Apple AirPods Max Headphones Review | Luxury Listening Redefined

Now, it took me a couple of days of listening, comparing, and taking notes, but I got the Apple AirPods Max Headphones. The original question when these headphones were surprise announced was, why is Apple making $550 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.

Pros and Cons | Apple AirPods Max Headphones

Pros	Cons
Exceptional Build Quality: Metal construction, aluminum ear cups, and a stainless steel headband provide a premium feel and durability.	Heavy Weight: The metal construction makes the headphones heavier than most, which can affect comfort over long periods.
High-Quality Sound: 40mm drivers deliver clear, rich audio with impressive bass and minimal distortion.	Expensive: At $550, they are significantly more expensive than other high-end headphones.
Superb Noise Cancellation: Nine microphones effectively cancel out background noise, comparable to Sony’s best offerings.	Lack of Sweat/Water Resistance: Not suitable for workouts or use in wet conditions.
Top-Notch Transparency Mode: Allows you to hear ambient sounds naturally, with great spatial awareness.	No Off Switch: Headphones rely on auto-detection for low power mode, which may not fully turn them off.
Comfortable Ear Cups: Memory foam ear cups are soft and comfortable, even during long listening sessions.	Poor Carrying Case Design: The included case doesn’t offer full protection and has a polarizing design.
Easy-to-Use Controls: The digital crown and physical buttons offer intuitive and satisfying control.	No Touch Controls: Some users may miss the lack of touch controls, though the physical controls work well.
Seamless Integration with Apple Devices: Quick switching between Apple devices is a convenient feature for those in the ecosystem.	Limited Android Support: While compatible, Android users miss out on many smart features.
Replaceable Ear Cups: Easily replaceable with magnets, ensuring longevity.	Overpriced Accessories: Replacement ear cups are expensive at $69.

Reference vs. Luxury Listening | Apple AirPods Max Headphones

There’s actually two types of high-end headphones. The first would be reference-type, like studio-grade, actual production headphones. Apple AirPods Max Headphones are going to be lightweight, with 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.

On the other side, there’s just luxury listening—just nice headphones that sound great for music, podcasts, movies, and all kinds of consumer-oriented features. You might have noise cancellation, and they might be wireless. That’s the other type; they’re geared for consumption. Now, this new pair of very expensive headphones—I’m glad they didn’t call them AirPods Studio—lands squarely in that second section of luxury listening.

Design and Build Quality | Apple AirPods Max Headphones

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 the fact is these Apple Airpods Max 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. These Apple Airpods Max headphones have aluminum ear cups that get cold to the touch when you’re outside in the winter and a stainless steel headband frame. 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 have this satin finish, which I think would look even better as matte black—Apple, why’d you send me the green one?

Weight and Comfort | Apple AirPods Max Headphones

The telescoping headband doesn’t have notches, but it’s really smooth and takes a lot of pull to move, so it feels high quality too. 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?

It turns out the reason you don’t see metal headphones very much is because all these other headphone companies have done the research. One of the primary factors for comfort when wearing headphones for a long time is their weight, and metal is much heavier than plastic. So they’ve all realized that and gone with plastic headphones because that’s so much more comfortable to wear for a long time. This is something AirPods Max has to work around.

They do their best with Apple AirPods Max Headphones really thin, flexible mesh in the top band that’s supposed to evenly distribute some of the weight on top of your head, but there’s no getting around the fact 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. 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, they weigh about 380-something grams versus 250 grams for other headphones. But you know what? This Apple AirPods Max Headphones do a pretty great job with the metal compared to how it could have been.

Comparing to Other Metal Headphones | Apple AirPods Max Headphones

I have exactly one other pair of headphones that’s made completely of metal, and those are the Beats Pro—$400 all-metal headphones. They bragged about how they’re all metal, but they did a terrible job with it. They weigh 450 grams or something like that, and they’re the least comfortable pair of headphones I’ve ever worn. They pinch you right underneath your ear; they’re on-ear for some reason instead of over-ear, and they’re harsh. They squeeze your head a lot—unless your head is shaped like this, which it’s not. So yeah, it could have been a lot worse.

Design Notes | No Logos, No Water Resistance

Some other quick design notes: there is no Apple logo anywhere on Apple AirPods Max Headphones. The design has actually grown on me over the past few days. It looks pretty clean, and like I said, matte black would look pretty sweet. Also, you should know there’s no sweat or water resistance here. So if you’re an athlete or looking to make these your gym headphones, or if you want to walk around the city while it’s raining or snowing, you should probably reconsider.

Ear Cups | Comfort and Customization

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, soft, and very comfortable. Through long listening sessions, they’ve actually done better than leather. I listened for more than two to three hours in a row before my ears started to get hot, and I needed a break, which is pretty great. The ear cups are removable easily with magnets in Apple AirPods Max Headphones.

Replacing Ear Cups | A Smart But Pricey Feature

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. Here it makes sense. 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, start to crack, get old, and fade. Getting a new pair keeps the driver the same distance from your ear and all that good stuff, just by replacing it.

Now, Apple is going to sell you replacements for $69, which is definitely overpriced. There’s no way they’re worth that much money, but I have 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, was a good call here on the AirPods Max.

Controls | The Digital Crown Does the Job

Apple added a larger version of that digital crown from the Apple Watch up top, which is basically just a fancy knob that you rotate for volume and press for media controls. 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.

Sound Quality | Luxury Listening at Its Best

But alright, they cost $550. They better sound like God himself whispering in my ear for that much money, right? How do they sound? Well, they sound like luxury listening, which is to say really, really good.

Now listen, I’m going to 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 Max has 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%.

Streaming and Wireless | Impressive Audio Performance

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.

Noise Cancellation | Apple AirPods Max Headphones

The noise cancellation is also excellent. I kind of saw this 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, the pass-throughs, or the mics—whatever it is, it’s all awesome.

Obviously, I haven’t gotten to fly with these yet, but they absolutely canceled out a vacuum cleaner like three feet away from my head. So I’m going to put these right up as matching the Sony XM4s as kings of noise cancellation, and they should be great on a plane.

Transparency Mode | Hearing the World Clearly

These headphones also have the best transparency mode I’ve ever heard. 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—if someone calls you, or your bus stop gets read out loud, or something like that. But these, for whatever reason, sound more natural. Apple says they’re computationally improving the sound passing through and enhancing certain parts of your environment. But when you hear someone talking to you, it sounds like they’re actually there, and that’s awesome.

Lack of an Off Switch | A Strange Omission

On the downside, the one thing these headphones don’t have is an off switch. Why? I don’t know. They just don’t have one. The AirPods Max automatically go into low-power mode when they detect they haven’t been picked up in a while, and then into ultra-low-power mode when you drop them into the carrying case. But there’s no actual off button to make them fully off, which is pretty weird. This brings me to the case.

The Carrying Case | A Disappointing Design

This is the worst part of the whole package, I think. The case is pretty bad. It’s supposed to protect these things, but not only does it not protect the entire headphones, but it also looks like a purse. I don’t know who designed this or thought this was a good idea. But you just have to accept that you’re going to have to live with it if you buy these headphones.

Who Are the AirPods Max For?

So finally, the bottom line for AirPods Max. Who are these for, and are they worth it? Well, if you’re listening to this, you probably already know if these are for you. It’s an expensive product, no doubt about that. But it does sit in a very specific corner of the market. These are luxury listening headphones; they do sound amazing, they’re built like no other pair of headphones out there, and they have a lot of the best wireless noise-canceling features we’ve seen. But also, they do cost more than double what those other best headphones cost. So they’re not going to make sense for most people, and that’s fine.

Comparison Table

Feature	AirPods Max	AirPods (2nd Generation)	AirPods (3rd Generation)	AirPods Pro (2nd Generation)
Price	$549	$129	$169	$249
Design	Over-Ear	In-Ear	In-Ear	In-Ear with Silicone Tips
Weight	385g	4g (per earbud)	4.28g (per earbud)	5.3g (per earbud)
Noise Cancellation	Active Noise Cancellation	None	None	Active Noise Cancellation
Transparency Mode	Yes	No	No	Yes
Spatial Audio	Yes (with dynamic head tracking)	No	Yes (with dynamic head tracking)	Yes (with dynamic head tracking)
Adaptive EQ	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Battery Life (Listening Time)	Up to 20 hours	Up to 5 hours	Up to 6 hours	Up to 6 hours (with ANC off)
Charging Case	N/A	Yes (standard)	Yes (MagSafe and Lightning)	Yes (MagSafe, Lightning, and Precision Finding)
Sweat/Water Resistance	No	No	Yes (IPX4)	Yes (IPX4)
Connectivity	Bluetooth 5.0	Bluetooth 5.0	Bluetooth 5.0	Bluetooth 5.3
Chip	Apple H1	Apple H1	Apple H1	Apple H2
Voice Control	“Hey Siri” support	“Hey Siri” support	“Hey Siri” support	“Hey Siri” support
Ear Tip Fit Test	No	No	No	Yes
Audio Sharing	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Color Options	Space Gray, Silver, Green, Sky Blue, Pink	White	White	White

Should You Buy AirPods Max?

If you’re all in on the Apple ecosystem and just love high-quality stuff and know you’re going to be able to tell the difference in listening with these, then you’re going to like them. There’s really not much else out there that offers this combo, so if you want to treat yourself, these are pretty much the best option.