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If Apple wanted to bury the fact it’s leaving its most expensive headphones as the least technically capable in its lineup, it didn’t do a very good job.
It all started promisingly. At Apple’s September Glowtime event, CEO Tim Cook teed up VP of hardware engineering Kate Bergeron for the big reveal by stating that the company’s much-loved AirPods family had “significant updates across the entire lineup.” And with four years under their belt since their debut, it felt like the supposedly flagship AirPods Max had to be top of the billing.
Instead, that honor was bestowed upon the AirPods 4—Apple’s cheapest AirPods at $129, and now with the option of noise cancellation for an additional $50. Among other additions, Bergeron announced they would now come with the “power of the H2 chip,” the most advanced headphone chip from Apple, which was first introduced in the AirPods Pro 2 in 2022.
That chip delivers some significant upgrades, too. Apple said at the time that the H2 chip in the AirPods Pro 2 cancels “twice as much noise” compared to the original Pro. Now, in the AirPods 4, Apple writes in its press release that H2 delivers a “major improvement in sound quality” and that it unlocks a whole host of “intelligent features that change the way users take calls, interact with Siri, and so much more.”
A lot of these features are down to the advanced machine-learning capabilities of the H2 chip, and Bergeron touched on a few of them in her enthusiastic introduction of the AirPods 4. Features like Siri Interactions, which allows you to respond to Siri by nodding or shaking your head; “the magic of Adaptive Audio,” said Bergeron, which blends noise cancellation and transparency modes to best suit your environment; and also Conversation Awareness, which dips your audio down when it hears you talking to someone, then raises it again after.
That's not even all of them. There's also Personalized Audio, shorter “Siri” summoning and Voice Isolation for clearer calls.
Better sound, better ANC, better features? That sounds like a very tempting package indeed. But when it came to the H1-packing AirPods Max, Apple quickly swept all that good stuff under the carpet, throwing a handful of new colors and a USB-C connection our way in the hope we’d forget about everything that had just come before.
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Where exactly were the “significant updates” here that had been promised? There wasn't even the sniff of a price drop to help soften the blow.
It’s not like these features wouldn’t even be really helpful to the AirPods Max users. Over-ear headphones tend to be worn in cities and busy spaces, and particularly for travel, thanks to the improved noise isolation that their design brings. Who wouldn’t want to be able to have a quick conversation with a barista without slugging the (quite heavy, actually) AirPods Max on and off their head? Or to block out the noise of public transportation, while still getting the intercom announcements cut through so you don’t miss your stop? And that’s before we get into the potential performance improvements the H2 could bring, as they have elsewhere in the lineup.
Of course, this had all been predicted by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in December last year. “The cans don’t sell well enough for the company to invest in entirely new hardware or software features,” he wrote, offering a potential reason for Apple's lack of love for the Max.
So, have the AirPods Max been a flop, and are they now on the slow and winding path to being retired from the lineup? Because if Apple isn't updating them now, then when? With a pretty meager 20-hour battery life, they’re already lagging behind the major competition in key areas, and this is only going to get worse as time goes on. To not even be able to compete with the cheapest AirPods in a technical face-off feels like a difficult, and frankly embarrassing, position to be in.
It’s all the more disappointing, of course, because, for all intents and purposes, they’re a good pair of headphones. Our review praised them for everything from their build quality and comfort to their “industry-leading fidelity.” But that was then. Right now, and at their not-inconsiderable price, they feel hard to recommend to anyone but the biggest Apple fan—and they’ve probably already got a pair.
