Apple is officially moving into the ‘big ass headphones’ space with the announcement of its AirPods Max. They’re almost four times as expensive as your classic AirPods. On the upside, they’re much less easy to lose.
The AirPods Max, announced Wednesday, retail for $899, come in five colours (space grey, silver, green, sky blue and pink), and have a noise cancellation feature that’s perfect (I assume) for blocking out the sounds of everything from your roommate getting dicked down to your chatty colleague’s latest thought.
Of course, being Apple, they look schmick. Here’s them:
The AirPods Max in the pink colour. Honestly, I love.
Apple says each AirPods Max ‘cup’ attaches to the headband through a “revolutionary mechanism” that distributes ear cup pressure across the band, contouring perfectly to each user’s head. Got a borked bonce? No worries!
A few other things you might want to know: they have 20 hours of battery life, come in Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency Modes, and each ear cup contains an H1 chip, which apparently is capable of nine billion operations per second.
“AirPods are the most popular headphones in the world, beloved for their effortless setup, incredible sound quality, and iconic design,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said in a statement.
“With AirPods Max, we are bringing that magical AirPods experience to a stunning over-ear design with high-fidelity audio. The custom acoustic design, combined with powerful H1 chips, and advanced software enable AirPods Max to use computational audio to wirelessly deliver the ultimate personal listening experience.”
Just like the AirPods, they Maxes have a one-touch set-up to pair with your Apple devices, can detect when you’ve taken them off (and will stop playing), and come with a fancy case to preserve battery life.
Unlike the AirPods – which retail for $249 – they retail for just shy of $900.
To put that in perspective, noise cancelling over-ear headphones are currently going at JB Hi-Fi for $300 to $500.
Me looking at the AirPods Max price pic.twitter.com/g1cS3xDbO2
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) December 8, 2020
https://twitter.com/stevekovach/status/1336312837355020289
$549 for the AirPods Max, I better be able to hear my loved ones in the afterlife.
— NUFF (@nuffsaidny) December 8, 2020
That being said – whatever Apple creates, the customers will come. (She writes, on a Mac, with an iPhone and AirPods in reaching distance.)
If you want to get your hands on a pair, pre-orders are open right now and will ship on December 15.
