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Should You Buy AirPods Max Now? Does a HUGE price drop make the AirPods Max Worth it?

13:18 video

It’s been eight months since the AirPods Max, and at the time I had zero interest in spending $550 on headphones: I wouldn’t even watch early reviews and stuck with my $20 Skullcandy earbuds. Then they started going on sale. I finally bought a pair and saved $100. (Skillshare sponsored this video.)

Ahead of a family trip to Hawaii with a seven- to eight-hour flight, I looked for new headphones. I had old wired Bose QC20s and cheap wireless TaoTronics noise-canceling headphones that are bulky, with iffy noise canceling and pretty bad audio lag. The AirPods Max went on sale for about $100 off, I debated all day and the deal expired; a couple of days later it came back, and I bought them. Since they go on and off sale, check the links in the description for the best price. The first adopters had battery and connectivity issues, which Apple has addressed with firmware updates.

Hardware

Plain Apple packaging: the headphones, paperwork and a USB-C to Lightning cable. They feel premium: aluminum on the outside, a rubber coating, a mesh headband and slick Apple Watch-like buttons. The first thing I noticed was a pungent smell out of the box, which went away after about a day.

  • Buttons: I’m happy with them. I’d compared many headphones with swipe controls or buttons that do three or four things. Here are a physical volume control and a button to switch between transparency and noise canceling. The digital crown is very granular, in much smaller increments than iPhone or iPad volume steps.
  • Ear cushions: removable, held on by magnets, easy to change or clean (and available in other colors, but I bought black, worried about oil staining lighter cushions).
  • Headband: aluminum with a rubber coating (like the iPad Pro Magic Keyboard case) and a mesh top, with a very smooth extension mechanism.
  • Microphone ports on each side for noise canceling, and a Lightning port for charging.

The case

The case is the most criticized part: it doesn’t fully cover the headphones and looks like a little purse, though in person it isn’t as weird as I expected. It doesn’t protect well (cutouts at the sides, a Lightning cutout, and an uncovered headband). It’s necessary because there is no power button: magnets in the case put the headphones into a low-power state.

For my trip, I didn’t want to risk damaging them, so I bought a third-party CarryOn case for AirPods Max: custom-shaped with a spot for the headband and each cup, with magnets and a little fin like Apple’s to trigger the low-power mode, rigid on the outside, zippered and folding, with a cable caddy (I stored Apple’s Lightning to 3.5 mm adapter and a Lightning cable). It’s a bit bulky, bigger than the cases for my TaoTronics and Bose QC25, but more protective.

Sound

I’m not an audiophile, but I can tell good from bad audio, and they sound really, really good: extremely clear and loud without distortion, with bass that you feel without being aggressive or fatiguing. Watching Mosquito Coast on the plane, a buildup of low hum felt like it came through my whole body, and in Spotify and Apple Music there’s good separation between instruments. I’m not getting into Apple lossless or spatial audio. The lack of audio delay is superb: any lip-sync delay drives me insane, and these have some of the lowest I’ve tried, with iPhone, iPad and Mac, essentially wired-feeling.

Noise canceling and transparency

By far the best noise canceling I’ve had on an airplane (versus the QC25, TaoTronics and a couple of Sony headphones): it blocks the low-level hum and constant noise, though you still hear people talking and coughing. Transparency mode brings the outside world in: you can hear a car going by or have a conversation while playing audio. John Gruber called it “uncanny,” and that’s the right word: it feels like you’re not wearing headphones.

Comfort and fit

I have an inexplicably egg-shaped, not very big head and trouble finding glasses and hats that fit. They fit and feel really good, perfectly when pushed all the way up. People say they’re heavy (compared with the older Bose QC25, maybe), but the weight is distributed evenly across my head. They fit better and are less bulky than my other headphones. As a glasses wearer, I found the right balance between cushiness and headband tightness to avoid pain or fatigue after many hours of wearing them, on the couch gaming or on a plane watching a movie.

Battery

I’ve had no issues: Apple apparently fixed them with firmware. Apple claims about 20 hours, and on my iPad Pro they lost about a third of their battery after a seven-hour flight, which lines up. There are two sleep modes (one when you take them off, a deeper one later), and if I don’t put them in the case and leave them for a day or two, the battery is lower than expected. That’s my gripe: no power button. If Apple added one, or a way to hold the buttons to turn them on and off, that would end any remaining battery complaints.

Are they worth it in 2021?

For most people, probably not. If you want a premium-looking and premium-feeling, premium-sounding device that works really well with Apple devices, they’re definitely worth considering. Are they the best noise-canceling wireless headphones? I don’t know, since I haven’t tried them all, but at $450 or sometimes less, they’re very, very good. Try them at an Apple Store or Best Buy, or buy and return them. For me, after saving $100, I feel like I made a good decision.

In this video

  • 0:00 price drop so I bought ‘em
  • 1:18 unboxing
  • 2:29 buttons and other hardware
  • 4:19 the case for a better case
  • 6:21 sound quality, noise cancellation and transparency
  • 9:44 comfort is most important
  • 11:13 battery
  • 12:13 should you buy in 2021?

Some links in this post are affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I may receive a small commission. See my ethics statement.

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