AirPods Max: Fantastic headphones, but why?
The first question that should pop up in your mind: “Why is Apple making these $550 headphones, when we have great headphones available at much lower cost?” There is no easy answer, by the way. As I understand, there are two types of headphones available in the market. There are production headphones which are used for a longer period and to produce or create studio based contents.
Sometimes they require a preamp to drive the extra clarity of sound. Then there are the ones that are for consumption, like listening to music or movies. They are actually used for "luxury listening". AirPods Max are mainly built for consumers with some major and unique features which are completely absent in all other headphones in these two categories.
Design & Build Quality
It's made of metal which is extremely unique for this sort of headphones. All of them are made of plastic. As AirPods are made of metal, it looks dope and strong. The telescopic headband feels great though it doesn't have notches. It's smooth and takes a lot of pull to move and adjust with your head. There are two buttons. A bigger digital crown and a push button to operate noise cancellation and transparency mode. One drawback of the metal design is weight. It's heavy and if you move around with this you will definitely feel the extra pressure on your head. Apple tried to deal with this with a really thin flexible mesh top band which is actually unique and design wise cool. The only major issue with the outlook is the weird case.
The case actually looked like a purse and the only purpose is to make AirPods Max in hibernation mode to save battery. It's big and not travel friendly as well. Lastly there is no Apple logo in AirPods Max. Super minimalistic and I really loved the look of it. Lastly these ear cups are removable and you can buy these from Apple for $69.
Sound & Noise Cancellation
They sound really really great. I am not a sound engineer but have used many headphones from Sony to Bose. And these are amazing. They have 40mm drivers behind the ear cups and sound excellent in all volumes. I am loving this solid punchy bass and even a little sub bass once in a while. Listening to Netflix or Spotify is just amazing and crystal clear. Variety of genres is great, not fatiguing at all to listen to.
Noise cancellation is excellent. It's not surprising after their recent effort on AirPods Pro. These nine microphones on here do a fantastic job with white noise and with a surprisingly natural sound to it. Sometimes noise cancelling headphones can feel like there's a bit of a pressure and sound unnatural as well. But with these mesh ear cups I didn't find any of it. Apple did a great job here.
These headphones have the best transparency mode in the industry. With a push of the button it works like magic. Bluetooth is excellent. I didn't find any issue with it. It works totally fine in every corner of my house.
There are some great features in it as well. The sensors inside can identify whether they are on your head or not. So if you remove it, music will automatically stop. Also these headphones can pair with all your apple devices seamlessly. You can hold the digital crown and talk to Siri.
Verdict
The AirPods Max are fantastic noise-cancelling headphones with an outstanding metal design, sophisticated & deep sound and out of the box computational features. But the price tag of BDT 60-65K with this unorthodox case is difficult to ignore when you have other options with half the price.