AirPods Max 2 Review – 6 Months Later

By Josh Teder

It’s been 6 months since we bought the latest generation of Apple’s beloved and hated over-the-ear headphones, the AirPods Max 2. Here’s why they’re both beloved and hated, how they’ve held up over the past 6 months, and whether we’d recommend getting a pair.

Noise Cancellation

The first highlight is sound quality and noise cancellation. The new version uses Apple’s H2 chip, which improves noise cancellation and is notably better than the previous generation of AirPods Max. Overall, we think it’s neck and neck with the top noise cancelling headphones from both Bose and Sony that we’ve bought and tested.

The AirPods Max 2 are great at canceling out background noise and airplane cabin noise. They won’t completely block out screaming kids in our experience, but they do make the screaming sound a bit more distant.

Breathability and Flying

In 6 months, we took these on four flights and really liked having them for a few reasons. One is breathability. The knit fabric Apple uses on the magnetically removable ear cushions is great. Our ears don’t get sweaty or feel hot like they often do on flights with headphones from other brands that have synthetic leather ear cushions. Plus, the excellent mesh canopy at the top helps dissipate heat from your head.

With this design, the AirPods Max are one of the most breathable pairs of headphones we’ve ever worn.

AirPods Max 2 vs. AirPods Pro 3 on a Flight

But how do they compare to just wearing the AirPods Pro 3 on a flight? Both work equally well at canceling out noise. When you eat on a plane, though, we prefer the AirPods Pro 3, because moving your jaw with the AirPods Max actually breaks the noise cancellation seal, at least in our experience. The other reason we prefer the Max over the Pro 3s for flights is sound quality. You get noticeably better sound thanks to the larger drivers and the headphone form factor.

Sound Quality

So, how do they sound? Overall, great. They’re the pair we typically reach for out of all the ones we test. They have the same clean sound as the previous version, but with more sub-bass. You get a wide sound stage, but not to the point where the instruments and other parts of the mix are so separated that it almost sounds artificial.

Songs like The Fate of Ophelia by Taylor Swift have a punchy, tight sound. Vocals are really present, the bass is there, and you hear lots of detail. With a song like The First Time It Happens by Seth MacFarlane, his smooth vocals sound great. And in a track like Listen by John Williams from Disclosure Day, these headphones do a wonderful job of reproducing the sound stage, where you can hear all of the different parts of the orchestra, especially in a format like Dolby Atmos, which is object-based and tends to widen the sound stage even further.

Dolby Atmos vs. Stereo Lossless

While these headphones reproduce Atmos music pretty well, over the past 6 months we’ve gravitated more toward stereo lossless, especially for non-classical music, because it sounds a bit tighter around our ears. Generally, we still prefer that sound with headphones over Atmos. But the new sub-bass really helps reproduce the low string notes from the double bass that John Williams loves to use in his orchestrations. If you had John Williams and his use of the C extension for a double bass on your AirPods Max bingo card, well, that would be surprising.

Some people might prefer the tuning on the original AirPods Max, depending on the type of music you listen to and how Apple’s Adaptive EQ works for you.

Adaptive EQ and the New EQ

Adaptive EQ is another really interesting feature on most AirPods nowadays. They use inward-facing mics to monitor the sound delivered to your ear, then automatically tune the music in real time to match the fit of the headphones and the seal of your ear cushions.

Thanks to a software update, you can now finally adjust an EQ, not just on the AirPods Max but on all AirPods with an H2 chip.

We found that making those adjustments can introduce more artifacting into the sound and sound kind of bad, honestly, so we haven’t really used it.

Lossless Audio Over USB-C

Another thing you can do with these that you couldn’t do with the original AirPods Max Lightning model is listen to lossless audio over USB-C. Can we hear the difference? We tested it with the NPR audio quality test and killed the first two songs. We correctly guessed the uncompressed lossless file, and it was pretty obvious which one was the better file because you could hear the difference in the sub-bass.

“Congratulations to me. I’m an audiophile. Well, that invincibility lasted for all of 5 seconds.”

For the remaining tracks, we couldn’t pick an uncompressed WAV file from the lowest quality stream half of the time. Depending on the type of music and the predominant frequencies, we clearly can’t hear the difference based on this test. You can take the NPR test yourself.

So, are we still glad these have lossless? Yes, in principle. We still like knowing they can reproduce higher quality audio, even if we can’t actually hear the difference between that and the lower quality audio, which, as we say it out loud, does sound kind of stupid.

Build Quality, Weight and Comfort

Build quality is another highlight that also comes with some downsides. These are basically exactly the same as the previous generation AirPods Max, and we’ve already covered two of the design highlights: the breathability of the mesh canopy and the ear cushions.

Deep Ear Cushions

The cushions have another beneficial part of their design: they’re deep, especially compared to the Sony WH-1000XM6s, which have a much shallower ear cup. The speaker mesh on the Sonys rests right on one of our ears, so we don’t find them as comfortable as the AirPods Max 2.

Weight and Clamping Force

Paradoxically, we find the AirPods Max 2 more comfortable even though they weigh a lot more. This is in part thanks to the aluminum ear cups, another distinctive part of their design. But that added weight is going to be a problem for a lot of people, and we consider it a downside. Overall, these are just heavier than they need to be. We’ve been able to wear AirPods Max headphones for years without issue, but it depends on your head shape and how you’ve adjusted them. If Apple ever redesigns these, we hope they bring the weight down so more people can enjoy them.

Weirdly, we’ve noticed a difference between our replacement AirPods Max Lightning version and the AirPods Max 2 we bought. Even after a 6-month break-in period, we can feel the clamping force on the AirPods Max 2 more than on the Lightning version, which feels more balanced and more comfortable. That makes us suspect some variation in headband tension and tolerance, either between versions or just individual units, since it’s the exact same hardware design. So if you’re having issues with the clamping force or pressure when you first get your AirPods Max 2, it might be worth returning them and getting a different unit to see if that fixes it.

Digital Crown Controls

The last part of the design we’ve really liked is the Digital Crown Apple uses for volume control and controlling your media.

Controlling volume feels more precise than on most other headphones outside of Nothing’s Headphone (1) and Headphone (1) Pro, whose controls we also love, as we noted in our Nothing Headphone (1) review. The AirPods Max also have even more volume steps than the Nothing headphones, so you always feel like you can adjust to the perfect volume, which is really nice.

Mic Quality and Transparency Mode

We’ve been pretty impressed with the mic quality. It sounds clear and we don’t notice a ton of distortion in voice. The AirPods Max also still have probably the best transparency mode of any headphones we’ve tested, though other headphones have started catching up to be about as good, which was not the case when the original AirPods Max first came out.

The Smart Case

The last thing we love about the AirPods Max 2 design is, of course, the smart case. We’re not completely joking.

“Practically every other reviewer on Earth hates this case except me.”

But the way we’ve used it over the past six months, we just don’t consider it a downside. In fact, we kind of like it.

The first reason is that it lets you keep the adjustments you make to your headphones intact. The case also protects most of the ear cups and is fine for leaving them on a desk or putting them in a bag. And brilliantly, the headband turns into a handle you can use to pull them out of a bag as well as out of the case.

If you just want to throw these into a bag with a bunch of other things, a hard case that covers the entirety of the headphones may suit you better, and you can find cheap ones on Amazon for that purpose. But we prefer this design because it takes up less room on a desk, which is why we use these 90% of the time. It makes it easy to pop them out and pop them back in, and we don’t have to deal with a stupid zippered hard case or readjust them every time we put them on.

The One Downside: Phantom Battery Drain

There is one downside with this case. To put the AirPods Max into an ultra low power state, you use the magnets within the smart case. Technically, they also go into that state automatically after a set period of time. The issue we had is that putting them in their case doesn’t always seem to put them into that deep sleep mode. Or it does, but you still get a good amount of phantom battery drain. That’s somewhat expected, since the original AirPods Max had the exact same issue, and we wish Apple would just implement some way to power these off. Nothing did that with a very Apple-y looking switch and it works great.

Apple Ecosystem

The last highlight is how well these integrate with the Apple ecosystem. They have seamless switching, so as you move from one Apple device to another, it moves with you. They’re built into the Find My network and will use their Bluetooth signal to show you their approximate location, and they’ll play a decently loud chirp as well. It’s still not as good as the Precision Finding feature you get with Apple’s other AirPods like the AirPods Pro 3.

Another ecosystem benefit is that these decode surround sound in Dolby Atmos really well. When you watch content on your Apple TV, or via your iPad or Mac on a plane, it sounds like you’re watching something in a theater. The head tracking helps trick your brain into thinking there are virtual speakers placed all around you, which is the situation where we think virtual head tracking really makes a difference. This is another huge advantage the AirPods Max have over headphones like the Sony XM6s, which don’t have that same ecosystem feature.

New Features We Haven’t Used

There are a few new things with the Max 2 that the previous generation didn’t have: head gestures, live translations, personalized volume, Conversation Awareness (which lowers the media volume and turns on transparency when you start talking), pausing media when you fall asleep, and camera remote. We just haven’t found ourselves using any of them over the past 6 months.

Downsides

Battery Life

Apple didn’t do anything to increase the battery life for the AirPods Max 2. They still have the 20 hours with ANC on that the first generation did, which is noticeably lower than most of their competition at this point. Both the new Nothing Headphone (1) Pro and the Sony WH-1000XM6s have up to 30 hours with ANC on. And that’s not counting the battery drain issue with the AirPods Max 2, which often means you’ll get less than the stated battery life.

Here’s how the headphones mentioned in this section compare:

Headphones	Battery life (ANC on)	Water resistance	Flat EQ for mixing
AirPods Max 2	20 hours	None	No
Nothing Headphone (1) Pro	Up to 30 hours	IP52	Yes
Sony WH-1000XM6	Up to 30 hours	–	No
Beats 360	Up to 32 hours	IPX4	No

No Flat EQ Mode

Speaking of the Nothing Headphone (1) Pro, oddly enough it introduced a feature that addresses another potential downside of the AirPods Max: a flat EQ mode that lets you use them for mixing and reference listening. It’s a very niche feature, but it’s something we wish the AirPods Max had, since the drivers and overall performance and sound on these are pretty excellent for mastering audio.

No Water Resistance

The AirPods Max are not water resistant. These are not workout headphones. If you introduce enough humidity into the ear cups, a lot of condensation will form, and eventually that leads to connectivity issues, dropouts and failure. This is the condensation problem that has plagued the AirPods Max design since they came out, and depending on your climate and how you use them, it can be an issue. It’s what killed our original pair of AirPods Max after 4 years.

Given the price of these, Apple should have figured out a way to make them somewhat water resistant, like Nothing did with the Headphone (1) and Headphone (1) Pro, which are IP52 sweat and splash resistant. Apple’s own Beats 360 headphones, which recently came out, have an IPX4 water resistance rating, meaning they’re good against things like splashes and sweat.

Repairability

These are not really meant to have user-replaceable batteries, which will eventually die on them, and Apple doesn’t make any spare parts or repair manuals available for them, which they really should.

Should You Buy the AirPods Max 2?

Overall, yes. They’re probably the most imperfect Apple product we own outside of the Vision Pro, but we love their sound quality. Transparency mode is still the best, the noise cancellation is excellent, they have a really breathable design, and they work really well with other Apple products. The weight, comfort and fit, and some design decisions like not having a power button, will be a turn-off for some, and maybe even that smart case.

Then there’s the price. At $549, this is really expensive for a set of wireless Bluetooth headphones, especially with the compromises you have to put up with. Luckily, they’re frequently on sale, typically for about $50 to $100 off. At that price they seem a bit more reasonable, especially since the competition has raised their prices over time to be closer to what the AirPods Max actually sell for.

You can check the live price of the AirPods Max 2 and the other headphones and devices we talked about in the Featured Products section. For deals on headphones or other Apple products, search “Apple deals” or “headphone deals” on our shop page.