- Hey everybody,
David and David here from payetteforward.com
and upphone.com
And in this video,
we're going to compare the AirPods Max
to the Beats Studio3.
You walk into an Apple store,
you say, I want a pair of over ear headphones.
And they say, here's what we got.
- Yep. You can trust our reviews
because we went out and we paid our own money,
our own dollars for these headphones.
So we are conscious of the price
and how expensive these headphones are.
- Yeah. We listened to eight tracks, identical tracks,
every pair of headphones we reviewed.
- Yeah - And that's kind of
how we formed the basis of our audio comparisons.
But we also want to talk about like
what actually comes in these boxes.
So AirPods Max,
- We'll take the box
- Here's the case. You can kind of see the case,
terrible, terrible case - flimsy
- Doesn't protect your headphones.
There is gaps at the bottom.
- Yep
- Liquid could just get in there
and get in the charging port.
- Yeah. You can't trust the case to protect your headphones.
Can't throw them in your backpack.
- The most fragile part here,
the mesh headband totally exposed.
Doesn't make sense to me.
It's a smart case. When you put these in here,
your AirPods enter a low power state
and they just don't use a lot of battery life.
You don't put them in the case,
they drain a lot of battery for two hours and then shut off.
- Yeah it's just a case that turns off your AirPods,
but it's just dumb AirPods.
Cause like they don't have a power button yet.
Headphone cable does not come in the box,
this little guy, $35,
- right
- $35 for this.
- Yeah.
So the price of these is essentially 290.
$35 plus $549,
- Yeah
- twice as much as the Beats.
- Yeah, I think the Beats, I mean, look at the case,
we've pulled the case. That's a solid case,
- great case,
- great case.
- Yeah, It's a solid guy jeez.
- It comes with the audio cable.
I really liked the way that the Beats fold up,
for the record.
- Yeah. It comes with the audio cable. Like I said,
- very portable
- Bang.
it's one of the easiest cases to use
because some of the other ones you have to
like fold up the headphones in some weird way,
- Yeah - especially the Sony's ugh.
Solid. You could use this as a weapon. It's so solid.
- So one of the things that annoyed me about the Beats
right off the bat, is we took it out of the box,
the first time. Look at the box, the color red on the box,
and then you kind of compare it to the headphones,
not the same color.
This is kind of a common problem
we found with headphones where the color on the box doesn't
really match the headphones.
They kind of make it brighter on the box.
So don't get misled there.
- Let's talk about the sound quality because that's..
- Oh, is that important with headphones?
- kind of important with headphones I suppose.
- Yep so both are active noise canceling.
- Both of these have an optimized sound,
the AirPods Max sound great.
And you'd be surprised at the number of headphones
that do not sound good. The problem with these headphones,
for me as somebody who likes music
is that they're optimized. And so are these
in a way that sounds very Apple and it's
this bump in the high-end for presence or silver around the
16 kilohertz or 15 somewhere in there
and then a bump in the base.
- One thing I felt with the Beats too,
I thought the bass got kind of overwhelming
to some of the tracks we listen to.
And you can definitely feel it more with the Beats than the
AirPods Max. I think the AirPods Max
is a little bit better balanced,
- Mhmm
- just trying both of them on Beats are a lot lighter
and you'll feel it
- Really?
- Yeah.They're...
- I haven't worn these since we last demoed them.
Yeah. I think that I would take those.
- Yeah.
- These have pretty tight.
- They're tight in the headband,
the padding on the top - yeah
- There could definitely be more.
- Yeah, there could definitely be
a little bit more on the top.
Cause yeah, this actually would, would get tight.
Whoa, jeez.
A lot of the Beats, they have this metal,
it's like a really sharp metal, not for children.
- The thing that really bugs with the AirPods Max,
I mean, they're good headphones,
and if you're somebody watches a lot of movies
on your iPhone or iPad,
spatial audio with these amazing
- Great - Amazing
- blows everybody else out of the water.
- But at the end of the day, it comes down to price for me,
I just can't justify $600 on
- No,
- you just can't. I can't do it.
- Right, I can't either, and to be honest
if these were the same price
as the Bose Noise Canceling 700s and the Sony XM4s
I would pick the Bose.
These are fabulous headphones.
The noise canceling is superior to the AirPods Max
and superior to the Beats.
But what I would say actually is don't buy the Beats.
Don't buy the AirPods. If you have $300 to spend,
don't buy these because these are
a little bit more than that.
- I'm going to get them on sale.
- Right, get them on sale.
Or if you're not exactly at the right time,
buy the Bose QuietComfort35 II
Noise Canceling Headphones for $300.
And sometimes they go on sale.
They're sort of the top of the line Bose
from the last generation.
And they are fabulous in terms of sound,
they beat these, not sure if they'd be the AirPods Max,
but they definitely beat these.
- You think Beats, you think these are like the
top of the line headphones and we started like
actually comparing them head to head with Bose and Sony.
They weren't as good. You know, it's hard to say, you know,
which AirPods or Beats, which would you pick
because I think the AirPods are better
but they're just too expensive.
And if you're going to spend this much on headphones,
as you said, go with a Sony or a Bose.
- I think part of the reason that Apple priced these so high
is that these are essentially Apple headphones too.
And all of a sudden these aren't very expensive,
even though they're $300,
they're not sort of the most expensive headphones
that you can buy that are made by Apple.
And they're a little bit more than half price
of the top of the line ones. - yeah
- So I think that they are thinking
pricing strategy with this
and they really blew the lid off of, you know,
high-end headphone pricing. Thanks a lot Apple.
- Yeah if price isn't a factor AirPods Max
definitely superior to the
Beats Studio - Definitely, yes.