Apple on Tuesday announced AirPods Max, innovative wireless headphones that bring the magic of AirPods to an over-ear design with high-fidelity sound. AirPods Max combine a custom acoustic design, H1 chips, and advanced software to power computational audio for a breakthrough listening experience with Adaptive EQ, Active Noise Cancellation, Transparency mode, and spatial audio. AirPods Max come in five gorgeous colors, including space gray, silver, sky blue, green, and pink.
Matthew Panzarino for TechCrunch:
First, they’re gorgeous. The earcups are beautiful. The band is incredibly sturdy. The netting feels like a high-end piece of furniture. The stems are very well done, with a precision pull out mechanism that acts like a precision milled car piston.
The netting, the ear pads, the clever (though now somewhat common) magnetic centering and clasp. The tuck and roll of the earcup covers providing an invisible seam as they attach to the body. The single piece of aluminum each of the ear cups is made of. How high quality is the build here? Like, this shouldn’t ship for $550 high. Judging from materials execution alone, the AirPod Max feels like it should be more expensive if anything.
There is a tradeoff here that I feel I must mention even in this early review, though: These things are heavy… If you have very high end headphones, you may be expecting this kind of weight, most people I think will not be… the crown feels almost exactly like an Apple Watch crown, with maybe slightly more tension. The Siri functions work totally fine, either with a long press of the crown or a ‘Hey Siri’. The earcups have precision detection of position so you can pause by simply lifting one cup.
Taking the headphones off and setting them down turns them off, there is no power button. This feels super natural and nicely Apple-ey. Just put them on to use and take them off to stop… Ok, that’s it for now, more as I continue to check them out. Shortly: super high quality, very heavy, sound solid so far.
MacDailyNews Take: All very high quality headphones come with some weight. As we said on Tuesday, “These gorgeous new premium headphones will sell like crazy. Bravo, Apple!”
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]