the apple airpods max are not cheap headphones they're
550 us dollars and yet they're already
flying off shelves but hold on a second apple haters don't facepalm yet this
is a good thing because the airpods max don't suck and the more people there are
out there listening to good headphones the better but
as a samsung user who wears an apple watch for some reason i've got to ask
myself is there any reason to buy these if
you're not already crotch deep in apple's ecosystem
let's discuss that after this message from ridge wallet
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gotta start with sound quality because that's what everybody wants to know
anyway for comparison we've got the ever popular sony xm4s and bose 700s and by
popular demand the drop thx pandas which i happen to personally really really
like the truth is that all of these headphones sound great with the caveat
that we of course are talking about consumer electronics that you're using
wirelessly probably to stream music from a service like spotify that means you're
probably using your smartphone as a source without the aid of an external
amp or deck and yes we know that there are higher
fidelity solutions out there but the thing is not everybody wants to carry
around an extra brick and lots of people like the convenience of not having a
wire of course the question is which of them is the most great compared to the
sony's and the bose frankly i gotta go with the airpods max albeit not by a
huge margin discerning listeners might think that it's a big margin but i would
hazard a guess that your average person won't hear much difference between any
of these four headsets assuming though that you are a discerning listener how
do the airpods max compare to the pandas which are also a cut above the other two
well that's trickier i would call them similar in quality
but different the pandas are much more forward with
crystal clear vocals right against your ear the maxes however have a greater
sense of space even on Android and a
heck of a lot more bass in fact i would call that their defining feature like
low rumbly sacral chakra type bass that
makes the pandas seem underwhelming by comparison and makes the sony's sound
loose and muddy don't believe me do a side by side during the macaroni in
a pot section of wap now a purist might still opt for the pandas given the
choice between the two as they support more audio codecs including aptx hd and
ldac and they advertise no digital signal processing as a selling point
meanwhile the h1 chip in each of the airpods max's earcups enables them to
use computational audio to enhance their active noise cancelling and allow
transparency mode which by the way works really well to pass through the world
around you they also enable adaptive eq which adjusts the sound in real time
according to the fit and seal of the ear cups as for codec support though it's
aac only which is the codec used by itunes this will probably be fine or
even preferred a lot of the time but Android users should be aware that
there's some evidence that aac sounds better on iphones than it does on some
Android devices because aac is computationally more demanding leading
some power optimized Android devices to downgrade the incoming audio to a lower
bit rate speaking of eq the airpods max
doesn't have a companion app like the bose and sony sets do so there's no way
to apply custom or even candy cues according to your liking you just get
what apple gives you which i guess is pretty on brand for them so
make sure that you audition them thoroughly before you buy to make sure
that you like their sound signature personally i find them a little bit
bright on the high end which sometimes makes symbols or even snare drums a bit
fatiguing to listen to good thing i have this pillow where's an ltd store pillow
get me a pillow ah yes this CPU-shaped
pillow from lttstore.com of course bluetooth headphones have
never really been about the absolute best sound quality anyway so how do the
airpods max compare to the competition when it comes to features
on Android not great out of the box there's no wear
detection for automatic pausing when you put them around your neck no battery
level indicator on your phone and no virtual assistant support at all
however if history is any indication these features should end up available
to Android users using a third-party app at some point then there's the settings
that you can tweak only if you have an iOS device for example by default this
button right here toggles the headphones between active noise cancelling on and
transparency mode but what if you want neither and you just want anc off well
it can be done but only by adjusting the button behavior on an apple device same
goes for updating device firmware and reversing the direction of the volume
knob if you're one of those uh people who plays inverted then finally there's
the features that are simply just not there if you're an Android user in
other words if you're an apple customer who hasn't bought enough of their
products to deserve all of the features it's like man
this is the kind of arrogant anti-consumer
sorry the airpods macs are advertised as supporting seamless movement between
your iphone ipad and mac and if you're listening to music on your laptop and a
call comes in they're supposed to switch over automatically which works great for
apple but guess what the sony's and both
do that as well except that on a pc or
Android when i try to do the same thing with airpods max and a laptop
they have to disconnect from one in order to play a signal from the other
so apple got me for 550 dollars here but
evidently i'm still a second class citizen same thing goes for their
spatial audio feature but even though that one's really cool i'm less upset
about it because understandably it requires proprietary software on the
source side spatial audio is a 3d sound mode that attempts to mimic the home
theater experience by tracking the headphones position so that when you
turn your head the sound stays put instead of following you around i would
definitely recommend using it for movie watching but
only if you've got an idevice get wrecked
while we're on the subject of apple shenanigans let's talk wires
yes it's true that bluetooth headphones can sound better when listening to them
wired but apple doesn't seem to want you to do that unlike every one of these
other pairs of headphones the airpods macs don't come with the cable to plug
them in or rather they do come with a
cable a lightning to usb type c that seems like it should work but it doesn't
instead you need a lightning to three and a half millimeter audio cable which
apple is happy to suggest as an add-on item at just 35
of course you won't be able to charge your headphones while listening this way
oh and if you want to plug into your phone you will also need a dongle where
i put the dongle ah there it is that's exactly the problem with these things
which again apple doesn't include in the box anymore
but your Android phone may finally this one's pretty bizarre when you are
listening wired you can no longer use the crown button to pause or skip tracks
by pressing on it but then you can still adjust the volume and
toggle your anc just like
why why doesn't Linus get to the point here
all right here we go if you're an Android user the answer is
no don't buy the airpods max unless you one
have access to an iphone so that you can update your firmware and adjust your
settings two find a third party app that helps
reclaim otherwise lost features in a way that's not crappy to use which by the
way may require a subscription fee and three you really like the industrial
design thing is they're not a bad product at all like there's a lot to
like here the headband is shockingly comfortable even over long periods i
mean i thought it was going to be awful but it's great the fitment adjustment
mechanisms are as beautiful as they are silent and the aluminum ear cups and
tactile volume knob feel way more premium than any of these other plastic
sets oh and by the way i haven't used the bra
thing all week and it's been totally fine so you're not obligated to use it
but in spite of all that it's clear that apple just doesn't want
my money these headphones are made for apple enthusiasts who are already deeply
locked into apple's ecosystem and if that's you then the sonic performance
build quality and the apple magic really do combine to something that's not
really overpriced so much as it's priced
for people who really value those three things
if you only care about sound though where are they there they are
just get the pandas and eq up the bass
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LTT and start protecting yourself from potential bad times at the link in the
video description if you guys are looking for something else to watch maybe check out the video we did
recently featuring the xm4s from sony they're
pretty sweet