AirPods Max 2 Review: Surprising Improvements

[00:02] Max 2. And despite looking almost identical, or actually identical, to the original AirPods Max, these actually have a lot of improvements. From the H2 chip, a new amplifier, new features on here, camera control, and a lot more I'm

[00:15] video. But, I'm not going to make this a comparison and only talk about the new things on these headphones. I'm not going to assume that you already have the original AirPods Max. Instead, this is going to be a full comprehensive

[00:28] review. I'll talk about I'll talk about the features, the sound quality. We'll the ANC, the transparency, everything else you need to know before buying before we get too far in this video, full disclosure here, this video is not

[00:42] Nobody's giving me any money to make this video. I'll talk about both pros even gift me these headphones. They're letting me borrow them. They sent them ahead of launch so I could try them out. So, this is, like I said, going to be a

[00:55] full, very honest review. I'll talk about pros and cons, everything I like, about these headphones. So, with that being said, I think we should start off something that a lot of people are buying these headphones for. They

[01:09] aesthetically have become very well accepted, and people wearing these walk anywhere. You'll see these headphones absolutely everywhere. And part of it's because they're a premium pair of headphones, and they're kind of a style

[01:22] colors with these. We've got the blue ones right here. You I'll link the other them on screen as well, but a lot of different options for aesthetics here. And the ear cups are magnetically removable, which is not only helpful if

[01:35] you wanted to change the color and have a different ear cup versus the rest of beneficial if you're wearing these in the gym, or anywhere, like if you just wear them a lot and these wear out, it's nice to be able to replace them very,

[01:48] very easily, or take them off and clean them, and then put them back on without worrying about, I don't know, the rest of your headphones. The design I said is you've got this kind of matte aluminum finish that's very similar to a MacBook

[02:01] Pro, for example. Kind of consistent with the rest of Apple's lineup. The headband is a nice solid metal, but at the same time flexible, able to be bent, and just feels nice and sturdy, not like a piece of plastic. But, it's covered in

[02:14] like a soft kind of silicone material that again makes it more comfortable. On distributes the weight across your head when you're wearing these. And as far as crown, which is similar to the Apple Watch. You can turn it, and that adjusts

[02:28] the volume. Very intuitively, you wear it, and your right thumb is going to be controlling that, or your right pointer finger. And you can press that as well to change, you know, playback, play, pause, next song, previous song, things

[02:40] like that. Or, you could press and hold it as well. And the other button is going to be your sound control, toggling between ANC and transparency. But, what between ANC and transparency. But, what these do not have is a power button.

[02:52] Look around them, you'll see there's no way to turn them on. You don't press and hold the top buttons. You just They just turn on. And that's kind of Apple's goal to make these feel like magic. They They just work. All you do is you take them

[03:04] out of the case, as Apple calls it, the smart case. And really, the way this works is there's a small magnet in in the middle here that when placed between sleep mode. So, these technically never

[03:16] of what they're doing. So, if you take them out of the case, it'll turn them them on your head, and they turn on. It happens fairly quickly, and 95% of the time, it works perfectly. But, 5% of the time, I find that I'm taking these off,

[03:32] putting them back on my head again just to retry that cycle to get them to turn on. So, my first complaint is that I do wish there was a way to turn these off or on by, you know, pressing and holding, or some combination of the

[03:45] there that that probably could happen, but Apple doesn't give us that capability. Talking about the case then, this is a a complaint that a lot of people have. I don't mind it nearly as much as other people, but the case only

[03:58] covers the ear cups. So, this is going to be, you know, it's lightweight, it's can charge it while it's in the case. That's a positive there. And you can But, if you're doing that, you may find that the mesh on the top could

[04:13] nail right there. I have a headphone hanger, and I've been using my previous generation AirPods Max on that for a while. And as you can see, they haven't worn out at all. But, my first generation from whatever that was, 4

[04:26] wrinkly in that mesh on the top. And the mesh is not nearly as easily replaced as the ear cups. In fact, I don't even know if you could replace that. But, talking about the case then a little bit more. If you don't like this case, so a lot of

[04:40] traveling, they want to throw something in their backpack, and they don't want damaged by other things in their backpack. I actually did find a really good solution to this. If you go online, I actually have a link down below, and

[04:53] expensive. It's like a hundred bucks. But, it's a nice premium leather case, allows you to store charging cables in there as well. And it is actually a that goes between the headphones cups, and it will turn it on and off just like

[05:08] these do. If you buy a cheap one on Amazon, it's very likely not going to do that. And if you don't have this going to ultra low power mode, it'll still go into a lower power mode, and then I think it's like 72 hours until it goes

[05:20] wrong in this, but you're going to be losing your battery a little bit faster with some of those cheaper cases. Some of the cases even have like you put it another case, and that solves the

[05:33] extra steps that I'm not really interested in having. Also, looking at have a USB type-C port. That's for charging. You get 20 hours of battery on these. Not really the longest in the industry. In fact, many in the industry

[05:48] are up to like 50 or 40 hours per charge. So, that's a little bit of a downside here. But, I do appreciate that the USB type-C port can be used for lossless audio through the wire connection. So, I have these hanging

[06:01] usually plug them in, but if I ever forget and I have a call, I put them on, dead." I could just plug into my laptop, it'll charge them, I'll be able to use it. But, you're also able to get higher quality audio when you do that. A port

[06:16] that is unfortunately missing, in my opinion, is a 3.5 mm port. I find that although you can have an adapter that goes from USB to to 3.5 mm, sometimes I are like I don't need to have that dongle. With some other headphones, they

[06:29] just have a 3.5 mm port on them. And these don't have that. As far as fit and comfort go with these, you'll see you can bend them quite far, and it is quite sturdy. So, not only does it bend, also you can adjust by that really premium

[06:42] smooth metal slider there with the polished metal bar underneath. Again, looks premium, but also is one of the most well executed, in my opinion, for size adjustments. And they bend with a magnetic snap, so a magnetic bias to

[06:54] come back in, but they bend out at an angle there, and then you can also flex it. So, it fits a variety of head sizes and shapes quite well. However, the you know, I think they're very

[07:06] you know, up to like an hour, absolutely no problem. My ears don't particularly get hot with these. I like the way they feel and fit. But, the weight of them is aspect, especially if you plan on wearing these for workouts. And speaking

[07:20] of working out with these, they technically don't have a water actually don't. You look at the best from Sony, Bose, you know, so many other ones out there that are premium, even similar in price to this, do not have a

[07:33] that may be viewed as a downside, it's actually very common in the industry, while they're running, or, you know, if they're in the rain, if they're sweaty, pretty well. You can leave a comment if you, you know, gotten these wet and had

[07:47] damage, but I haven't personally heard of anyone that had a problem with that. So, technically, you still could work just fine for working out. I'll talk video, and who I think these are really best for. But, let's talk a little bit

[07:59] more about the active noise cancellation. One of the biggest reasons to get these headphones. There's a lot that these do incredibly well. ANC, without a doubt, is one of them. And the ANC now has been significantly improved

[08:11] versus the previous generation. So, even though, like I said, these are indistinguishable in design, the previous generation and the Max 2, the difference. And the reason for that is because we now have the H2 chip versus

[08:24] to get many features with that. I'll talk about that in a second. But, the ANC is claimed to be, I think, like one and a half times stronger. Based on my and a half times stronger. Based on my testing, that is 100% a huge improvement

[08:37] did a basic test where I played some white noise, set distance away, turned longer able to block it. The previous generation was blocking a very impressive 61 decibels until it really wasn't sufficient anymore. The new

[08:51] generation was blocking about 65 and a half decibels. And remember, decibels are a log scale. So, that difference is absolutely huge. If I was traveling with among the best in the industry, actually, when blocking out those lower

[09:06] how these compare to the best of Bose and Sony and Sennheiser, I am working on subscribing to the channel if you want to see that video. But, the other test of ANC. So, low noises are not everything. Some ANC models really

[09:21] struggle to block higher frequencies. So, when blocking out voices, I find that, again, you do have a very significant improvement in the newer model here. I I was blocking about 38 decibels on the original ones, or the

[09:33] previous generation, which is like the one and a half one. It was the USB type-C AirPods Max from like 2 years ago. The new ones, I was blocking about 44 decibels. So, a very significant jump in that as well. So, the active noise

[09:46] cancellation on the AirPods Max 2 is absolutely incredible. A huge step up, and one of the biggest reasons people would buy these headphones. The that changed in my experience, but it

[09:59] didn't need to be changed. The previous generation was already pretty much the industry gold standard. The transparency is very, very accurate. There's no white noise. You can put them on your head and take them off and it's almost

[10:11] indistinguishable. You can hear everything around you and like if I wanted to listen to music and I had these on and they weren't connected, I could still enjoy music from a speaker a couple feet away. And that kind of

[10:23] brings me into sound quality. Now, the sound quality on these has been improved for several reasons. So, these now have Bluetooth 5.3 versus 5.0 on the previous ones. They also have a new amplifier, the same amplifier as the AirPods Pro 3.

[10:36] And of course, much like last generation, you're still able to get that lossless audio if you're going with a USB-C cable, but as far as Bluetooth goes, these only have SBC and AAC, which many people are going to look at that

[10:49] And yes, I would absolutely love higher resolution codecs, but these actually still sound really, really good. So, these have an adaptive EQ. There's no EQ all. I'll show you what you're able to adjust on the phone, but you know, the

[11:05] sound you get is the sound you get. However, there's powerful bass, very overdone like so many other headphones. There's plenty of details on the highs. Overall, a very neutral profile, much like a lot of the other AirPods products

[11:18] that makes them really versatile. Although, some casual listeners who prefer the V-shape, the boost in the in the bass, the boost in the trebles, they personally am a big fan of these. I think the sound profile on the AirPods

[11:31] Max is very well done. It's really hard to complain about these. And like I said, between the new amplifier addition of the H2 chip, these are getting some audio improvements compared to the first generation. So, let's get into a mic fun

[11:43] test. These are the AirPods Max 2 and I'm using the microphone through the camera app on my iPhone on my iPhone Air, but the microphone is directly to use these. Uh presumably, if you wanted to record a

[11:57] away, like yeah, these can act as a microphone. But, this would also be an example of probably the best-case scenario. I'm in a studio environment get on a phone call. We'll see how well it's able to block the sound around me.

[12:11] Um and I mean, AirPods Max in the past, actually all AirPods, have done an excellent job with microphones. So, I would not be surprised if these also did to.

[12:23] obviously, but busy road. There's definitely a breeze right now. You can see some cars going behind me. This is just like a Google Meet call using the AirPods Max 2 on my iPhone. Definitely a tough environment, but let me know if

[12:37] this is able to block out the sounds around me and how well you're able to hear me if at all. And of course, the price of these. Now, people are going to ridiculous price, expensive, blah blah blah. Like people are going to complain

[12:50] about these. And yes, they are absolutely not cheap headphones. But, actually changed versus when they were first launched back in 2020. So, a 2020 dollar is not the same as a 2026 dollar. So, according to bls.gov, I I checked

[13:06] this. If you look at $549 in December of 2020, what is it equivalent to in today's dollars? It's actually $689, which means that if you're using the same currency from then to now. And this

[13:18] economics here. These, the new ones, are actually cheaper than how the original ones were launched. They're $140 cheaper because launched. They're $140 cheaper because $549 today is less valuable than $549

[13:32] in 2020. So, Apple is giving us the same design, a lot of improvements, but technically, they're lowering the price in the actual value of dollars. I'm sure who don't understand what I mean by that. So, if you do understand, go on

[13:45] help explain it to some other people. So, I mentioned that these don't lot of settings. So, let's see what Max 2. If you go into your settings and you tap on AirPods Max 2 once they're

[13:59] transparency and noise cancellation. There's also adaptive ANC, which is going to change based on the environment you're in. So, if you go outside, it volume. It works really seamlessly and some people try this and they're like,

[14:13] works so well, you don't even realize what it's doing. There's also a volume wearing these and something really loud happens, that's not going to be ears, which is kind of a nice safety feature there and makes it a lot more

[14:28] comfortable. Scrolling down, you can see you're able to answer calls and change pressing the buttons to do stuff like that. Camera remote, I can turn that on. So, you can press it once or press and hold to take photos and start videos. I

[14:41] "This sounds really useless. I don't want to be wearing the headphones in photos and like looking like, you know, in my photos." But, you know, gym or whatever, some people might be might be using that. But, I want I

[14:54] can you actually take the headphones off when you take a photo? So, let's the camera control button, I'll go into photo. First of all, with it on, let me photo. First of all, with it on, let me turn it around, get a photo of me here.

[15:09] I can press it. I'll press the crown. And it does a timer, 3 2 1. worked pretty well. But, let's see if I can take the headphones off and if it'll still work. So, if I'm holding it over here and I press the crown once, it does

[15:24] photo, you could technically like hold these behind your back, I suppose, and take a group photo. Assuming you don't have like an Apple Watch or something could achieve this, but okay, that's actually kind of a useful feature if

[15:39] group photo and you just hold them behind your back. Okay, so what else do volume. So, based on, you know, you, it's going to adjust the volume. I don't awareness is a really big one and is

[15:53] especially useful on these headphones. So, if you're on a train or something, your head, like you can't just take one earbud out as you would with AirPods, these you can just talk and it'll turn the volume down, turn on transparency.

[16:07] It identifies that you are speaking. You can have a conversation with somebody while, it'll just turn your music back up and turn on the ANC. And the longer your conversation is, the longer it waits before resuming your music. So,

[16:20] that's a feature that is very well executed by Apple in my opinion. We've customize the volume. Loud sound reduction, like I said, that's a appreciate that and I always leave that on. And we've got some other, you know,

[16:33] 360 audio, spatial audio is what they call that. I'm not a big user of that, but it does exist if you wanted to use it. I'm actually going to go and disable that right now on this new one with this phone. So, stop using it.

[16:46] not something I use. But, there's also live translate came out with the AirPods Pro 3. People were very excited about that. People are now excited about these having live translate as well. So, the way it works,

[16:59] technically, it's in beta right now, but you download the language you want to use. So, if I'm like, all right, I'm traveling to Japan, I can download the press and hold the listening mode button. That's the kind of rectangular

[17:11] button, and that'll open up live translate. I demonstrated this with my original AirPods Pro 3 review and I found that it's definitely improving a requires a lot of compute and it's definitely not perfect. It's not going

[17:24] to get every word correct, but I found that it worked reasonably well. I could hear the voice and I also heard like the basically Siri kind of voice talking in my native language and translating for me. So, yeah, it's kind of impressive.

[17:37] probably already achieve with some other apps out there, perhaps even with better exists. We also now get head gestures on the AirPods Max 2, so you can nod or shake your head to answer or reject phone calls and notifications from Siri.

[17:52] And you can talk to Siri by either saying, "Hey Siri." or just Siri. here. Apple does a really good job in my opinion of being accommodating to people with different needs with accessibility. Um but, otherwise, those are the

[18:05] talk about pros and cons of these headphones, kind of rounding it off. Pros. These have excellent sound quality. These have excellent ANC. These have excellent transparency. These are deeply integrated into the Apple

[18:18] ecosystem. Those four reasons there are going to make these like that's probably these. And that checks all the boxes that make them an excellent pair of everything is going to be perfect on them. And before getting into the cons,

[18:33] kind of neutral on the price. It's definitely expensive. People will premium headphones. And like I said, technically, the price is lower in real dollars than it was just a couple years ago. However, if you look at other

[18:47] premium headphones on the market, the Sony XM6s, 460 bucks. Bose QuietComfort Sony XM6s, 460 bucks. Bose QuietComfort Ultra 2, 450 bucks. Sennheiser 630s, 500 bucks. So, yeah, these are still pricier, but the gap is getting smaller.

[19:00] Now, getting into the negatives. They are very heavy headphones. They don't really have a case that protects them entirely. You could buy a third-party one, but that's an extra 100 dollars. There's no on or off button and there is

[19:12] There's no on or off button and there is still no EQ. Also, they really only work on Apple. You can put them in pairing mode and connect them to a non-Apple any settings. You won't be able to get any updates on these. They won't have

[19:25] the seamless switching between, you know, all the Apple devices as you do. So, compatibility is really quite limited to the Apple ecosystem. But, I still think if you're deep in the Apple ecosystem and you have a budget that can

[19:37] probably really like them. They're excellent performing headphones and right. And even though, like I said, these are indistinguishable aesthetically from the previous generation, they really do have have

[19:50] me know what you think about these in the comments down below. Hope you going to be a ton of comments that are like super pro or super anti-Apple. happen in the comments, but I'll see you down there.