AirPods Max Review: Luxury Listening!

[Music] so [Music] hey what's up mkbhd here i figured it out i got it i understand airpods max now now it took me a couple days of listening and comparing and taking notes but i got it so the original question when these headphones were surprise announced was why is apple making 550 dollar wireless noise canceling headphones they better either sound incredible or have some kind of unreal feature to be worth that much over all the other headphones that we already know are good right well here's my take on where these fall so there's actually two types of high-end headphones right the first would be like reference type like studio grade actual production headphones so these are going to be lightweight they're going to have a super flat sound signature you're going to wear them for hours and hours on end and you often need extra hardware like a mini preamp or something like that to drive them they are geared for production and then on the other side there's just luxury listening there's just nice headphones that sound great for music and and podcasts and movies and and all kinds of consumer oriented features so you might have noise cancellation they might be wireless that's the other type they're geared for consumption so now this new pair of very expensive headphones i'm glad they didn't call them airpods studio because they land squarely in that second section of luxury listening and it was kind of confusing to pin them there at first because they do have a bunch of features and a bunch of really weird quirks that actually kind of resemble the other world i'll talk about those in a minute but fact is these headphones check a set of boxes that no other set of headphones i've ever tested can claim to check it's a really odd combination of pieces here but let's just start with the design right off the bat it's metal so these headphones have aluminum ear cups that get cold to the touch when you're outside in the winter and stainless steel headband frame here and so right away they've already started to differentiate themselves because virtually every other pair of high-end headphones or really any headphones out there are made of plastic but this metal build is dope it's got super tight tolerances the ear cups are even this like satin finish which i think would look even better as matte black apple why'd you send me the green one and the telescoping headband doesn't have notches but it's really smooth and it takes a lot of pull to move so it feels high quality too and the button and the digital crown up top are super nice they feel really high quality so if the metal build is so great why are these like the only pair of headphones doing the metal thing why are the rest of them all plastic well turns out the reason you don't see metal headphones very much is because all these other headphone companies have done the research and one of the primary factors for comfort for wearing headphones for a long time is their weight and metal is heavy much heavier than plastic so they've all realized that and they've all done plastic headphones because that's so much more comfortable to wear for a long time so this is something airpods macs have to work around so they do their best with this really thin flexible mesh in the top band that's supposed to sort of evenly distribute some of the weight on top of your head but there's no getting around that these are heavy headphones it's kind of like driving an electric car if you keep it in a straight line you can forget that it's heavy but as soon as you hit a corner you remember it's a heavy car and so for me if i sit still with these headphones for a while i totally forget the weight they just kind of sit on my head like a pillow but the second i nod my head or stand up to look at something or look up i remember they're quite heavy for the numbers people about 380 something grams versus 250 ish grams but you know what these do a pretty great job with the metal compared to how it could have been i have exactly one other pair of headphones that's made completely of metal and it's these remember these these are the beats pros 400 bucks all metal headphones and they bragged about how they're all metal and these did a terrible job with it these weigh 450 grams or something like that they're way heavier and they're about the least comfortable pair of headphones i've ever worn they pinch you right on the right underneath your ear they're on ear for some reason instead of over ear harsh they're brutal they squeeze your head like a lot unless your head is shaped like this which it's not so yeah it could have been a lot worse but then some other quick design notes there is no apple logo anywhere on these headphones so the design is actually it's actually kind of grown on me over the past few days it looks pretty clean and like i said matte black would look pretty sweet and also you should know there's no sweat or water resistance here so if you're an athlete or if you're looking to make these your gym headphones you want to walk around the city while it's raining or snowing or something like that probably reconsider apple went with over-ear headphones here instead of on-ear and i definitely prefer this the mesh ear cups with memory foam are nice and soft and very comfortable and through long listening sessions they've actually done better than leather i listen to more than two three hours in a row before my ears start to get hot and i needed a break which is pretty great and the ear cups are removable easily with magnets now this is a quirk you pretty much never see in consumer headphones but the fact is you really should be somewhat regularly replacing the actual ear cup part of your headphones that you keep for a long time but most people never do but here it makes sense you know these are going to be metal headphones that will hopefully last you a long time many many years of use but this piece that you want to stay the same will eventually compress and start to crack and get old and faded you get a new pair it keeps the driver the same distance from your ear all that good stuff just by replacing it now apple's going to sell you replacements for 69 bucks which is definitely overpriced there's no way they're worth that much money but i got to give them credit for the system here at least they're easy to replace and you can mix and match colors if you want to the lack of touch controls i think were a good call here on the airpods max apple added a larger version of that digital crown from the apple watch up top but basically it's just a fancy knob that you rotate for volume and press for media controls and it works great it's got really satisfying clicks and you can reverse the direction of the spin in ios software if you want to but alright marquez they cost 550 they better sound like god himself whispering in my ear for that much money how do they sound well they sound like luxury listening which is to say really really good now listen i'm gonna preface this by saying i'm not an audiophile like probably every other review at this time but i've listened to a lot of headphones at this point i know what i like and these sound really good airpods macs have these big 40 millimeter drivers behind those ear cups and they sound excellent super clear at all volumes i was impressed by the ultra low distortion at high volumes too and they do get loud enough that i should never need to listen at 100 volume i max out at probably 75 to 85 percent you obviously approach the limits of how good things can sound over wireless when you're just listening to streaming services and bluetooth but with high quality spotify streaming quality i'm loving this solid punchy bass and even a little deep sub bass once in a while the instrument separation is great and the clarity through mids and highs in a variety of genres is great not fatiguing at all to listen to now if you're sitting and watching this video and thinking well okay what about some nice higher bitrate local files these headphones already aren't for you like at that level that you're talking about you probably want you you end up getting some extra hardware so a nice preamp with some nice clean gain to power some wired headphones probably open back and some nice single source audio files with high bit rate and by the time you get through all of that that's a very different level of commitment and work than someone who just wants to grab some wireless headphones so you would be getting some extra quality that you could hear out of that setup sure but people listening these headphones are i'm gonna be totally honest listening to spotify and apple music and maybe title but also some soundcloud and youtube and some some podcasts and watching some movies so the sound quality is fantastic for that the noise cancellation is also excellent now this i kinda saw coming but these nine microphones on here do a fantastic job with white noise and with a surprisingly natural sound to it sometimes noise-canceling headphones can feel like there's a bit of a pressure and they sound a little bit unnatural with it on i found that these didn't do much of that whether it's because of the mesh or the pass-throughs or the mics whatever it's all awesome and obviously i haven't gotten to fly with these yet but it absolutely cancelled out a vacuum cleaner like three feet away from my head so i'm gonna put these right up as matching the sony xm4s as kings of noise cancellation and they should be great on a plane and these headphones also have the best transparency mode i've ever heard and you know obviously other noise canceling headphones will do this they'll have a mode where you can let ambient sound through so you can hear your environment someone calls you or someone your bus stop gets read out loud or something like that but these for whatever reason are incredible i can hear everything but not just what things are being said but where they're coming from or some things to my right to my left in front of me behind me a lot of other headphones have an ambient mode these are the king of that so all of that translates to these being fun to listen to there's no latency or range issues anywhere with bluetooth so i'm able to walk around corners and even up and down stairs away from my device without a drop connection and also you might be wondering how the audio would sound with these nine microphones picking up your voice and cancelling out the background noise so this is how it would sound it's fine there's not a lot of background noise even this time but if you're on a zoom call or a facetime and these are your microphone is what you're gonna get all right we gotta talk about this case this stupid case i hate everything about this i hate the way it looks i hate these sloppy kind of pointless slots across the bottom i hate that the lightning port doesn't quite line up at the bottom in that notch cutout i hate that they're annoying to take the headphones out of quickly and they're annoying to put the headphones back into i hate that the magnet is kind of small in the lip and it's kind of easy to miss sometimes and it's not as satisfying to slap it shut i hate that it doesn't protect easily the most delicate part of the headphones that needs protection that mesh headband i hate that it looks like a mini purse and i hate that i know apple thoroughly considered all this stuff i hate that there's no off button on these headphones and that it requires you to put them in this stupid case to trigger the low power mode so it doesn't just burn through battery all the time now don't get me wrong the battery life on these headphones is fine they do reach the advertised i would say 16 to 20 hours even with noise cancellation on and you can plug them in for five minutes and get an hour and a half of extra listening so the battery is not a problem but this case is so stupid it's just this it's just a weird choice very apple-like choice to to lock you into their magical solution for they turn on and they just work when you want them to because now you have to use this case like if i don't want to use this case when they sit out they drain battery at about the same rate as when they're on and playing music whether they are playing or not even though they know they're not on your head and they'll do that for about two hours staying ready to go until they automatically go into low power mode but aside from that dumb case there's plenty of smart features built in here the sensors inside will know if they're on your head or not and will auto play pause when you take them off and put them back on you can hold that digital crown you can talk to siri all you want she'll read out your text messages and talk to you and of course all the awesomeness of airpods pairing to every apple device you have instantly is still pretty sweet so you can quickly switch between your mac your iphone and your ipad if you have one solid and then some last little housekeeping stuff from those of you who left comments on the impressions video what you wanted to know uh can you use these with android just as normal bluetooth headphones yes you can but at this point you're cutting off a lot of the smart features so it seems not worth it how's the bleed they do bleed a little bit so if you've got these up at say 75 85 volume or higher people around you can actually hear what you're listening to and do they still work when the battery is dead if they're plugged in yes they do but at the end of the day this all comes down to what you want headphones to do so like i mentioned at the beginning of this video there's a separate section of high-end headphones that are reference grade professional production headphones and you could use these for that but i personally wouldn't i mean these are not flat uh you can't turn adaptive eq off you can't turn the colorful sound off and it just doesn't have the production stuff built in they're not wired they're not open back they're just they're not really for that but what these are meant to do is deliver a great listening experience and with their awesome sound quality they do and with their sweet noise cancellation they do with their pretty cool spatial audio experience which only works with iphones and ipads for now but is basically the same as uh airpods pro it'll pick up on 7.1 and dolby atmos sound sources and will sort of respond to your head placement based on where you're at it's awesome for movies that is so great as a listening experience the wireless connection great for listening i mean all the stuff that they've built in the the play pause stuff all the volume controls it's so that it's a better listening experience and they do all this stuff with just a few gigantic quirks sort of like a top three giant quirks which are the stupid case the metal build which is a bit heavy and that price tag but if you are okay with those three things and especially if you're in apple's ecosystem like we've talked about so many times well then these are pretty dope headphones sounds kind of like a lot of other apple products right either way that's been it airpods max review hope you enjoyed it's kind of tech sember at this rate isn't it lots of stuff coming up lots of stuff in the back burners catch you guys very soon in the next video peace

Channel: Marques Brownlee

Views: 6,901,321

Rating: 4.8943663 out of 5

Keywords: AirPods, AirPods Max, AirPods Pro, AirPods Pro max, AirPods headphones, apple headphones, AirPods review, AirPods Max review, noise cancelling, noise cancellation, mkbhd, AirPods Max vs, AirPods Max vs Sony, sony wh1000xm4, sony xm4

Id: Gvvo6vUpJRc

Length: 15min 25sec (925 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 15 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Eugene1026]

It’s funny how Apple went from the best storage case for the regular airpods and AirPods Pro to this disaster with the airpods max haha

[u/riziger]

Did he say that the battery drain when not in the case is the same as the usual being on? I never use my headphone cases unless I’m throwing them in a travel bag.

Feel like Apple can solve this by letting users change the timeout period. 15 mins instead of 2 hours is pretty ok.

I don’t know why I’m watching reviews though. 899 aud is a joke.

[u/hay_qt]

2 hr shut off time is a joke, I hope Apple will push an update for us to choose how long.

[u/reluctant_engineer]

Kinda disappointed that he didn't describe the sound as much as I would like, but understandable since he ain't a audiophile.

Someone on /r/headphones did if people are interesting in a more detailed sound impressions. It seems like the DSP is doing weird things in the treble region for some reason.

PS: At 8:20 mark, Marques mentions open back headphone but shows HD820, which is a closed back lmao. Not a major complaint but funny nonetheless.

[u/Luph]

Did every reviewer get sent the green ones? It's really weird because it seems like the ugliest one to me.

[u/BaxterVoice]

Apple completely dropped the ball with the case. There isn’t a single good thing about it. I now have to wait for a third party to create a real case. But I can’t even ditch the original entirely because the closest thing these have to an off button is this stupid “case.”

[u/[deleted]]

He says:

• King of noise canceling (with Sony)
• King of transparency mode
• Premium design
• Great sound
• Heavy, but comfortable
• Hates the case
• Hates the lack of off button
• Fine battery life
• Spatial Audio is “awesome” for movies
• Play/pause and various controls offer a better listening experience
• All the standard AirPods feature are still “sweet”

[u/chicluxechilll]

From what I can tell, most reviewers are saying they're great for what they are but that they hate the case and weight of them. The ease of switching between devices you already get with AirPods and spatial audio was added to the Pros. They seem like a nice to have product if money isn't a factor and you're really into listening to music. Otherwise most other mid priced headphones and earphones are good enough for the everyday person.

[u/ATWiggin]

• Weight is significant. Doesn't feel like much when completely stationary, can definitely feel the mass as soon as you start moving.

• No sweat or water resistance. This coupled with the weight makes them a complete no go for exercise.

• Earcups are very comfortable and easily replaceable. Apple replacement earcups are, "definitely overpriced, no way they're worth that much money".

• They sound really, really good even at high volume. Will probably have to use the paid version of streaming services to get the higher quality audio files to make this truly worthwhile.

• High-fidelity lossless audio is your thing? These aren't for you. The sound from a wired AMP and headphones are STILL going to blow these out of the water.

• ANC on par with the the Sony's, king of noise cancellation.

• Best transparency mode available.

• Microphone audio is fine.

• Worst in class carrying case. There are zero redeeming qualities here.

• No off button on headphones is a head scratching mistake.

• Battery life is fine.

• Smart features work well within the Apple ecosystem.

• Usable with android, just without any of the smart features. "Seems not worth it".

• Does bleed noise outside of the earcups.

• Not great as reference headphones, not flat sound signature with that adaptive EQ always on and no way to turn off. "They're not really for that."

• Latency high enough that he "wouldn't trust it with precise audio edits" either.

• Great listening experience if you can put up with it's "gigantic quirks".