Apple added headphone to their lineup. And there's a new pair of over ear,
wireless noise cancelling Apple headphones. They're called air pods max. And
they cost $550.Now, I didn't really know what to make of the name right off the
bat, I don't think I would have named them air pods personally. But, if you
look at the rest of Apple's lineup, I guess all of their audio products have
pod in them. There's ear pods, air pods, home pods, so fine.
It's a pretty big
box for a pair of headphones. First thing you see is the headphones inside
already inside the smart case, because they don't fold. They don't pack down at
all. This is how you travel with them. This is how they ship in this case with
the band's as a handle. The metal of the headphones is actually legit cold to
the touch, which is pretty sweet. Anyway, not much else in the box, you get a
little bit of paperwork, no Apple stickers. And there is one cable, but not the
typical cable that comes with headphones. Now, this is a USB type C to
lightning cable, there is no brick. And this is purely for charging. And there's
no audio cable included. That'll be another 35 bucks from apple.com. But yeah,
there you have the headphones pretty unique. They look like those huge planar
magnetic headphones from back in the day. But like a modernized version of that
design, I guess it's kind of classic, this green here probably isn't the best
looking color from being real. But that's it, we can get it back into the smart
case, slap that magnet shut. And we're off to the races.
So
it turns out, there is a lot of really interesting stuff with this particular
pair of headphones. But there's a lot that's different a lot that's unique
about these that you don't really see very often. This is just going to be my
first impressions and the top five things you should know about these new air
pods.
So number one, the materials. Like I said, when I took it out the box,
the metal was cold to the touch. These headphones have a stainless steel
flexible frame and the ear cups is aluminum. The shiny telescoping arms and
bulkhead joints on the ear cups that have to move around a little over 90
degrees. Overall, there is no doubt these are built very well. There's no
creaks, no gaps anywhere, I mean, even the little slide to expand the
headphones is really satisfying because there's a lot of resistance and I think
actually like this more than the typical plastic clicks to expand. But really,
the materials aren't actually as important as the overall comfort. And these
are going to sit on top of the head pretty nice that mesh band at the top is
basically designed to distribute the weight as evenly as possible across your
head and be kind of breathable, and it is really soft, which is awesome. But
we'll see about durability long term. I think it's probably worth it though,
because with all this metal, they are heavy headphones, they come in at a hefty
386 grams, compared to the much lighter 250 grams of Sony XM force. But yeah, I
mean, as far as just high grade headphones go aside from this one's particular
lack of sweat or water resistance, it just doesn't get much better built than
this.
The color options are same as the iPad Air, black, silver, light blue,
pink, and minty green.
Alright, number two, the ear cups magnetic. So they just
pop off pretty easily. They do stay on really well in their sort of groove when
you're wearing them. And obviously most of the time they don't just flop off.
But when you really do pull them to take them off, they come off. And that's
actually really smart because most people should replace the ear cups on their
headphones every once in a while the metal part the outside that's designed to
last a long time. But the inside especially with softer materials and leathers
you see that a lot people sort of outgrow the the ear pad and then just buy new
headphones. So this is a good idea. Now Apple is very happy to sell you some
new ear pads for $69 a set.
Mix and match colors if you want to, would have been nice if
you could customize your cushion color straight from the order page and macromeres
even put together a little visual aid so you can see what the different color
combos look like. But that's just the most Apple thing you've ever heard, isn't
it buying $550 headphones, and having to spend an extra $70 to change part of
the color.
But number three is
the controls. There are no touch controls anywhere on the size of either of the
ear cups as there are with a lot of other wireless headphones. Instead they
borrow the digital crown from the Apple Watch. Plus, there's an extra noise
cancellation button just to go on or off with transparency or noise
cancellation, I might have preferred to see these buttons at the bottom of the
ear cups for better reachability. But overall, this is probably honestly better
than a lot of the finicky touch controls. So here on the apple headphones, you
can spin that digital crown for volume, you can tap it in to answer calls, or
double tap to go forward triple tap to go back, etc. And also in iOS 14.3 when
you update there's controls and support built in that let you reverse the
scrolling direction for the crown in case you end up getting it backwards.
Then number four, the case. They call it the smart case, it
comes with the headphones. And the headphones literally just slot in here and
close with a magnet. And my very first impression is there is no redeeming
quality about this case at all. The headphones don't actually fold down or get
more compact to travel with the most durable part of the headphone is covered.
And the softest least durable part is your carrying strap. It's the most
exposed part. And then it isn't even fully protect all of it. There's like
slots in here. And then also something to note, there is no on off button with
these headphones. So instead, you put them in this case, and when the magnet
shuts, it detects that they're in the case and they go Okay, we don't need to
be on anymore, it goes into this ultra low power state to save battery. That's
really smart. And that means you don't have to remember to turn them off every
time. And as soon as you take them out the case they wake up. And it's like you
never turn them off. Easy, but now that means you have to use this case to turn
the headphones off. And if you don't use this case, they will just sit around
draining battery for about two hours before they go into auto low power mode.
Not sure if other cases can be made that also use magnets to trigger this low
power mode. That remains to be seen.
But then number five, last but not least, is the smart
features. So this is the part that's going to require the most additional
testing because basically as aside from sound quality, which first impression
is very good. And noise cancellation is right about on par with AirPods pro
basically, they're incredibly good with white noise. But there's a lot more
testing for this sort of thing for the full review. And there's a lot of smart
features to there's the dual h1 chips, doing a lot of computing as you listen
to music one in each year, there's nine microphones this time for noise
cancellation and transparency mode.
Apple headphones made to be used
with iPhones and Apple products. So when you use it with an iPhone, you get
features like audio sharing, Siri, reading your text messages, and the instant
pairing and all that fun stuff. Like Of course I plan on putting them through
the wringer and very thoroughly testing them because at $550 they deserve that
and you deserve that.
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