1 (max) were fine to drive it for me. Both HD600/XX
bwv848 | 7 hours ago
robotswantdata | 19 hours ago
For all day online calls, Jabra evolve2 65 are hard to beat for the price.
LorenDB | 18 hours ago
janfoeh | 18 hours ago
The ANC is not in the same league as a $300 pair, but one certainly would not expect them to.
nagisa | 17 hours ago
papa0101 | 16 hours ago
panda888888 | 19 hours ago
Until they make the ear cups tilt horizontally, these will be a no-go for me. My ancient 10+ year old Bose QCs 35s can pivot and are a million times more comfortable.
oidar | 19 hours ago
drnick1 | 18 hours ago
theYipster | 18 hours ago
Can anyone with experience with either the AirPods Max 1s or XM-6s tell me what they feel like to sleep with on an airplane (business class with a lie flat bed?) Plane travel is my primary use-case for these type of headphones.
Dangeranger | 18 hours ago
sashank_1509 | 18 hours ago
Now I wonder if AirPods Max 2 is even better than AirPods Pro 3 but we are soon reaching the point of diminishing returns. So to all kindred souls who hate noise, Pro 3 is probably good enough for your use cases!
mrcwinn | 17 hours ago
nebula8804 | 17 hours ago
I’m someone who bought three generations of AirPods Pro, as well as an AirPods Max. All four devices have been absolute headaches.
The first AirPods Pro had the rattle‑gate issue. I was able to get it replaced under warranty, but it was a pain to deal with until the recall program came out.
Ok I chalked it up to a first gen product and I generally liked it when it worked so I decided to upgrade to the second generation because it offered more features and I hoped that it improved reliability.
I upgraded, and I immediately got the rattle‑gate problem again, this time right past the warranty period. There was no recall program for second gens, and when I went to the store they told me the headphones were damaged and I was out of luck.
I try to maintain these devices extremely carefully, but I guess my use of isopropyl alcohol to disinfect and clean them damaged the ANC microphone. I’ve never dropped the AirPods, yet they still failed.
While being super frustrated with the Pro 2 I ended up buying the pro 3 but reconsidered after what I was told about the status of the Pro 2 but I missed the return window by a few days. After these Pro 3 fail, I just don't want to give them any more money for headphones.
I saw the Airpods Max on sale for Black friday a while back so I gave them a try as I was getting ear issues wearing in ear devices for so long each day. While they are very comfortable, the ear caps are a pain to clean.
They absorb sweat and oils over time and do not make it easy for them to get released when cleaning with detergent and water. it’s a massive effort. Im scrubbing with a toothbrush to clean, disinfect and then extensively drying them with a heater. All of this is taking 1+ hour each 1-2 weeks.
I am someone who is trying to maintain all my equipment as much as possible and this "woven texture" feels great but is not great for maintenance lifestyle.
Luckily ive accepted that the cheapo 20$ ear caps on Amazon are good enough and I just toss old ear caps after they become too hard to clean and buy another replacement set. I also have to disassemble the headband and use a special cleaning solution I found on Amazon, which smells like its just laundry detergent to prevent the headband from darkening from regular skin oils.
Now I’m starting to get very occasional "tinny" type of rattling with ANC enabled, as other people have indicated here as well.
These damn things are too expensive to have all these stupid issues. I’m really desperate for something more repairable and maintainable than this junk.
I had a sennheiser wired unit before this and those things lasted years with the only replacement being the ear caps like once a year.
As it stands, I may have spent close to $1,000 on this over the years, and I am just sick and tired of it. They’re not bad products when they work, they’re absolutely GREAT when they work. But man, all this headache when they dont work is just ridiculous at this point.
wahnfrieden | 17 hours ago
theonemind | 17 hours ago
wahnfrieden | 15 hours ago
unknown2342 | 6 hours ago
iwontberude | 17 hours ago
shell0x | 17 hours ago
astrange | 16 hours ago
theonemind | 12 hours ago
unselect5917 | 8 hours ago
I can tell you haven't heard a leaf blower in a while, if ever. The revving the operators inevitably do causes it to bounce up and down over the spectrum at completely random-seeming intervals. Punches right through ANC, windows, doors, walls.
As if that's not bad enough they pollute more than a gigantic SUV because of how much oil they burn being a two-stroke.
jaybyrd | 17 hours ago
Gigachad | 16 hours ago
tempaccount420 | 15 hours ago
Gigachad | 15 hours ago
amelius | 16 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_Multipla#/media/File:Fiat...
mlmonkey | 16 hours ago
KeplerBoy | 16 hours ago
smusamashah | 16 hours ago
Also got a nothing Ear. They are very comfy, and have very good sound. But transparency mode in those is awful. Other things are bad too.
omnimus | 15 hours ago
I actually have their budget brand CMF Buds 2 plus and they are straight up great even before you consider the price. Pretty good headphones are commodity now, everybody makes them. Apple is just winning the branding game.
mlmonkey | 13 hours ago
nout | 10 hours ago
asdff | 15 hours ago
fruitworks | 15 hours ago
crooked-v | 8 hours ago
pokstad | 15 hours ago
65 | 14 hours ago
auggierose | 5 hours ago
aucisson_masque | 15 hours ago
dzhiurgis | 15 hours ago
hsbauauvhabzb | 15 hours ago
Does that mean 50% better, or 150% better? Sure does look like weasel words.
hnburnsy | 11 hours ago
hsbauauvhabzb | 8 hours ago
It doesn’t change how iffy the wording is though.
2muchcoffeeman | 15 hours ago
I can buy a laptop for that money.
It’s strange to me that they haven’t introduced a more budget friendly line to serve different segments, like most of their product categories. Headphones aren’t an experimental hobby product.
Where are my $200 budget pair?
kemayo | 15 hours ago
awad | 15 hours ago
FinnKuhn | 15 hours ago
ainch | 13 hours ago
65 | 14 hours ago
cm11 | 14 hours ago
It's slowly made less sense to buy directly from Apple in recent years. Not a criticism just an observation. I assumed Apple was simply okay with that and decided it was net better for them. Seems reasonable. There was a period not that long ago where you could only buy directly. And there still are some products that are seemingly only on sale at specific retailers—Homepods have for whatever reason never (rarely?) been sold on Amazon, but are at Best Buy. Often you'll see like the latest Airpods for sale cheaper on Amazon/Costco/Target/etc. immediately even before launch day. The whole Apple experience is nice in its own way and sometimes I suppose you get small but nice little dopamine hits buying directly or going to the nice stores and having someone walk you through stuff (if you need/like it) so there's reasons some people go direct. Simply saying there's less reason than before and so I'm surprised and curious as to how this little section of the website came to be.
Do they want that margin back? Do they want to fight a little bit to keep you in more parts of the chain (but I guess not to the point of restricting sales/inventory to themselves)? Is this just like one PM (measured on one KPI) fighting for a little web real estate (presumably against the PMs involved in the retail partner channels)?
catgirlinspace | 14 hours ago
neuroelectron | 13 hours ago
testbjjl | 12 hours ago
mvkel | 12 hours ago
testbjjl | 7 hours ago
mvkel | 12 hours ago
It represents the company effectively forgetting about it as as a product line, but leveraging the latest chips to keep them selling, even in small quantities.
If they truly invested any amount into updating these things, they would reflect the many lessons learned from the 1.0 product. To have a 2.0's form be 1:1 with the 1.0 is lazy at best.
mr-pink | 12 hours ago
stingraycharles | 12 hours ago
Since the AirPods Pro 2 that were released last year got wireless lossless, this surprises me: I would have expected lossless without cable in the AirPods Max 2, to the point that I was waiting to buy them.
That’s a shame, as that would be a real differentiator compared to all other headphone manufacturers, wireless lossless audio.
anArbitraryOne | 11 hours ago
jhogendorn | 11 hours ago
I really wish the audio technica headband style was more common, even they use it less now. The two winglets as the head contact are just so much more comfortable than literally any other configuration.
Has anyone done a teardown and figured out where all the gravity in these things comes from?
linux_devil | 11 hours ago
keyle | 11 hours ago
hnburnsy | 11 hours ago
>(5) Ultra-low latency audio and Lossless Audio listening requires a wired USB‑C connection and compatible content from supported apps and services.
Soooooooo Apple, you gonna tell us which content, apps, and services are compatible?
On another note, it seems excessive that your marketing page for this product needs 22 footnotes, disclaimers, and legalese consisting of 1,252 words.
stingraycharles | 9 hours ago
Why they don’t support it wirelessly on the AirPods Max 2, which should be a superior product to the AirPods Pro 2, is beyond me.
nlitened | 5 hours ago
I’d guess that the target audience would argue that real lossless music experience requires high-bandwidth wires, and is not possible over the air without degradation.
stingraycharles | 3 hours ago
I don’t think “it’s just marketing” is the reason, Apple always positioned themselves as the premium option with these things. Being the only wireless lossless headphone would be right on Apple’s expected feature list.
dijit | 2 hours ago
You could still be talking about bluetooth and it would still be “data over radio” technically.
throwaway27448 | 10 hours ago
drsalt | 10 hours ago
tptacek | 10 hours ago
ttul | 10 hours ago
Apple has not done enough to fix glitchy software problems, which continue to occur even on the latest AirPods Pro devices. I won’t touch the Max headphones until I start hearing that the software has been fixed.
JSR_FDED | 10 hours ago
sulam | 8 hours ago
trymas | 4 hours ago
Sony WH-1000XM and Bose QuietComfort can do 24h on bluetooth + ANC if not more.
rpozarickij | 8 hours ago
I couldn't use neither AirPods Max nor AirPods Pro (1st generation) because they were making my tinnitus noticeably worse.
I have no such issues whatsoever with my Sony WH-1000XM4 and a few other ANC headphones I've used.
faizan199 | 4 hours ago
tianshuo | 4 hours ago
So, if Apple keeps on building new features while not fixing major problems, I'm not considering buying these unreliable, expensive products at all ...
46493168 | an hour ago
steveBK123 | 3 hours ago
ulfw | 3 hours ago
Putting a 2022 chip into the most overpriced headphones and that's the only update is... wild in 2026
nerdjon | an hour ago
My biggest issue with the Max I have now (and why they just don't get a ton of use) is keeping them charged. I would love for a dock or something. I know there are third party solutions but they require putting a little plug into the plug in the headphones, and it is not hard to find issues that people have had with those so I have not done it.
An official solution from Apple would be amazing, something as simple as what the Astro A50 does.
t1234s | an hour ago
Normal_gaussian | 53 minutes ago
nsbk | 47 minutes ago
Considering the modest update and the fact that they lose many of the quality of life features if outside of the Apple ecosystem, which I am becoming increasingly disenchanted with, I will be looking elsewhere.