Apple last week unveiled 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, and are available today, Tuesday, December 15th.
Patrick O’Rourke for Mobile Syrup:
First off, the AirPods Max build quality is beyond anything I’ve encountered before with over-ear headphones, including Sony’s WH-1000XM3, Beats’ Solo 3 headphones and several other over-ear sets from Bose and Sennheiser; they’re truly on another level.
Everything from the mesh canopy to the removable earcups and aluminum coverings feels decidedly premium. On the sound quality side of things, the Max feature crisp audio and a wide sound stage that excellently balances the highs and lows of various types of audio, including music, podcasts, television/movies and more… Apple’s AirPods Max are my favourite over-ear headphones that I’ve ever used — and given their price tag, they should be…
The knit mesh canopy running along the part of the AirPods Max’s band that actually touches your head is also a cut above anything I’ve experienced before with over-ear headphones. At times, it feels like the headphones aren’t even touching your head… The memory foam cushion earcups that can easily be removed and attached to the AirPods Max through magnets are very comfortable. Similar to the headband, it feels at times like I’m not wearing headphones at all. The cushions are also great at removing outside noise…
Where the AirPods Max truly shine is in the audio quality department. They are the best-sounding headphones I have ever encountered, surpassing even Sony’s WH-1000XM3s (I haven’t used the 1000XM4s but to my understanding, the sound quality is nearly identical to their predecessors), several of Bose’s higher-end headsets… The AirPods Max handle bass excellently, don’t distort audio at loud volumes and generally feature the widest sound stage I’ve ever encountered in a pair of headphones…
MacDailyNews Take: O’Rourke goes after the rather awful case pretty hard in the full review, but it deserves it. It’s not as bad as the Siri Remote because it’s just a case, not something intended to be used so intrinsically, but it’s nonetheless horrific that it even made it past initial prototyping, much less being shipped.