Hi, everyone. Aaron here for Zollotech. And these are the AirPods Max.
Now these are the most expensive headphones I've ever purchased.
I normally use Sennheiser HD 650's connected to an amp,
and then A DAC to the computer. So I'm pretty into fairly high end audio,
not the highest end, but maybe pro-sumer level, I suppose.
And these are the most expensive headphones I've ever purchased.
They're $550 and there's five different options.
Now this is the silver color. There's also space gray,
green sky, blue and pink. So the same colors as the iPad air.
So let's go ahead and open them up and take a closer look.
We've got a little pull tab here to open them up.
So we'll take the wrapper off. Let's open the box here
And there we go. Nothing else inside the box.
And here's the headphones themselves, and they're fairly heavy.
They're 13.6 ounces or 384.8 grams.
We'll set this aside. See what else we get in the box for $550.
So it says AirPods max,
and then it tells a little bit about them,
how to pair them what the different buttons do.
We'll go over those in just a moment.
And it looks like we've just got a safety and handling regulatory and
compliance and warranty summary card. And that's it. So we'll set these aside.
So we'll put these back in the box and it looks like we've got a lightning
to USB-C cable and that's all we get in the, in the box with this.
So you've got that. No charger, nothing like that. Hopefully they're charged.
So let's put the box aside and take a closer look.
So this is the AirPods max. It has a wrapper around it.
So this opens magnetically
Looks like we can just slide this off here,
slide off to the paper.
It's got a little backing to it and there we go. And so immediately,
as soon as I opened this, it popped up on my iPhone to pair it.
So let's go ahead and hit connect.
We'll take just a moment here. It says connecting,
I guess we'll just take these out
and then we'll go around the AirPods.
So it took a moment to connect and as you can see,
it says noise control, press and hold the noise control,
switch between noise cancellation and transparency, media control.
That's your little digital crown we have.
And then it says, I guess, that's it.
So that's the little animation that tells you about it.
And then it talks about using control center.
So we'll skip that talks about spatial audio,
which is amazing if you've ever used that and we'll hit not now.
And then we'll hit done. There's 77% charge.
So let's set the phone aside and take a closer look. So this is the case itself,
and it's kind of an odd case you can see right through it and kind
of interesting there. Now I've got some magnet paper,
and one thing you're able to do is put the headphones or the AirPods max into
the case to put it to sleep.
And that's how it knew I opened it up or turned it on.
So it looks like you've got two big magnets right here, as you can see.
And I don't know if there's anything else.
On the back.
That just looks like there's magnets that you have.
You've got the magnets inside here that know the cases closed and so
nothing on the bottom or anything else. So this case is really strange.
I'm not a huge fan of the way it looks and you can't fold up the AirPods max.
So that part's kind of strange,
but let's go ahead and take a look at the outside of them.
And you've got these two little, I guess,
paper cups inside set those aside and these feel really nice.
It's cold to the touch.
You can see it's already leaving fingerprints here and it's aluminum.
So these are aluminum. Now let's go around the outside edge of the AirPods max.
And apparently there's nine microphones in total for active noise cancellation
and talking on the phone and things like that. So let's take a look.
So we've got the digital crown here, which I really like.
They've taken from the Apple watch to help you control media, press it to play.
Then you've got a little microphone opening.
It looks like you've got your active noise cancellation button there.
And then if we go to the bottom,
it looks like we've got a couple more microphones, a little status indicator,
light there next to our lightning connector, a couple more microphones,
and then we've got an antenna array. It looks like.
So you've got a little cutout in the metal for the antenna and more microphone.
So all the way around it. Now another thing too is these are magnetic.
You can swap out the ear cups with different colors,
but there are about $70 from Apple.
And you'll be able to order them a little bit later.
But I guess if you had a couple pair in the house,
you could swap them with space gray or whatever. You'd like now again,
with the magnet paper,
you should see magnets and drivers all the way around here.
You can see the driver in the rear rear of the,
the AirPods max. So there's just one driver,
but there's some magnets that hold everything on as well.
So you can see those here. So let's set the magnet paper aside,
put this back on, and then these adjust like this.
So they come out kind of like this reminds me of sort of a shock on a trunk or a
hood of a car. So it feels similar to a hydraulic shock that way.
And then they adjust spring.
Loaded this way.
So you can move them this way, spring loaded, and they look pretty nice.
This feeling of this mesh is really nice.
It's sort of like this outside mesh reminds me of a home pod, for example.
So like I said, you can't fold them up,
but you can put them in here and they keep clinking together.
So you can put them in this case, close it,
and then you could charge it on the bottom here.
So if that's something you want to do, you could do that.
So I really like the look of them outside of the case.
I don't think I'd use this as a carrying case with a handle or anything like
that, but they seem like they're pretty nice.
Now I'll go ahead and listen to some music. See what I think,
because I'm fairly picky with this and ILS 14.3, for example,
added support for the AirPods max and says that it adds high fidelity
sound and things like that. Now, technically these are Bluetooth 5.0,
and hopefully they're using some other things to get the best quality sound such
as aptX or something like that,
that you find on different phones or different standards as far as Bluetooth,
because for $550, they better sound pretty good.
Now there's a bunch of sensors inside here too.
So you have an optical sensor on each ear cup.
That's probably for head detection and then also position sensors,
case detect sensor and accelerometer in each ear cup and then a gyroscope
in the left ear cup. That's probably for spatial audio.
So you've got all of those sensors inside here as well. Now,
before I listened to some music,
let me go ahead and put these on my head and see what they're like here.
So they're sealed. You get the ding that you get. When you.
You connect your AirPods pro or whatever you have for AirPods,
you get the same sort of noise. Let me hit the noise cancellation button.
Now I can hear myself with transparency through the AirPods max,
so that part's nice. And these are fairly heavy, but because of this mesh,
you don't really feel it on your head too much. So that part's really nice.
So now that I'm trying these out, they feel really nice,
but let me go ahead and listen to them.
Maybe I'll watch part of a movie and then I'll let you know what they sound
like. At least my first impressions. Anyway,
now something I noticed right away is when you turn the dial,
you can actually hear an audible click.
So it's almost like you have a physical connection when you're playing music.
When I'm moving it just like this. I don't hear anything,
but when music's playing,
I actually hear a little click as I turn the digital crown.
So that's kind of nice. It's a nice little touch. Now in my initial first use,
I can't turn them up very loud.
I think I have the headphone safety set a little bit low.
Now that's a good thing of course, to preserve your hearing,
but you can adjust that. So you go to settings,
then you go to sound and haptics headphones, safety,
and then you have reduced loud sounds so you can turn that off,
whatever you want and then see how loud they go. So if you have transparency on,
you can hear yourself, no problem. And after adjusting those settings,
these go nice and loud. And they're clear at their loudest volume.
Although I don't know what that actual decibel res rating is.
So it could be too loud, but as you can see, we have some controls.
So if I push the transparency button here, you can see that it switches, noise,
cancellation, transparency, and then off. So with it off,
it's actually pretty hard to hear yourself. If I go to transparency,
I can hear just fine.
And then you have the digital crown is an option back to front, front to back.
So if I turn this up, you can see I move the digital crown.
It's adjusting it on my screen. If I change it,
that seems if I want it to go loud, I want it to go the other way for me.
So I want to turn it clockwise to go loud.
Counter-clockwise to bring it back down. So that's what I've adjusted it to.
And those are really your options. So you have spatial audio.
I want that when I'm watching videos.
So.
Spatial audio is incredible. If you've never used it,
maybe you have AirPods pro and you have an iPhone or an iPad.
If you have a movie that you've purchased through iTunes,
I highly suggest you try it out. It's incredible. Every time I use it,
I actually stopped watching movies on my TV and watch them on my iPad pro
because it's like, you're looking at a theater.
You get so involved because the audio is just incredible. As I move around,
you might've seen that the audio shifts. So if I turn this way, for example,
I can hear it coming from this year. If I turned this way,
it comes from this year.
It's like you're sitting in a theater and the sound is in one fixed place.
And you're moving around in that environment.
It's amazing what Apple's done with that.
So I'll continue to listen to these for a moment and then I'll give you my
impressions.
So.
These do the exact same thing is air pods. When you take them off of your head,
they turn off. When you put them back on, they turn back on.
Now that's a feature. You can turn it off if you don't want it.
And then you might've seen me automatically switch from my iPad to my iPhone.
And that's something that I think a lot of people are missing is convenience.
Yes, they're expensive. But being able to just switch between my iPhone,
my iPad, a Mac,
and just jumping between those devices when I want to do whatever I'm doing on
those devices, watch a movie, listen to audio, switch to maybe editing a video.
It's amazing that it just automatically switches and knows where you're at. Now.
As far as music goes, the music is very good.
It reminds me a lot of the original home pod. It's very balanced.
The bass is balanced. It is good bass. It's fairly heavy.
Although it's clear, it's not overpowering.
So compared to the Sennheiser HD six fifties that I normally use through an amp
and a deck, I'd say these are good. They're not that good.
If you want clear,
basically balanced audio where this isn't manipulating the audio with the
AirPods max, you're actually getting a manipulated audio.
That's using auto EQ to adjust it to whatever it thinks is best.
So if you want to hear what the art or the artist actually created, well,
then you probably want to use maybe pro grade headphones and an
amp to listen to that in the best quality possible. But with these,
this is for, I'd say the pro-sumer and under where you just want quality audio,
that's balanced.
It's going to sound the best for the type of music you're actually listening to.
It's clear. I didn't hear any digital noise or anything like that.
So I don't know if they're doing something with, with the iPhone.
I listened to some lossless music and some Apple music. The lossless was better.
Of course. And it just sounds pretty good.
So if you like the sound of say a home pod, for example,
you'll like the sound of these. If you don't like the sound of a home pod, well,
then you might want to skip these. Now,
the one thing I don't like about them is this case it's really goofy where you
have to put it in here to actually shut it off.
So if you want to put them to sleep without just leaving them,
you can just leave them, but this will actually put them to sleep.
And then you can charge them. They're built incredibly well.
I think if they didn't have this,
I'll probably just leave them on auto and Apple says they're good for 20 hours
of playback with noise cancellation turned on. So,
or 20 hours of movie playback or so with noise cancellation on.
So that's pretty good. It's not as good as some of the competitors out there,
but the build quality of these is better than any headphone I've ever had
anyway. So they're built incredibly well designed well,
except for maybe the case, which is kind of goofy. But other than that,
these sound really good. I'll continue to use them just out of convenience.
Now I'm hoping I can edit with them. Full-time and I say hoping,
because they're Bluetooth.
So oftentimes you get a little bit of lag when you're editing with Bluetooth
headphones. So I may still have to use wired headphones for that. Now,
if you already have a decent set of headphones,
I probably wouldn't run out and pick these up.
But if you have maybe a cheap pair of headphones that are just kind of
terrible sounding while you're going to be very impressed by these,
I really liked the design of them. They feel incredibly well-built.
And I do like that. You can replace the ear cups if you need to.
So that's my initial impression of them.
I'll continue to use them for about a week or so.
And if you'd like a follow-up review, let me know in the comments below.
One thing I've noticed is I keep banging these together and I'm afraid I'm going
to dent it. Hopefully I won't.
And they've made this thick enough where that's not a problem,
but it is something that concerns me a little bit.
Especially if you have some of the other colors, maybe it will chip the paint.
We'll have to see over time though. Now,
if you'd like to get your hands on the wallpaper I have on my iPhone, of course,
I'll link that in the description like I normally do.
So if you'd like to get your hands on this, if you haven't subscribed already,
please subscribe. And if you enjoyed the video, please give it a like,
as always. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time.