(upbeat music)
- Hey everybody Dave and David here
from payitforward.com and upphone.com.
And in this video
we're going to talk about the new AirPods Max.
These are Apple's latest headphones
and they come with a pretty hefty price tag.
- $550.
Unlike some other YouTubers, who shall remain nameless,
we went out and dropped 550 of our own dollars
plus tax on the AirPods Max.
So for me, that's a lot of money.
And as I was listening to them,
as I'm wearing them
I was definitely taking that into consideration
especially when some of the other
premium consumer headphones like the Bose and the Sonys
don't even come close to $400.
So this is in a league of its own
at least in terms of price.
- Yeah. So let's talk about what comes in the box.
Can we justify that price tag?
Well, you get AirPods Max,
you get the worst headphone case ever made.
- Ever made.
- You also get the charging cable, but no charger.
- Right.
- And if you want a headphone cable,
to plug it into your computer or your Android phone
or whatever,
it doesn't come in the box
you need to buy that separately for $35.
- After tax you're over 600.
- Yeah, exactly.
- One of the things that Apple made such a big deal about
with the iPhone 12 event was the size of the box.
They said we're cutting down on the box size.
Can't fit the charger in there anymore.
And then they ship the AirPods max in this giant box.
And my theory is that they had to
because the case is so pathetic.
Look at this,
look at the amount of padding that's in this box.
It's just, it's ridiculous.
- It's a lot.
- Let's just take it out of the case.
We'll show people why it's so bad.
- Headphones themselves are nice.
Good build quality,
metal as opposed to plastic
that does make them a little bit heavier
and you do kind of notice it
when you wear these compared to like the Sony XM4s.
You can definitely feel it
but I don't think it's so overwhelming
that it's like horrible.
- Yeah I personally didn't think to myself
when I put these on or after I wore them for a while,
Oh, these are heavy on me.
Never had that thought at all.
I think they did a good job of balancing that
with this mesh here,
sort of springy.
- Yep.
Another thing to keep in mind
is that there is no power button.
These don't turn on or off.
They're just always on.
And what you do is you put them into your smart case
their headphones, no they're in your smart case.
And then they go into a low power mode.
So if you leave them out like this,
right now it's just using battery life.
- Yeah it's going just be connecting to my iPhone,
it's going to be connecting to my Mac,
I'm trying to take a phone call on my phone.
Dave was using the AirPods earlier
and you know, just went right to the AirPods.
So that's going to be annoying.
Cause you're going to have to carry this thing
around with you to turn off your headphones.
That's pretty stupid.
- They do enter low power mode after two hours.
So you're gonna want to have the case with you,
but let's talk about the case.
I mean, when I first saw the reviews
of people who got these earlier,
I thought the case was gonna be
a little bit better than this.
It is really flimsy.
It's really thin.
There's, you know, it's not even,
there's no padding.
Yeah. I think my number one complaint about it
is that it's not functional as a case.
Essentially it's like a little wrappy thing that protects,
you know part of the metal and some of the the ear cup here,
which can be replaced,
but it doesn't protect this mesh at all
at the very top of the AirPods Max,
which is probably like,
I'm not throwing this in my backpack.
- No.
- It's going to damage them.
- Well, maybe you can look out for Apple's new
AirPods Max case carrier.
I'm sure that'll exist.
Another thing to look at with the case is that
the headphones are exposed at the bottom.
- Right everything was exposed.
You can't get the case wet.
You would hope that you leave it out in the rain
for two seconds,
it's not going to ruin the product.
This it's got the lightning port which is just exposed.
Drop of water gets in there,
see you later.
These are not water resistant at all.
- So we've kind of bashed the case
The headphones, the sound quality.
- Right. - Pretty good.
- Pretty good. - Pretty good.
- So for me,
I think that Apple optimizes the sound
that is coming out of this thing in their own special way.
So David and I have recently compared 28 pairs of headphones
and that includes some low end ones
but mostly high-end models.
Including the Bose Noise Canceling 700s
and the Sony XM fours,
which are also sub $400 but excellent quality.
And for me these have that Apple optimized sound
where they have sort of a peak it's called presence.
A lot of the times are silver
and somewhere around 15 kilohertz there's a bump,
and then there's a little mid-range dip
and then there's a lot of bass.
So they sound great.
Like they're really good sounding headphones
but then when you put it in the Bose you realize,
Oh there's a lot more to this mix
when it's more evenly balanced.
So as an audio person,
you know this is not geared toward audio professionals
and I think that's why they're not called the AirPods Pro
because there already are the AirPods Pro.
What were your thoughts about the sound?
- So I thought the sound it was good.
And one of the things I've seen
a couple of people call these
the new king of noise canceling,
and I'm not so sure they're noise canceling.
Pretty good.
- I am sure,
No, they're not the new King of noise canceling.
I didn't think that the noise canceling in this
was any better than the Bose 700.
- The other thing to talk about is the spatial sound
we tried it out with Star Wars.
We watched a couple minutes of Star Wars
and Darth Vader comes in a new hope and--
- Yeah.
- Was looking for the death star plans.
- Right.
- And it was really cool
like wearing these headphones,
you put them on and you turn your head
and sound's still coming from,
it can tell where the sound is coming from I like that.
- Right and it only works for the iPhone and iPad.
Hopefully eventually it works with Apple TV as well
because that's how I started to do it at first.
I was like, wait a minute this isn't working.
And David was like,
you got to use your iPhone.
- Yeah - Bro.
- So that was very cool.
If I was making a video called the best headphones
for watching movies,
winner.
- Easy.
- Especially if it was the best headphones
for watching movies on your iPhone or iPad.
Definitely the winner.
Hopefully in the future they find a way to
build this into the Apple TV as well
cause it'd be very cool.
The thing that I liked about the sound of these
that does differentiate them
is that they sound sort of bigger,
like more spacious.
And in my opinion,
part of that is because these ear cups are detachable
and magnetic which is cool
because eventually these are consumable products
they can be replaced for the low, low price of $69.
Great.
In any case,
part of the reason the noise canceling
isn't as good on these as it could be is that
this is just some fabric unlike a Bose
which are actually pretty solid rubber there
that are going to isolate more of the noise.
So open air headphones,
especially for audio file headphones
have a tendency to sound bigger.
They say it's a bigger soundstage.
So these sound bigger than the Bose headphones,
than the noise canceling Sony headphones
because those are closed back.
These are sort of in-between open back and close back,
in my opinion.
And that's how Apple got away
with making this really cool sounding headphone
that is really like an optimized sounding headphone
that's going to sound great to 99% of the people out there
who listen to them
but people that are audio files are not going to like them.
- Yeah so the thing that really bugs me
about these headphones
and I think why I would prefer the Bose 700s
or the Sony's XM4s is simply the price.
You can get the Bose or the Sony's on sale pretty often
for less than $300.
And then they're half the price of these headphones.
I think the quality of these,
if price wasn't a factor,
I might pick these just cause I'm an iPhone and iPad user,
but I can't get over the price deck.
- Right and if price wasn't a factor for me
I would pick the Bose.
Because the Bose have a flat EQ response.
They sound fabulous.
They're just great.
I think that the noise canceling on the Bose in an airplane
is going to be far superior to these.
In a quiet room,
there's not too much to cancel in terms of noise.
But these ear cups are going to let more noise into start
than the Bose are.
And so the Bose are going to have less work to do
in terms of noise canceling
and as far as I can tell the technology is just as good.
So I like these headphones.
I think that they're you know, a good product
but I'm kind of mad at Apple
because I think they're horribly overpriced.
Part of the marketing strategy that Apple uses for these
is a shortcut.
It's a shortcut that we all have
because we are inundated with information every single day
and there's no way that we can deal with life
without having these mental shortcuts.
So one of these shortcuts is expensive equals good.
And you see this all throughout your life.
This is how we know that the $4 deodorant
is better than the $2 deodorant,
even though it might not be
and we can't research the ingredients in deodorant.
It's how we know that the $500,000 house
is better than the $300,000 house,
even though it might not be
because the $300,000 house might not fall apart
within five years.
So usually these mental shortcuts
that we have built into us, don't let us down.
Usually a $50 meal is better than a $10 meal.
It's pretty solid bet.
Do not be fooled by this little mental shortcut
where expensive is better.
And this is by a book called 'Influence' by Robert Cialdini
which we'll drop a link to in the description section below
just the best book I've ever read on marketing,
fabulous book.
But all of a sudden the AirPods Pro which were $250
are now an affordable pair of headphones
because they're that much less than these.
Apple owns Beats.
Beats has a $300 pair of headphones.
All of a sudden
the kids that are asking for the Beats headphones
that are $300 for Christmas
aren't asking for the most expensive headphones that exist.
They're asking for a moderate choice
which is only $300 compared to the AirPods Max,
which are $549.
So that's some of the marketing thing behind this.
Apple is going to sell a ton of these headphones
because most people are saying
and should not buy these headphones
because they're not worth it.
But what they're doing is
they're going to sell more of the less expensive headphones
which their marketers absolutely know about.
They know how to price things.
They know how to price products
and unfortunately I think that Bose, Sennheiser
a lot of other headphone companies
are now going to follow suit
and price their high-end headphones at $550
and not $350 like the Bose are now
and the Sonys are now.
So thanks a lot Apple
you just raised the price of premium headphones
for all of us by $200.
- Come on.
- Brutal. - Brutal.
Take a breath Dave.
- Too expensive.
Too expensive that's the marketing thought.
- AirPods Max good headphones too expensive.
- Too expensive
and a watch our other headphone review videos
and we're going to talk next about,
or I guess next,
it depends on the order you're watching the videos
about the Sony, XM4s
and the Bose 700s versus the AirPods
and maybe we'll even talk about the Beats.
- Beats Studio.
- Yeah the $300 Beats.
- Thanks for watching this video.
Leave a comment down below,
let us know what you think of the AirPods Max
whether or not you're gonna buy these.
I mean I would just say get the Sonys or Bose.
- Yeah. Do you have any other questions?
We're happy to answer them.
There's--
- Yeah.
- It's interesting.
- Yeah and don't forget to subscribe to this channel
for more great videos about headphones.