AirPods Max: Compared to What?

All headphones reviews are subjective. There are very few ways they can be measured objectively. The ways in which objective measurements can be done rather miss the point for most people in most cases. The main thing anyone wants to know about headphones is how they sound. No one can tell you that because no one has your hearing. And they do not evaluate sound in the same way you do. That makes writing a headphone review feel pretty futile.

This is why headphone reviews are comparative reviews featuring two or more popular headphones in a similar price range and designed for a similar purpose. I am going to do my best not to do that. For one thing, I have not owned the most popular headphones in this range. So I have nothing with which to compare them. For another thing, I hate reading and writing those types of reviews. To the extent possible, I want a product to stand or fall on its on as a value proposition.

If you need another reason why I will not write such a review, it is because I have no idea what products to compare these headphones to. Is Apple really trying to compete with the Bose 700s? The feature set suggests a comparison. But the price does not. Bose and Sony do have offerings that are obviously designed to go head to head in the same market.

While there are headphones filling the $500 to $1,000 consumer space, I have never even been in the same room as those other offerings. I know what others have said about them. It might help if I start there and try to explain the headphone marketplace. It will explain some of the quirks found in the AirPods Max. But it will not lead you to a proper comparison. Here we go:

A bigger market than you first imagined

There is a good chance that the vast majority of humans who will ever own a pair of headphones are at the extremely low end of the market. For the purposes of this writing, I am using the word to mean anything that goes, in, over, or around the ears to deliver sound from an electronic device. Most people will only ever use what came with their smartphone. When they break or get lost, people will just replace them with something similar. They simply don't see the point of getting more than the basic device.

It is a little like computer monitors. Most people never purchase a monitor beyond what came with their computer. If they have to replace it, they get the cheapest thing they can find. The only reason people are not still buying CRT monitors is that no one still sells them. You are wasting your time trying to explain to most people why they need a better computer monitor. Headphones are the same.

We are still dealing with people who listen to their music and talk on the phone over the speaker, and that is while they are in public. These people don't care about quality headphones. They don't care to use them at. All. I hate those people. (Sorry, dad). My point is that the fattest part of the market by a large margin is the lowest end of the market. When it comes to headphones, it is not the fat middle; it is the fat bottom.

The next level are the people who want something a little better than what came bundled in the package. Mind you, they don't want anything great. They just want something noticeably better. Fortunately, it is easy to take a giant leap in quality for relatively little money. The average person believes that $50 headphones are way too expensive. But if you want to take a dramatic step up from the bottom, spend about $50. This represents the best sound most people would ever care to hear from their smartphone, music player, or portable game console.

As we go up in price, the improvements get smaller and the audience shrinks dramatically. You personally know very few people who would willingly pay $100 for a pair of headphones. I am not wealthy. But I wouldn't even consider a pair of headphones for less than $100. My starting point is between $150 and $200. But I'm a freak. $100 headphones are better than $50 headphones. But it is a difference almost no one will hear because almost no one buys $100 headphones. At that point, we are firmly in niche territory.

My point is that the market for low-end headphones is completely different from the midrange market. I am in the midrange market of $200 - $400 headphones. While $400 headphones are very expensive, they are not the high-end. They are the upper mid-range. Tech geeks and music enthusiasts will sometimes breathe that rarified air. Many will mistakenly believe they are in the high-end market. They are very wrong about that.

High-end headphones for consumer purposes might be between $500 and $1,000. This is the territory Apple wants to claim. They want to be the value proposition for the high-end consumer headphone market. The vast majority of people reviewing these headphones, including me, don't know the high-end market at all. They believe a good comparison is the Bose 700. I believe this is not the case. Apple is going for something more ambitious.

In the high-end range, you will find headphones that use planar magnets which are more rare and more expensive. They also tend to sound better than anything on the market according to the people who have reviewed them. But those headphones aren't really designed for walking around town. They are designed for home listening. I will cover this more in a moment.

First, I want to close out this section by mentioning the headphone market that goes much higher that $1,000. That is the low part of the professional headphone market which gets into multiple thousands. As headphones get more expensive, they get more specialized and have a much smaller audience. But that audience exists, and would consider $2,500 headphones a bargain. The fact that you might not understand or appreciate that market is irrelevant. It exists. AirPods Max play in a market that will be new to most of the people who read blogs like this one. Now, let's talk about use cases for headphones:

Your headphone situation

The headphones you choose greatly depend on your headphone situation. There are roughly 4 major categories:

Casual use on the go - $0 (with product) to $200
Serious listening on the go - $200 to $500
Luxury listening at home - $500 to $1,000
Professional use in studio - $1,000 to infinity

You can get plenty of headphones used by professionals for $200. And you can get casual use headphones for several hundred dollars. There are always exceptions. The above categories are very broad generalizations that don't apply to everything. But if you know nothing about the headphone market, that is a good place to start.

So the first question to sort is what is your headphone situation? The vast majority of humans are in category 1, and will never get out of it. If you care about sound quality but not much, you should not spend more than $200. If you don't care about sound quality, you should not spend more than $100. If you need your headphones to be excellent generalists and don't mind spending more, Your choices get interesting.

Up to the $500 range, headphones are often generalists. If they have a small plug at the end or no plug at all, they are aimed at consumers. If they have a big plug at the end, they are probably geared toward something more professional. That is not always true. But it is a general rule. The large plug is used for professional or prosumer gear.

Good generalist headphones can do it all pretty well. The music is okay. There are extra features like ANC. These days, you also get transparency mode. They are often wireless with the option to be wired. Sometimes, there are other features. They need to be ready for anything, including longe listening sessions while on the go. They are not perfect at anything. But they are good at most things. And you need to be prepared to pay for the privilege.

Above this generalist range is the specialist headphones. You will often find what is know as audiophile headphones. These are geared to the highest fidelity audio that is well beyond the average consumer's interest or ability to discern. It is all about the purity and perfection of the music. Forget about podcasts. You can usually forget about extra features. These don't have ANC because that might damage the audio fidelity. Forget about wireless in most cases. Forget about wearing them while running errands.

These headphones are open-back, meaning they leak sound. They are not intended to hold the sound in. This gives them a more airy and spacious feel. You will not be wearing these on a bus. They often need to be plugged into other gear such as a headphone amp. That is an utterly ridiculous piece of equipment most consumers would not understand. You use these headphones while at home, in a comfortable chair, with uncompressed music in some format no one has ever heard of except for desktop Linux users. This can get to be a very expensive indulgence.

Many professionals use headphones from DJs to airplane pilots. There is no point in trying to describe this use case. When I was a semi-pro music producer, I used $200 headphones and did just fine. But real music and movie producers are convinced they need multi-thousand dollar headphones. I could kind of explain it but it doesn't matter. That has nothing to do with the AirPods Max.

The challenge is figuring out what situation Apple was going for. I believe they were eyeing the value-priced audiophile market rather than the high-priced generalist market. But there can be no denying AirPods Max have characteristics of both. It seems they want to straddle the line. That leads to some very confused reviews as no one really knows what to compare these headphones to.

Size, weight, and fit

I hate over the ear headphones. I just hate in-ear headphones even more. I have the Powerbeats Pro, AirPods Pro, and Bose QC Buds. The all have different fits. But the constant is that my right ear is a little bigger than my left. Things fit in my left ear much better. The right earbud often fits loosely and I have to fiddle with it a lot to keep it in and properly seated.

There is also the earwax factor. All ears produce wax, some, more than others. Mine are in the latter category. That means that even a good fit doesn't stay that way for long. They tend to slip over time. There is also the problem of shoving something in your waxy ear that pushes wax further into your ear canal. That same wax also gets into the earbuds, requiring meticulous cleaning. None of that is much fun, nor is it necessary with over the ear headphones.

Full headphones always stay seated properly. They might not be comfortable. But they don't tend to move around once place. When you are dealing with noise cancelation, you need the headphones to form a complete seal in or over the ear. And that seal has to remain rock solid. I find that only happens for me with full headphones.

The biggest problem for me to overcome is head squeeze. The way headphones keep the tight seal is to squeeze the head like a vice. I find headphones by Beats to have too strong of a vice force, especially when wearing glasses. The AirPods Max also have a relatively strong vice force, but not so strong that I feel like taking them off from time to time to relieve the pressure. They offer enough vice force to achieve and keep a good seal, and nothing more.

As other reviewers have noted, the Max headphones are quite heavy compared to other consumer generalists. But they are not heavy when compared to audiophile headphones. It is a tradeoff. Big magnets are heavy. The steel and aluminum are also heavy. But these are also the components that make the headphones sound great and last a long time. The weight is what one would expect at the high end of the market. I will also add that I got used to the weight after a day or two. I don't even feel it anymore.

Apple did manage to keep the headphones rather thin considering all they have going on inside. They do not look bulky on the head. However, they will take up a chunk of real estate in your bag. Some people will not want to take these headphones out and about. But I believe they were intended to be worn like generalist headphones, not just listening to pristine tracks at home in the listening room. Here are a few reasons why I think so:

They do not support the kind of lossless tracks that audiophiles would have at home.
They are wireless and don't come with a cable in the box as they would were they aimed at the at home market.
They come with a much that protects against scuffs, presuming they will be carried in a bag with other items.

The size, weight, and fit are well within the range of normal for audiophile listening. But other features suggest a more generalist purpose.

Music to your ears

Everything sounds good through these headphones, including podcasts and broadcast TV. But they were clearly made for music and movies. Having never listened to audiophile headphones, I can't say how they stack up. But those who have done that comparison report that AirPods Max stack up very well. They are not as good as $1,000 headphones. But at $550, they don't have to be. The sounds strikes at the low end of the audiophile range. Make no mistake about it: That means it is better sound than you have ever heard from a set of headphones.

Almost all agree AirPods Max produce the best sound of any wireless headphones. I believe the market is the audiophile market that craves pristine sound, but also wants to get out of the house and bring that quality with them. Once you take audiophile headphones out of the perfect listening environment, they are no better than any pair of generalist headphones. They might even be worse because they are encumbered with a wire and they usually don't have noise cancelation. So the purity of the sound will have to compete with environmental noises. The environment wins every time.

In the real environment of everyday life, I suspect the AirPods Max are better than the majority of audiophile headphones because they were made for the real world outside of listening rooms. The sound you get in a quiet place is the sound you get on the subway or in a coffee shop. This is partially due to the most excellent active noise cancelation (ANC). It is also due to the headphones performing adaptive equalization. There are microphones inside the Max that hear what you hear, and adjust the sound accordingly so that it stays balanced regardless of the environment. Take that audiophile headphones!

I think it is fair to call these audiophile headphones if you think of them as audiophile on the go. That is not really a category. But I believe it is the category Apple is trying to create. That is why there are so many generalist features packed into cans that are much higher quality than any generalist headphones on the market. Apple is making a bid for the audiophile market without the audiophile limitations. The sound, alone, tells me they have achieved this goal.

High-end sound

There are a couple of features you can look for in high-end headphones with regard to sound. The first is low distortion. Cheap headphones distort with base. The higher the volume, the worse the distortion. That high volume is mostly wasted because you back off the dial until the distortion goes away. High-end headphones don't perceptively distort. Distortion is an expensive problem to solve. And Apple has solved it with the AirPods Max.

Another expensive problem to solve is bass boom. You want thumpy bass, not boomy bass. Boomy bass tends to overwhelm the subtleties of vocals and other instruments. I suspect the singing voice and lyrics are not the point of tracks that feature such bass. But if you want to hear more than a tone that makes your teeth rattle, you need a better set of headphones than the ones you have right now.

Good headphones will give you a bass-induced skull fracture without destroying the fidelity of everything else. The bass is present but separate. Everything else has to be able to cut through it. Again, this is an expensive problem to solve. And Apple has solved it. This is true of audiophile headphones as well. There are other aspects of high-end sound that AirPods Max don't quite manage. But the ones they do are the ones most people can hear. There are more subtle differences most people couldn't hear even if you pointed them out. I believe Apple focused on the aspects of sound that matter.

Trying to avoid any jargon related to sound, I will summarize it by saying the AirPods Max sound fantastic. Bluetooth is not an issue as near as I can tell. I cannot tell the difference between wired and wireless sound. This is as good as bluetooth audio gets. You will not notice. The only time you will want the wire is for zero latency recording and mixing.

These headphones are worthy of sitting in your comfy chair, in your quiet place, with your pristine tracks. You are going to love the way your music sounds. It is better than what you get from generalist headphones. It gives you some idea of audiophile sound without spending a thousand dollars.

ANC and transparency

If you are familiar with AirPods Pro, the Max is better in every way. ANC works better, in part, because there is no slippage. The seal around your ear remains unbroken. The intensity of the noise cancelation does not make you functionally deaf. But it can lower the sound in a noisy coffee shop to the point where you can't recognize the song being played over the speaker. You know that music is playing. But you want know what song it is unless you really concentrate.

You will hear environmental noises because no ANC is good enough to make you functionally deaf unless you already are halfway there to begin with. However, these do as good a job as I have ever heard. I'm a longtime fan of Bose ANC. It is generally very good. Some say that Sony is even better. But many reviewers say the AirPods Max is even better. Best is relative. You are going to be very pleased with how these cancel noise.

Transparency mode is a way of letting in the noise. You want that for when you need to hear sounds around you without taking off the headphones. The best transparency mode would be the mode that was indistinguishable from sound without the headphones. I doubt that can ever be achieved. But AirPods Max come pretty close.

You can hear everything including the sound of your own voice in a very functional manner. You don't have to speak loudly or ask people to repeat themselves. You can hear just fine from across the room or from another room entirely. You never have to do that awkward gesture of lifting a single ear cup. Just tap the transparency button and get on with your life as usual.

There is a way to turn both features off altogether. That would probably save battery life. But by default, you are only choosing between ANC and transparency. That is really all you need. There are no shades of grey like on other headsets. You are either all in on transparency, or all in on noise cancelation. I actually prefer it this way.

Usability

It is not enough that the headphones be good. The headphones also have to be usable for your situation. I have been using AirPods Max as my only headphones for days. I use them at my desk when working. I use them to podcast and edit video. I use them for sit-back music listening. I use them to walk the dog. I use them on public transportation and walking around in NYC. (That is a very noisy city). I use them for everything, all the time. And I use them more than I have used any other headphones I've own.

I find them to be very good in all those use cases. When it comes to long listening sessions, I have many thoughts. When I leave the house, I put in or on headphones and never take them off until I get back home. The battery has to last for hours. They have to be comfortable for hours. And I don't want to have to fiddle with them at all except to control my media.

Since I have owned AirPods Max, I put them on in the morning and don't take them off until the evening whether or not I leave the house. I just never take them off. I don't run into situations that require me to take them off. Noise cancelation is outstanding. But when I need to hear, I just press a button and never have to worry about missing anything.

I never have a situation where I feel compelled to take them off. They are not uncomfortable to me. I am very used to the weight. And I have had spine surgery on my neck this year. My C4 - C5 have been fused with hardware. I expected it to be a problem. It isn't, not in the slightest. I also don't gets sweat head from wearing them. The fabric-covered pads are the most breathable I've used. Bose has the most comfortable offerings in the short run. But over time, your head will get hot and sweaty.

With AirPods Max, there is no reason to take them off unless you just want to. They last all day, they are not uncomfortable. You can hear as much of your environment as you like. And wen you switch to another Apple device, the headphones switch with you. Oddly enough, the only time I don't want to have them on is in front of my large television driven by an Apple TV 4K. That is 10 lb. of wrong in a 5 lb. bag.

Movies

AirPods Max are the best movie-watching headphones at any price as far as I'm concerned. There is one huge caveat: You have to be watching those movies on an iPhone or iPad. It hardly gets crazier than that. Sure, you can use them with your Apple TV like any ordinary bluetooth headphones. But they are nothing special in that role. When they can invoke spacial audio, they are worth their weight in gold. They can only do that on iOS devices with motion sensors.

Spacial audio makes movies feel like you are watching them in a theater. It is not just the sound placement and crazy-wide soundstage. It is the feeling like the audio is coming from a big screen in front of you that doesn't move when you do. No one has ever been able to explain this well and I am going to give it up as a bad job myself. I will just say it will blow your mind. It will also work on AirPods Pro. It just seems a little better and more immersive on the Max.

This trick also works with content other than movies. It works with Hulu. That is how I get TV. So even news casts get spacial audio. Once you turn on spacial audio in settings, it works for everything where it is possible. It even has another trick up its sleeves. If you put your phone in your pocket, the sound will be a bit off to the side. But give it about 10 seconds or so and the sound will automatically reorient to directly in front of you. I sometimes watch a football game on my iPad mini placed to the left of my keyboard. The sound will situate itself as if it were coming from the computer monitor in front of me. The spacial magic still works when I turn my head from one side to another.

None of this works with an Apple TV or a Mac. I am in front of those screens all day. So I have to watch things I care about on a small screen or sacrifice the best audio experience available. It is maddening madness. I don't care about the excuses for why it is this way. Apple could have made this work had they wanted to do so. No one should be forced to watch video content on a tiny screen. As delightful as this feature is, Apple has found a way to make it frustrating and disappointing. That is the opposite of surprise and delight.

Automatic switching

Automatic switching is a feature shared by all headphones with the H1 chip. That would be AirPods Pro, Powerbeats Pro, and AirPods Max. This works on apple devices running MacOS 11 and iOS 14. When you put on or in one of these headsets, the device you are using automatically recognizes them and switches to them as the output. If it does not switch, it gives you a notification that gives you the opportunity to switch to them with one click. It is a fantastic feature if you are all in on the Apple ecosystem. But it is meaningless for everyone else.

If you are all in on the Apple ecosystem, you will find headphones without this feature to be frustrating. I suspect people who recommend Sony products are not in the Apple ecosystem to the fullest extent. They are used to compromises imposed by Windows PC and Android phones. They might have one Apple product amid a sea of other branded products. They will undervalue exclusive features like spacial audio and automatic switching. Being all in on the Apple ecosystem, I can say these features are priceless. I have come to dread using my other non-Apple headphones.

Conclusion: Intangibles

I really like the AirPods Max. But I find it difficult to say why I should keep them and not return them for a full refund. The sound is great. But is it great enough for the price? According to the experts, it is. But I am not convinced that any sound is worth $550 no matter how good it is.

For that price, you can pick up a pair of Bose or Sony headphones and a pair of AirPods Pro for less than one pair of AirPods Max. That is a great combo worth recommending as the ultimate, headphone package. That is also an easy package to justify. Are there drawbacks? You bet. But they are drawbacks you can probably live with.

And that is where I will leave things for now. That is not the end of my headphone journey. The next chapter will be coming after a brief period of testing. Testing what, you ask? Stay tuned...