The Bluetooth connection has also been improved, from Bluetooth 5.0 to Bluetooth 5.3. As anyone who has ever experienced having 45 different strangers’ headphones pop up on your iPhone in an airport, the improvement in connection stability is the most noticeable in Bluetooth-heavy environments; I didn’t notice any dropouts. You can also now plug the headphones into your phone to reduce latency and for better sound quality, which is a bit useless for me since I’m one of the vast majority for whom lossless audio makes no difference.
As far as the sound goes: These are some of the best-sounding headphones I’ve ever tried. (I compared them in listening tests with the Sonos Ace.) Anything with a big bass line sounds amazing with Apple headphones, and that iconic “headbanger” intro to Missy Elliott’s “Get Ur Freak On” vibrated right through my skull without sounding muddy.
Photograph: Adrienne So
The main criticism of the AirPods Max line in general is that the highs are painfully bright, but I didn’t notice this with Kacey Musgraves’ pure, clear vocals on “Everybody Wants to Be a Cowboy”. I could also enjoy the full speed and articulation of Billy Strings’ intricate fingerpicking. Dance music also sounds incredible—I loved the big brass in La Roux’s Trouble in Paradise and also found myself listening to a lot of Robyn’s Sexistential. There’s still no manually adjustable EQ, so you better be happy with how it sounds because you’re not changing it.
As is the case with most Apple products, if you already own a pair of the OG AirPods Max, you don’t really need to shell out the money to upgrade. However, if you own an iPhone and you’ve been considering whether to get these, the Sony pair, or the Bose, you should probably just get these.
They sound amazing; they block out the whirring of the giant propeller blades of death and your children shrieking while playing Paper Mario in the next room. They now come with a whole new set of software upgrades that make them, along with the AirPods Pro 3, the most useful headphones for iOS.
And if this matters to you—it probably does, since you’re reading this review—the AirPods Max 2 still look and feel totally different from every other headphone around. Why mess with a design that anyone can still spot at 100 yards away? I wish they still came in green, though.
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