• il y a 7 heures
Transcription
00:00All right, what's up? MKBHD here. So we got a little surprise, a little quiet but not
00:09so quiet addition to Apple's holiday season stuff, a little one more thing on top of their
00:14one more thing. So they've added to their headphone lineup, and there's a new pair of over-ear
00:20wireless noise-canceling Apple headphones, and they're called AirPods Max, and they
00:27cost $550, and I got them right here. Now, I didn't really know what to make of the
00:37name right off the bat. I don't think I would have named them AirPods personally, but hey,
00:42if you look at the rest of Apple's lineup, I guess all of their audio products have Pod
00:46in them. There's EarPods, AirPods, HomePods, so fine. Either way, this is the box, and
00:52it's a pretty big box for a pair of headphones, but you can see we have this minty green
00:56color here today to get into. When you pop that top, get into the top of the box, first
01:01thing you see is the headphones inside, already inside the smart case because they don't fold,
01:08they don't pack down at all. This is how you travel with them. This is how they ship in
01:12this case with the bands as a handle, but we'll get to that in a minute. I'm just going
01:17to take them out of the case for the first time, and the metal of the headphones is actually
01:21legit cold to the touch, which is pretty sweet, not going to lie. I can get the paper off
01:25of the smart case so we can admire that too in all of its glory. Anyway, not much else
01:33in the box. You get a little bit of paperwork, no Apple stickers, and there is one cable,
01:38but not the typical cable that comes with headphones. No, this is a USB Type-C to lightning
01:44cable. There is no brick, and this is purely for charging, and there is no audio cable
01:49included. That'll be another 35 bucks from apple.com. But yeah, there you have the headphones.
01:55They're pretty unique. They look like those huge planar magnetic headphones from back
01:59in the day, but like a modernized version of that design. I guess it's kind of classic.
02:04This green here probably isn't the best looking color if I'm being real, but that's it. We
02:09can get it back into the smart case, slap that magnet shut, and we're off to the races.
02:13So, it turns out, there is a lot of really interesting stuff with this particular pair
02:25of headphones. I mean, you guys have seen headphones before, I've reviewed them, but
02:29there's a lot that's different, a lot that's unique about these that you don't really see
02:33very often. And so, while this isn't my review, that'll be coming up soon, and definitely
02:38make sure you subscribe to be among the first to see that if you haven't already. This is
02:41just gonna be my first impressions and the top five things you should know about these
02:47new AirPods. So, number one, the materials. Like I said, when I took it out of the box,
02:52the metal was cold to the touch. So, these have a stainless steel flexible frame, and
02:56the ear cups I was touching are aluminum. There's these shiny telescoping arms and ball
03:01head joints on the ear cups that let them move around a little over 90 degrees. Overall,
03:06there is no doubt these are built very well. There's no creaks, no gaps anywhere. I mean,
03:11even the little slide to expand the headphones is really satisfying because there's a lot
03:16of resistance. And I think I actually like this more than the typical plastic clicks
03:21to expand. But really, the materials aren't actually as important as the overall comfort.
03:27And these are gonna sit on top of the head pretty nice. That mesh band at the top is
03:31basically designed to distribute the weight as evenly as possible across your head and
03:36kind of breathable. And it is really soft, which is awesome. But we'll see about durability
03:42long term. I think it's probably worth it though, because with all this metal,
03:46they are heavy headphones. They come in at a hefty 386 grams compared to the much lighter
03:53250 grams of my Sony XM4s. But yeah, I mean, as far as just high grade headphones go,
03:58aside from this one's particular lack of sweat or water resistance, it just doesn't get much
04:04better built than this. That's just facts. By the way, the color options, same as the iPad Air.
04:09So black, silver, light blue, pink, and this sort of minty green. All right, number two,
04:16the ear cups, magnetic. So they just pop off pretty easily. They do stay on really well in
04:22their sort of groove when you're wearing them. And obviously, most of the time, they don't just
04:26flop off. But when you really do pull them to take them off, they come off. And that's actually
04:31really smart, because most people should replace the ear cups on their headphones every once in a
04:36while. The metal part, the outside, that's designed to last a long time. But the inside, especially
04:41with softer materials and leathers, you see that a lot. People sort of outgrow the ear pad and then
04:46just buy new headphones. So this is a good idea. Now, Apple is very happy to sell you some new
04:52ear pads for $69 a set. But I guess a nice bonus, at least, is that you can actually mix and match
05:00colors if you want to. Would have been nice if you could customize your cushion color straight
05:05from the order page. And MacRumors even put together a little visual aid so you can see
05:09what the different color combos look like. But that's just the most Apple thing you've ever
05:13heard, isn't it? Buying $550 headphones and having to spend an extra $70 to change part of the color.
05:21But number three is the controls. So there are no touch controls anywhere on the sides of either
05:27of the ear cups, as there are with a lot of other wireless headphones. Instead, they borrow the
05:31digital crown from the Apple Watch. Plus, there's an extra noise cancellation button just to go on
05:36or off with transparency or noise cancellation. I might have preferred to see these buttons at the
05:41bottom of the ear cups for better reachability. But overall, this is probably honestly better than
05:46a lot of the finicky touch controls. I like when there's a physical control, like on Microsoft's
05:51headphones, having that big dial spinning. That was sweet too. So here on the Apple headphones,
05:55you can spin that digital crown for volume. You can tap it in to answer calls or double tap to go
06:02forward, triple tap to go back, et cetera. And also in iOS 14.3, when you update, there's controls
06:08and support built in that let you reverse the scrolling direction for the crown in case you end
06:13up getting it backwards. Then number four, the case. So let's just get the jokes out of the way
06:20right off the top, shall we? It looks like a purse that doesn't really hold much and it looks like
06:26a bra, like no way around it. But for real, this is a super strange case to me. So they call it the
06:32smart case. It comes with the headphones and the headphones literally just slot in here and close
06:38with a magnet. And my very first impression is there is no redeeming quality about this case at
06:46all. The headphones don't actually fold down or get more compact to travel with. The most durable
06:52part of the headphone is covered and the softest, least durable part is your carrying strap. It's
06:58the most exposed part. And then it doesn't even fully protect all of it. There's like slots in
07:03here. I understand you can charge here if you want to plug them in via lightning, but what is all
07:08this? This case is weird. And then also something to note, there is no on off button with these
07:14headphones. So instead you put them in this case and when the magnet shuts, it detects that they're
07:18in the case and they go, okay, we don't need to be on anymore. It goes into this ultra low power
07:22state to save battery. And that's cool. That's really smart. And that means you don't have to
07:26remember to turn them off every time. And as soon as you take them out the case, they wake up and
07:31it's like you never turn them off. Easy. But now that means you have to use this case to turn the
07:38headphones off. And if you don't use this case, they will just sit around draining battery for
07:43about two hours before they go into auto low power mode. Not sure if other cases can be made
07:50that also use magnets to trigger this low power mode. That remains to be seen. But then number
07:54five, last but not least is the smart features. So this is the part that's going to require the
08:00most additional testing for me, because basically aside from sound quality, which first impression
08:06is very good. And noise cancellation is right about on par with AirPods Pro. Basically,
08:12they're incredibly good with white noise, but there's a lot more testing for this sort of
08:16thing for the full review. And there's a lot of smart features too. There's the dual H1 chips
08:21doing a lot of computing as you listen to music, one in each ear. There's nine microphones this time
08:26for noise cancellation and transparency mode. And they're of course, Apple headphones made to
08:31be used with iPhones and Apple products. So when you use it with an iPhone, you get features like
08:36audio sharing, Siri, you're reading your text messages and the instant pairing and all that
08:41fun stuff. But like I said, I'm going to get super into this and the audio quality and in-depth
08:46thoughts on all of this stuff in the full review. This is just the impression. And there's a lot of
08:51testing to be done. But at the end of the day, you know, what's the hardest part for me about these
08:57is I don't really know what exactly to compare them to. Like, of course, I plan on putting them
09:02through the ringer and very thoroughly testing them because at $550, they deserve that. And you
09:09deserve that. But I guess I want to hear from you in the comment section, what you specifically want
09:14to know about these headphones? What do you care about with headphones like this? Like my natural
09:20instinct, as you probably saw on Twitter, was to compare them to my precious, my, I mean, a lot of
09:25people's favorite wireless headphones ever, which is the Sony's and the XM4's. They're basically the
09:30top of the line industry favorite noise canceling wireless headphones. And as you know, those
09:34headphones have the absolute best noise cancellation I've ever heard. They're lightweight and comfortable.
09:40They have a longer 30-hour battery life. They actually fold for travel. They come with a real
09:46protective case. They come with an audio cable and they're $200 less at their absolute maximum of
09:54350 bucks, but you can already find them for less than that. So by that logic, at least on paper,
09:58Sony's headphones absolutely beat Apple's headphones in pretty much every metric, right?
10:05But I feel like a lot of people aren't going to use that as a comparison, interestingly enough,
10:10maybe. Maybe it's like the Pro Display XDR, where you have to compare it to the super ultra high-end
10:17reference grade stuff to appreciate it. So if I'm comparing it to my $2,400 Sennheiser headphones
10:24that I've edited with, maybe this is a lighter weight, wireless, smaller, cheaper version of that,
10:32that works with more devices. Maybe that's the comparison. Or maybe it is somewhere in the
10:37middle with like, you know, the Sennheiser HD 650, or even the Drop THX Panda headphones,
10:43somewhere in that high-end audiophile range, except now it's just Apple's entry into that
10:48space. It's hard to say. But at the end of the day, if you hear from my take,
10:52from my first impression, I have listened to these for a couple hours now and they sound
10:57really good, but do they sound $550 good? I mean, you're starting to approach the limits of
11:03wireless audio, so TBD. They are built extremely well, but does that alone make them worth $550?
11:12Not really. They of course have all the Apple's smart features, and I don't think that by itself is
11:18going to make you buy headphones that expensive, but maybe all of this stuff combined, maybe just
11:23maybe all of that put together, well, there's an audience for it because they're sold out already,
11:28but either way, I hope to find that out all in the full review. This has just been my first look,
11:33first impressions of AirPods Max, a weird name. I'm not going to get used to saying that for a
11:38while, but again, let me know what you think, what you want to know about these headphones.
11:42Thanks for watching. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.