Tested product: Apple Airpods Max

Price:  $549.00 at Apple Store on Amazon

With Airpods Max, Apple enters the market for premium wireless headphones and competes at the same time with both Sony and Bose for the position of best noise-canceling headphones and with brands such as Bang & Olufsen and Bowers & Wilkins for best wireless sound.

Retrofuturistisk design

Airpods Max really stands out from the crowd. In fact, even Bang & Olufsen's luxurious Beoplay H95 has a more conventional design. Apple has chosen a design with clearly futuristic features while looking back at older headphones before plastic became commonplace. The silicone-like material that covers the upper part of the metal frame has a blurred look that feels almost sci-fi-like, and the covers are very typical of modern Apple with the same color choice as the latest Ipad Air.

Place the top models from different headphone manufacturers next to each other - Airpods Max is unlike any other. Whether you then think they look good or not is of course a matter of taste, but they are not a dozen designs.

Heavy but beautiful

There is no doubt that Airpods Max is really cool headphones physically. They are large and heavy with the solid build quality. Start pulling them apart more than they should be able to and it feels like the worst that can happen is that the frame gets a little deformed. Not at all like with most plastic headphones where it feels like something is going to break. The aluminum covers feel, in an unusual way, cool to the touch. It is possible that it helps to keep your ears cool, but also that they become uncomfortable to touch if you wear them outdoors in cold weather.

But with the solid build quality also comes higher weight than more plastic headphones. Airpods Max weighs 50 percent more than, for example, the Sony WH-1000XM4. How much it affects is of course very individual and depends on such things as your head shape, neck muscles, and what you are used to. I use Sony's older MDX-ZX770BN for everyday use and the difference in weight is immediately obvious, where the latter feels much lighter both in how much they hang and how hard they squeeze.

Airpods Max squeezes with a not insignificant strength, but Apple has done a very good job with the cushions. After several sessions of up to a couple of hours at a time, I have not experienced any problems, the fact is that it feels like they breathe better than many other closed headphones. Noise-canceling headphones can also create an unpleasant feeling of pressure, but it is minimal with Airpods Max.

Sounds great

Maffigt describes the sound in Airpods Max. Headphones that connect via Bluetooth should hardly be able to sound this good. Apple does not include an adapter for the analog audio cable, you have to buy it. We have also not had the opportunity to test whether there will be even better sound with cable, but it is obvious that Apple has not been content with any compromise just because they are wireless.

The sound is open and detailed throughout the register. Maybe not neutral, but at least not exaggerated, neither in the bass nor the treble. I use an equalizer for the Sony headphones, designed to make the sound neutral, and the Airpods Max is not far from them in the soundscape while offering much, much more. The bass never takes over, but the reserves are there for music that requires a lot of bass and can literally make your head vibrate in songs like I Come First by Terror Jr. and this year's song on Apple Music, The Box by Roddy Ricch. But also with precision to handle drums and standing bass with retained details, for example in Dis Boy by Gurls.

The separation of different instruments on songs such as The Beatles remastered While My Guitar Gently Weeps and Is It Always Binary by Soulwax is distinct and spatial in a way that is usually only achieved with open headphones. And then still the Sony headphones I compare with are known to also have an open sound with good separation.

While the base can make your teeth rattle, voices are clear and distinct. Airpods Max also handles sudden shots between high and low very well. In a metal song like System of a Downs BYOB, worse headphones can make porridge out of the scattered sound, but these are definitely good headphones for the genre.

It also sounds just as good regardless of the noise reduction setting, which is not always the case (Sony headphones, for example, need two different eq curves to listen with or without noise reduction). This is especially important if you listen to music with a large dynamic range, such as classical music but also some rock and electronic art music. Quiet parts do not disappear in a buzz as on cheaper noise-canceling headphones (this is something Sony's XM3 and XM4 are also good at, while Bose has always been among the best).

Airpods Max has a unique feature that is missing from competitors: virtual surround sound. If you are watching a movie or TV on an iPhone or Ipad and the video has to surround sound with 5.1, 7.1, or Dolby Atmos sound, the headphones adjust the sound so that you both hear environmental sounds around you, and hear the dialogue directed from the screen. Turn your head and the voices will follow. This is also available in Airpods Pro and actually works really well. Unfortunately, so far it does not work with either Mac or Apple TV.

Noise reduction

If you buy headphones for peace of mind, effective noise reduction is probably one of the most important things for you. Airpods Max uses both passive (isolation) and active noise reduction, where the latter can be switched on and off or put in transparency mode so that you can hear the surroundings almost as if you were not wearing the headphones.

I have only been able to test for a little over a week, and not in as many different situations as I would have liked, but the experience so far is that Airpods Max is at least as good as Sony and Bose on just noise - vacuum cleaners, traffic, fans. For more varied buzz with many higher frequencies - like people talking around you - Sony seems to be a little ahead, perhaps because the XM4 samples the environment 700 times a second. Apple has not said how often Airpods Max samples, but Airpods Pro does it 200 times a second.

But Airpods Max is not bad at sudden sounds, just not quite as good as Sony's best. As an example, I discovered by chance how loud my clatter on the keyboard actually was when I took off my headphones and continued typing.

Turn on some music and the surroundings melt away much better even with voices in the background. The combination of good insulation and noise reduction means that you have no idea if someone is in the room next door and can easily miss, for example, a crying child.

Physical checks

One of the nicest details in Apple's design is that they are controlled entirely by physical controls: a steering wheel that is a larger version of the crown on the Apple Watch and a button. Unlike competitors that use capacitive touch controls that can mess with gloves on or when it's cold, the Airpods Max's physical controls feel more reliable.

You can set which noise reduction options you want the button to switch between via the system's Bluetooth settings. For example, if you never use transparency mode but want to turn off and on noise reduction, you can select those options.

Capable battery, but what did Apple think of the case?

Apple promises 20 hours of listening and that's right. It's not as good as for example Sony WH-1000XM4, but still perfectly okay and you will not run out of battery for a day. The first squeeze-and-feel articles about the headphones pointed out that there is no on / off button and that the only way to force the Airpods Max to turn off is to place them in the included case. But if you just take them off and put them on the desk, they only lose two percent of battery overnight, in practice it makes no difference, as long as you have activated automatic ear recognition so that what is played is turned off as soon as you take them off.

The case has been written and talked about a lot. I join the crowd that wonders what the hell Apple was thinking here. It's not really that ugly and is not bad either, but they do not do much good either. Sure, they will protect the aluminum covers from being scratched (except for the edges), and protect the pillows from the risk of getting caught in something on the desk or in a bag and torn. But it does not protect in the slightest against dust or moisture, nor does it cover the arch at all.

For almost SEK 7,000, we had expected a much more sensible case or shell. Airpods and Airpods Pro have very good and practical cases, so it's extra strange that Apple did not pay for a comprehensive, rigid case so you can take Airpods Max on the trip without worrying that they will break. As it is now, it feels like they are meant to just have it at home. The fact that they cannot be folded at all does not make things better.

Only Bluetooth and analog adapter

Airpods Max is made to connect wirelessly and nothing else. There is no standard audio input. You need to buy an adapter from lightning to a 3.5-millimeter connector to be able to use them for example on the flight or with an LP player. You can also not use them if the battery is exhausted, unlike for example Sony's XM4 which works as passive headphones via audio cable for any number of hours.

What is even worse is that it is not possible to connect the headphones with a lightning cable and listen completely digitally from the computer. I think this should be a matter of course in such expensive headphones. If it had worked, you would have been able to listen to uncompressed music with 192 kHz sampling frequency and 24-bit resolution per channel instead of 48 kHz and 16 bits. Among competitors, for example, Bowers & Wilkins PX7 has support for this. It's hard to understand why Apple could not afford the ability to connect digitally with cable even if analog audio does not fit.

Good for Apple-saved with deep pockets

If you are snowed in on Apple gadgets and love the simplicity of Airpods but want better headphones with the maximum sound quality for intense listening at home or in the office, then Airpods Max is definitely a good choice and you will not regret the purchase. The noise reduction is in class with Sony and Bose while the sound is at a slightly higher level. The handling is almost perfect and if you often watch movies on the iPad, the surround effect works really well.

But wireless audio will not beat really good analog headphones. If you are just looking for maximum sound quality, it is better to invest in a good headphone amplifier and for example Sennheiser's HD series or anything from Hifiman or Audeze (but if you think Airpods Max are expensive you will get a shock from the prices of real hifi lurar). And if you're mostly looking for noise reduction, Sony and Bose are just as good but significantly cheaper.

Specifications

Model:  Airpods Max

Manufacturer:  Apple

Type:  Over-ear headphones with active noise reduction

Connection:  Bluetooth 5.0, lightning-to-3.5mm adapter (not included)

Frequency range:  Not specified

Battery life: Up to 20 hours with or without noise reduction. 5 minutes of charging gives 1.5 hours of listening

Hands-free function:  Yes

Weight:  385 grams

Other:  Surround sound with iPhone and Ipad, Siri, transparency mode