Apple AirPods compared: AirPods Max or AirPods Pro

Apple now has two high end iPods models to choose from the $250 iPods Pro, or the $550 air pods max. So let's find out what difference $300 really makes. So I know exactly what you're thinking. You're saying Lexy this is a ridiculous comparison. This is like comparing a Ferrari to a Ford Fiesta. And yes, I completely agree with you. With that said thanks very much for watching and I hope you enjoyed the video. Look, just kidding. That being said, these two headphones and wireless earbuds are actually more similar than you might think. Now, maybe you have the Airpods Pro, and you're thinking I do want a pair of over ear headphones and should I get the airport max Or maybe you have neither of them and money is not really an object. You just wanna know which pair is gonna suit your needs the best. If you're interested in other comparisons between the airport's Max and over ear headphones from other brands, don't worry, stay tuned. We will have plenty more comparisons coming your way soon. But for now, let's just stick to apples. This is apples. [BLANK_AUDIO] Now normally I would start with sound quality in any headphone review, but I actually do want to talk about the elephant in the room first in terms of their design because that's also really going to play into the sound when we get to talk about that. So first things first. One is an over ear closed headphone, and the other is a pair of in ear wireless earbuds, so completely different on that account. And, that might be the first thing that you need to choose from to determine which one is going to suit your use case. The most. The other thing to consider is the material composition and the weight of these products. So AirPod pro a plastic and obviously thanks to their in ear design, they are lighter and easier to wear for an extended period throughout the day. If you're swapping back and forth between them to charge the battery you can get a full day's use out of them, all right? So the AirPod max A heavy, I was genuinely surprise, I mean I read the spec sheet, I knew that this were gonna be heavy than other [UNKNOWN] headphones. But when I took them out of the box and I put them on my head, I was genuinely surprise, I thought they actually really quite heavy. It's obviously thanks to [UNKNOWN] material composition which is Stainless Steel on the telescopic arms and aluminium or aluminum on the cups themselves. So if you are sensitive to any amount of weight on your head that these might be a little bit too heavy for you. Now the other thing though, that I did like about the design of the mat, Apart from the weight not being my favorite thing in the world thing I did like was that the cups themselves are actually quite large and they're actually quite deep as well. So if you have big ears or you've had problems with ears kind of touching the insides of other over ear headphones before, I don't think this would be a problem at all with the air pods max The actual foam around it is super comfortable. So I really liked that but I would not use these for working out and I'll tell you why. Number one, they are a little bit too heavy and I don't feel like that they're secure enough to be staying on my head if I was doing anything like running, it would definitely be a little bit too uncomfortable for me to do something active. And also they're not IP rated. So sweat resistance, rain, any kind of moisture, you just don't have any guarantee that these are gonna be able to withstand that. So I definitely think that these are for indoor use only, maybe outdoors obviously, but not at the gym. So that might also sway your decision now the airport's Pro, our IPX4 rated which means that there'll be a couple splashes, little bit of rain and also some sweat. [INAUDIBLE] The color of the airports max that you choose might also play a difference if you are considering using them to work out with. Just think a lighter color, probably not going to look so good. All right. Let's talk cases because this one is very interesting. Now you've probably seen all the means now out there about the smart case for the airports max. I really think that this was such a missed opportunity to make a case that was durable. Now, lots of other OBE headphones that are cheaper. Also have a hard case or at least a protective pouch, to be able to make sure that if you put the headphones in a bag or you're traveling with them, then not going to get damaged. Now I haven't had the max very long But I can just see, especially with a lighter color, this might develop some sort of damage, some discoloration. And the other thing is durability. So I've dropped the AirPods probes so many times and they've been totally fine. They are built like a tank, so I'm not gonna do a drop test on the air pods next deliberately to find out, But as I said, I definitely feel like I do have to be much more gentle and baby these a lot more. Now the smart case on the air pods max does not have any kind of charging capabilities in it. Unlike the case of the airports pro that does hope several charges in it. Now when you put the headphones in the smart case, they actually go into a low power standby mode. There isn't a power of button so do be aware of that. And also there is no way to use this in a kind of passive listening mode like other sort of noise cancelling headphones that you might be familiar with. So if you added battery, you're out of luck you don't get any sound out of them. They both charge using lightning so either on the bottom of the airports max or on the bottom of the airport pro Now the pro case as well is also wireless charging enabled. So you can just put it on your cheek and portable charging pad and charge away. So speaking of cords, the airport's max if you do want to use them with a wired connection now, there isn't a cord provided in the box right? So these are primarily designed to be wireless bluetooth headphones. However, if you do want to use them as wide headphones to tie to your audio source, which a lot of people would because there are 550 dollar pair of headphones. Do you have to buy a $35 3.52 lightning cable? And I thought, okay, well, I don't want to spend $35 on top of $550 that I've already forked out for. So I thought, I've got this lightning to 3.5. Why don't I just plug these in, and then plug a 3.5 into my 3.5 source. That's gonna be so easy. Doesn't work you really have to buy that $35 cable if you wanna have wired listening like, come on. Okay, let's talk about one of my favorite things in any headphone review which is of course the sound quality which is super important. When it comes to deciding which one is right for the application that you wanna use the headphone for. Now I've been using the Airpods Pro for over a year as pretty much my daily driver. Now the sound is fairly neutral. So it's not too booming on the base. The highs and the mids are also pretty well defined, but they don't sound super exciting on the default settings. And that's actually not a bad thing. If you think about you want to do a lot of different things, listening to podcasts, maybe watching a couple videos, jumping on calls and listening to a little bit of music throughout the day. Now, the airport's max when I first put these on my ears I thought I wasn't gonna be that impressed, but I started listening to music across a lot of different genres and I really felt that they were super balanced. And I really did like the sound profile and I was genuinely surprised because I wasn't expecting to like it as much as I actually do. I tried a lot of different apps. Streaming Apple Music Spotify and even title with some masters and I thought that the sound was really really good across all I definitely think that listening to the higher quality files I could really tell a difference however, that being said I haven't yet tethered with the $35 cable but if you do want to find out impressions of what it sounds like. You do tie it to an even higher bitrate source. Say for example FLAC or lossless files. Do check out the ongoing review which is linked in the description below. So you can read all about that. Now some users have experienced a. A crackling issue with the ANC or the sound quality on the airport's Pro. There is a replacement program available if you are one of those affected users. These are the same efforts for that I've had for a year and a little bit now and they have been fine but as I said, your mileage may vary. So do check out the replacement program if that applies to you. Call Quality super important. So I found both of these were actually really good for things like zoom calls when tied to a computer. I also did a number of voice calls on both of them in the same environment The airports pro we know that they're good for calls. They have strengths in that, especially if I was in a noisy environment the cola on the other end, notice that a lot of the background sound was a little bit more muted and my voice was isolated a little bit better. By contrast, when I made a call with the air pods max the cola remarks that they could hear Pretty much everything that was going on around me. So in terms of noise isolation, I think that the iPads pro are probably going to be a little bit stronger for that, at least in my tests and the experience as the cola on my end. When I was listening to the call itself, I really found that I liked the sound in the over ear headphones is just a bit of a no brainer because it's a much more immersive experience. Especially when I use transparency mode, so I'm not shouting when I'm talking to the person, which I like and it works really well. Now it's all well and good that I say these things about the microphone and the call quality, but I do want you to take a listen to a couple of samples that I have recorded On both of the mics on these headphones and earbuds to see what you think, one indoor test on the air pods Max, not too much sound going on around me, but just to give you a comparison between indoor and outdoor microphone performance. And here we are, the AirPods Max. This is a sample from the microphone outdoors. Not too much external noise, but there are still a few birds and ambience sounds from things like the traffic. So AirPods Max sound recording on the iPhone 12 Pro [UNKNOWN]. And one more AirPods Pro, indoor environment just to hear the differences in the microphone performance. All right, here is a sample of audio recorded from the AirPods pro microphone, as you can see in here. This is the sound from the microphone in an outdoor situation. Everything else now features and controls So both of them have pretty much the same feature set all up in terms of the settings that you have in terms of both have transparency mode. So that's the mode that pipes in sound from the outside world to give you an awareness of your surroundings. So you can still be listening to music or on a colon, hear what's going on so you don't get ran over. You can still hear a crying baby, all of that stuff and I think Apple really does do an excellent job of transparency mode across the headphones. Now both of the headphones obviously have active noise cancellation that's a big reason why we choose one of these two over the myriad of other options from other brands out there. The AMC on both of these is really really good. Now for obvious reasons the air pods max have better ANC. Due in part to the design, but obviously newer technology and the array of mics and so on, that contributing to that make for a really immersive experience. In order to set up a kind of simulation of some constant loud, white noise to see what would happen, and how effective the active noise cancellation is in relation to one another I set up in my bathroom with my noisy overhead fan, pretend that I'm commuting on the bus, train whatever you have you and see what happens. So it's pretty clear the airport's max work much, much better. I put them on I started listening to some music and I was genuinely surprised like I almost couldn't hear The actual fan itself, it was that good and that quiet. So I'm looking forward to finally testing these out on a plane, because I think they're gonna be really, really strong for that. The airports pro obviously not as effective with the ANC compared to the max, just because the innate design does naturally let in a little bit more of the outside world, but still very impressive. Just not to the same level as a pair of over ear headphones. The other things that they share in common is an adaptive equalizer to change the sound profile automatically depending on variables like the fit and how they fit either on or in your ear. They also both have spatial audio. So this is the ability to kind of give you a virtual surround sound experience. If you are listening to content same movies that are mastered in 5.1 7.1, or Dolby Atmos and it sounds really good, obviously a little bit better on the air pods max because you have that over air experience and they both have the H1 chip now that is for faster and more seamless connectivity With iOS devices. Now you can also do some multi device switching as long as you have all of your devices signed into the same Apple ID, that's available on both of these. However, it is a little bit finicky and it's not as seamless and as perfect as I would like. So if you do wanna pair either of these to an Android device, it is possible because they're both bluetooth headphones. But you do miss out on a couple of things, including Spatial audio support. You also lose out on the voice assistant being able to say read messages aloud in your ear. And also you won't be able to change the controls. Say for example, the stem on the AirPod's Pro. Now overall, it doesn't really make sense to buy the Airpods Max if you do have an Android device or couple things, they using the AC codec. And on Android you have the options of things like apt x, for example, which can deliver better sound. So if you're considering these on Android, it's pretty hard to recommend them right now, it might change in the future if Apple does roll out additional codec support, but for right now for the price, I think there are better options if you are on Android, but I do know plenty of people that use the applets pro on Android I'm pretty satisfied. Just don't need to worry too much about things like AFC and codecs. They just want the really good noise cancellation earbuds. Now let's talk about controls. Now on the airport's Pro, obviously, the stem of the air pods themselves is clickable and you can change that to a number of different things whether that is activating the voices system. Clicking back and forth between tracks, turning on and off transparency mode and things like that. That's all adjustable in the iOS settings. The episodes max have a digital crown on the top similar to what the Apple Watch has. You can use it, To adjust the volume by turning it back and forth, you can also change it. So if you want to move it either anti clockwise or clockwise, that's also a setting you can change, which is a nice touch cuz I was getting confused doing it the wrong way. The first time I took it Get out of the box. There's also a button to activate and turn on ANC and transparency mode. So just to flick between the two and the digital crown itself, you can also use to double tap to change between tracks and things like that and also answer calls. If you want to Beside pedals, don't do anything. Don't do what I was doing to try and tap madly to see what was going to happen. Nothing does. Alright, let's talk battery life now the airport's pro are able to get between four and a half to five hours of listening time on a full charge. If you are listening with AMC will active noise cancellation turned on and you can even push it a little bit more if you're just using transparency or Turning off those settings all together. Now I've had these for about a year and the battery life now just gives me around three and a half to four hours after about a year which is totally normal, natural battery degradation is a thing with any wireless earbuds or any battery powered device. Now the airports max are rated for 20 hours of listening with ANC and spatial audio turned on. I did my own battery test and got around 20 hours and 20 minutes out of them. Now overall, I have to say for a number of different factors, I do prefer the AirPods pro for all day listening. Just because I'm able to switch them back and forth between the case to keep charging one in the case while I have one in my ear. And that's particularly useful if I'm in a meeting or something And all of a sudden, one of the earbuds starts to get a bit low. I know I can pull one out, put it in the case, leave it in there to charge up while I'm still staying on a call on the other ear. But I really like that none. That's obviously not something you can do with the air pods max if they're running low. Thanks so much for watching. I hope this video has been super helpful for you and working out. If you should go for the air quotes Max, or the AirPods pro and whether or not it is worth an extra $300 to get an over ear pair of headphones. Now if you have any questions that I didn't answer in this video, feel free to leave me a comment down below or you can also find me on your favourite social media platform at lexy civilities. See yah