I am finally hands-on with the Apple AirPods Max 2's, and these have been
making waves out there. Not all good waves, but there's plenty to be excited
about here with the headline feature, of course, being the inclusion of the same
H2 chip that Apple brought to the AirPods Pro 3's. As you may recall from
this channel, I was not excited by the audio tuning changes that Apple made to
the Pro 3's, but there's no denying that the noise cancellation and extremely
natural voice pass-through that the H2 chip enables is a killer feature, and I
did ultimately end up switching over completely to the Pro 3's. However,
I think we're unlikely to have a similar experience with the Max 2's. Let's get
to that in a second, though. First, the included accessories. You get a brazier,
not a large one, not a comfortable one, but a magnetic one.
Uh HR, no stickers.
How much are these again? For $550,
they couldn't give me a charging brick or a proper case. Sorry, you know what's
funny is I wrote the title for this video because I was kind of thinking,
"Yeah, there's a lot of issues with the AirPods Max 2's, but realistically,
they're no different than the issues that I had with the original AirPods Max
5 plus years ago, and I just feel like I've grieved them already, you know? The
lacklustre accessories, the super heavy
weight, and um [music] mediocre ergonomics." But
>> [laughter] >> maybe I do find myself freshly offended by them. To be clear, lots of things
don't include a charging brick anymore, a trend that Apple was at the forefront
of. And I guess I'm not the only one who feels that way, because one of the main
criticisms of the AirPods Max 2's is that Apple just plain hasn't changed
that much over the last 5 years. And for some people, this felt like a product
that deserved an overhaul. At the bottom, we've got a USB-C charging port,
but even that's not new because they did do a refreshed version of the AirPods
Maxes that did have USB-C. We've got some of the whopping nine microphones
that are studying this thing. Three of them aid in voice capture, while eight
of them are used for active noise cancellation. So, there is a little bit
of overlap there. Uh we've also got our [music]
crown dial and our listening mode button so we can quickly and easily toggle
between active noise cancellation or transparency. I do like Apple's approach
to removable ear cups. Uh this material is not my favorite, [music]
but I also don't find it offensive and oh, there's our optical sensor to detect
whether you're wearing them or not. I've been told by a fellow whose hair is how
do we put [music] this? Not as thick as it once was that apparently this mesh
can be quite uncomfortable. >> It's not even a mesh. It's like the two bars. Like the mesh doesn't provide
enough cushioning. So, the weight of the headphones just pulls those bars on the edge down. So, like
>> Oh. Turns out I misunderstood. I thought he was talking about something that was
unique to people with less hair. No, the bars just go on my head, too.
>> Okay. Like there it's just not a very good headband. Uh that's all. And
they're they're not a super strong clamping force headphone. So, you can't
just kind of like rely on them to hold themselves up. Or
rather, you might be able to except that they're so bloody heavy that over time
they tend to make their way down and then you end up with that pressure. Immediately. My god, though.
That noise cancellation. [music] I don't even have any content playing.
Sorry, I just get very excited by Apple's noise cancellation because
there's more to it than just how much noise it blocks. Um it's very
comfortable in a way that is hard to fully describe other than that they just
don't really apply that same that ANC pressure that you get with some other
solutions while also covering an extremely broad band
>> [music] >> of audio frequencies. I just I just love it. Uh it's so good. As someone who gets
a little bit of sensory overload, uh one of my primary use cases for my AirPods
Pro 3s is just putting them in >> [music] >> when the situation is
too much. And these more than achieve the same
effect. I just wish that [music] they were as comfortable to carry. Uh I
have occasionally, over the last 5 years, seen people with AirPods Maxes,
but based on how few I see compared to AirPods like in-ears, it doesn't
surprise me that Apple [music] just isn't that focused on this product line.
And I can see why some other content creators, if they're into over-ears, are
frustrated that Apple's vision for this product hasn't really changed. And for
me, the biggest issue is just the weight. One of my classic tests with
headphones to determine whether they're uh going to be comfortable for me to
wear long-term is to give my head a shake.
And, you know, I'm an active person when I'm out and about. I'm not the kind of
person who's afraid to run when they're late for a bus or a crosswalk light. And
anything that is not going to solidly stay on and is light enough to just kind
of grab onto my head and be part of me is just
not really able to be part of my life. But a lot can be forgiven with
outstanding active noise cancellation. And, to their credit, they're actually
really similar to the AirPods Pro 3s in
terms of the naturalness of my own speaking voice as well. That's very
cool. And the H2 chip enables some other cool features that I don't care about,
but you might. Like adaptive audio, conversation awareness, voice isolation,
and live translation, which are all coming to the Max lineup for the first
time, along with Bluetooth 5.3 rather than 5.0. But I can see why some folks
were underwhelmed. I just I guess my expectations were just really low. Oh,
speaking of needing a new software version on your phone to use headphones,
if you were hoping to get any of the fancy-pants features [music] of the AirPods Maxes on a non-iPhone. No major
changes there, unfortunately. While some of them may end up being
reverse-engineered, like monitoring battery life and stuff like that, it is
no guarantee that it will work or that it will remain working if it does. Apple
continues to treat this product like one that yeah, you bought it, but do you
really need all the features or do you need to buy more stuff from us? Which is
an attitude that I just can never get behind from any company. Brad lent me
his phone. That was the solution rather than waiting half an hour for an update.
All right, connect. What if I don't want to carry this case
around with me? But like, how how am I going to pair them then? Can you pair
them without the case? Oh, okay.
To be clear, you can pair them to your phone without going through this
process, but you'll only get a Bluetooth connection, so a lot of the special
features won't work. It'll be just like if you were paired to an Android phone,
like some kind of pleb. No, I don't need personalized volume.
Oh, I'll have conversation awareness. No, I don't need that. All right,
downloading some languages. Let's go. Lossless audio with USB-C, very cool.
And done. All right. They're on.
It's on. We brought a French speaker.
So, translate. [music] Here we go. Live.
Okay, their language, French. Your language,
English. And I what? I'm going to go English UK. Hi there. Salut. Comment ça
va? I am very well. Thank you for asking. Where can I find the nearest
lingerie shop? >> Je ne sais pas. Je cherche aussi.
Oh, that's wonderful. Maybe we could go shopping together. Conveniently, I also
understand French reasonably well. This is like a very good translation. Very
cool. This is the first time we've managed to get a live translation feature working on the ShortCircuit
set, too. So, that's a milestone.
Digital Crown, let's get that adjusted. I don't like it when things are not
clockwise to increase. Ooh, I'm going to
throw it in noise cancellation. It's doing a really good job with my voice.
Like, it's passing it through even though I'm in noise cancellation mode.
It's almost like too good right now. Am I just in transparency mode? Hey.
No, yeah, no, it's doing a great job. It just switches over to transparency mode.
That's That's great. On the subject of battery, they claim up to 20 hours, which is
pretty nice if you're out and about for a long time. There is no battery in the
case, unlike the AirPods not Max. All
right, finally using it. >> [music] >> I already find myself wanting to engage
in a really bad habit. I want to turn the volume up so that I can hear better,
which tells me that any criticisms Apple has garnered for the sound signature not
being improved over last time. Well, you know what? I'm going to leave it to DMS,
actually, who's going to jump in and give you guys a closer look at the
acoustic performance of the AirPods Max 2s. Me?
Yeah. Let's talk about science.
I'm DMS. I'm Labs' resident audio nerd, and I can tell you exactly how these
sound with science and how they compare to the first gen using this guy. But
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offer. We'll have that linked down below. Okay, let's get into the nerdy stuff.
So, here's how we test things. We measure sweeps of sound that cover the
whole range you can hear. We do it using this guy, this thing, and a tiny
microphone in my real human ear. I take all that information, crunch it down,
and build a map of how these headphones perform on my head, on your head, and
probably some other guy who's watching. So, here's what that data looks like. On
this end, we have the bass, the deepest part of what you can hear. On this end,
we have the treble, the the sizzles, the highs.
Here, we have the midrange, what makes the music sound full.
And this gray area that goes all the way across, that's the average listener
preference. If the sound falls within this range, it means you'll probably
perceive it as being a sound quality. And that's important. This range is
pretty wide. So, let's break it down starting with the bass. Right here,
you'll notice this has a lot of sub-bass. That's pretty significant.
This thing extends down very deep. So,
you get a lot of that rumble. We have a decent tilt down here going into the
mid-range, but it's still a bit outside of our average listener preference
bounds. That means the average person will probably find these to be pretty
bass-heavy. Now, that might be a good thing depending on your preferences.
For me, it's a bit too much. The mid-range right here, that's pretty
good. This is really linear and I don't really have any complaints in this range
at all. This is exactly what I would expect from a really solid, maybe seven
out of 10 mid-range. It means that your music is going to sound nice and full.
There's not going to be too many holes in it through here. Then we have this
area right here. This is mostly where vocals live. And you'll notice on the
top of this range, that's where things start to go south, literally. We get a
huge dip right here in what is very
close to the most sensitive part of your ears. This. What this means is that the
upper end of vocals, especially female vocals, start sounding a bit nasally,
like they're recessed in the treble. It's not really what you want. And on
top of that, literally, things start trending up pretty strong. The areas
that make things sibilant, where the s sounds are very harsh and piercing and a
bit too sharp for the average person. There's a little bit of erratic stuff
like this that we're getting more on measurements in real human ears. You
will hear a bit of that and it's going to make it sound a bit more unpleasant, but overall, this is where the biggest
issue is. And this dip and this elevation side by side make each other
sound a bit more severe. The result is a headphone that is close to what people
describe as V-shaped. I think you can see why. Now, I have a bit of a rant on
this and I'll condense it as short as I possibly can. It frustrates me that a
company that has this much money is making this kind of mistake. This right
here is the result of a common mistake that I see of people misinterpreting
microphone in real ear measurements. Now, there's no way to know exactly what
it is that Apple was thinking with this or what they were planning because it's
kind of a black box. We don't have a lot of visibility into what makes these work
and why they chose to tune them this way, but we know that it's outside of
the range that most people are going to like. Let's compare this to the AirPods
Max version [music] 1. These do measure a ton like the AirPods Max version 1.
You can see the Max 1 here in blue and the Max 2 in red. Realistically, they're
almost exactly the same through the bass through most of the mid-range. We get a
little bit of a difference right here based on the placement, but really
they're almost exactly the same through the bass and through the mid-range. We
get a little bit of difference in terms of the elevation of some of these peaks
in the treble on specifically
that thing right there, the head and torso simulator. Now, depending on your
placement, you could get bigger differences than this, but
realistically, it seems like they didn't want to change much. They decided to
keep it as close as possible to the original AirPods Maxes with what some
might call a slight refinement, but not what I would call an improvement. Now,
just because they measure very similar, it doesn't mean they're the exact same.
Some things were retained from the original that I think are fantastic.
These have the best transparency mode that I have ever heard in an audio
product bar none. I mean, these sound more open than some super open-back
headphones, which is just crazy. It doesn't make any sense. And they
definitely improved the active noise canceling. The active noise canceling
like on the AirPods Pro 3 is a massive jump over everything else that I
previously heard before that. And the rest of the competition is starting to
catch up, but these are truly in a league of their own in terms of ANC. But
is that worth it for the compromise they make in sound?
Not for me, maybe for you, and I think it really comes down to things like
ecosystem. I'm not heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem. I do have a
MacBook, I do have an iPhone, but I also have a graphene phone. I also have a
Linux desktop. And with all those devices, I don't really use the
automatic device switching. The devices I do use have multi-point connectivity
and are already connected to all my things anyway. These will be H D 630s,
by the way, from Sennheiser. I love these, but while they're better on sound
quality, they don't compete in terms of active noise canceling or transparency.
So, it really depends on what are your priorities. If you're an audio person,
this probably isn't the headphone for you. And maybe you're a person using
these for meetings. The eight mic array is incredible, and the microphones
inside the cup allow these to perform way more consistently from head-to-head,
especially in the bass. You could be the kind of person using these with an Apple
TV and spatial audio to watch movies and not disturb your partner. That's
actually a pretty cool use case, especially because the sub-bass is so strong. But, the best spatial audio
device that Apple made was the AirPods Pro 2, oh, which are discontinued. It
just depends on what you're looking for and what you're after. I personally
don't recommend these from an audio nerd perspective, but
if that's not really what you're into, does it matter? At $549,
they're not cheap. You could buy 11 pairs of the Koss Porta Pro, which is a
cheap audio legend of a headphone that I honestly think they look kind of cooler
than these, too. But, for some people, especially someone who's really into the
Apple ecosystem, this might be worth it. Do you want to know about a premium headphone that has some similar problems
to these, but you can actually fix with software? It's these. These are the
Nothing headphones, and you can check out their video down below. Remember,
good sound is getting cheap, cheap sound is getting good, price does not
correlate with sound quality, and vote with your wallet.