REASONS TO BUY
Immersive sound
Outstanding noise cancellation
Apple perks
Head detection
REASONS TO AVOID
Uncomfortable
Expensive
No power button
No app
Apple AirPods Max Review
Excellent sound and noise blocking, but not so user or wallet-friendly
Credit: Matt Lighthart
By Genaveve Bradshaw ⋅ Senior Review Analyst ⋅ August 1, 2025
Contributions From: Rachael Lamore & Lissette Velasquez
RELATED: Best Wireless Headphones of 2025
Our Verdict
The Max is sleek, in terms of aesthetics and performance. Their smooth, streamlined design holds some of the most syrupy-rich sound and serenely quiet noise cancellation available. It's immersive, detailed, and deeply dimensional. One of the biggest perks is how seamlessly the AirPods Max integrates with other Apple products. However, their minimalistic design may leave some users wanting more: more controls, thump, brilliance, or a comfortable fit. Nevertheless, if you're willing to invest in the sky-high price, the Max ranks among the top-performing headphones in our review.
Our Analysis and Test Results
The Airpods Max provide a wondrous experience thanks to masterfully engineered dynamic drivers that deliver high-fidelity, ultra-low distortion audio.
Our thorough analysis spares no details.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
Sound Quality
Wow! That's how we feel about the sound of the AirPods Max. One tester gushed, “It feels so immersive! It surrounds, soaks up all the space, and expands with beautiful warmth and wonderful clarity.” Volume up or down, the sound is crisp, detailed, and pleasing.
This outstanding performance is due to masterfully crafted 40-millimeter dynamic drivers that minimize harmonic distortion. Adaptive EQ technology helps automatically tailor the sound, faithfully reproducing every musical note. The sound mix is rich and inviting, with a slightly sculpted quality, but could use a bit more in the highs. One tester said the headset delivered “an appetizing blend of elevated bass, thick and fleshed out mids, and decent highs that could use more sparkle.” The R&B track “Lemonade” by Iris Temple is silky smooth. Our expert ear said, “The bass-line and kick-drum punch through the layers to hit with sweet vibes. The brass, synth, and electric guitar flow like liquid gold, rich and syrupy in the mids. The vocals float above the mix with clarity and depth.”
The lows have a pleasing weight and body that permeates the mix without overpowering it. We loved listening to R&B, soul, pop, and dance artists like Leon Bridges, Chris Lake, and Meghan Trainor, but the bass wasn't thumpy enough to fully enjoy hip-hop. The mids are present and clean, pushing vocals and instruments like guitars forward. Indie and alternative tracks were our favorites, but the emphasized mids sound excellent with country, soft rock, blues, jazz, and pop genres as well. The highs are crisp and, according to testers, “never become fatiguing,” allowing you to fully enjoy jazz, electro-acoustic, and classical instrumentals from artists like Yussef Dayes, Natalie Tenenbaum, and Kai Schumacher. They're consistently not as fully developed as the mids or lows, and vocals can struggle to shine through tracks with dense percussion. “Bliss” by John Legend & Teyena Taylor is a prime example. The vocals don't sound bad, just somewhat masked behind the low drums and synths.
Despite our minor hiccup with the treble range, the overall sound profile is lovely and warm, complementing a variety of musical tastes.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
Soundstage
The AirPods' soundstage envelopes you with a richness and depth not shared by many competitors. It transports you front and center. Instrumental voices come from a wide, tall soundstage with excellent stereo spread and clean separation. Its dimensionality is dramatic and powerful. This experience is available without enabling Apple's Personalized Spatial Audio feature.
The AirPods' sound is layered in every dimension, and instrument locations are easily identifiable on the imaginary stage.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
Frequency Response
The frequency response graph visualizes the sound signature of the AirPods Max and aligns with our expert's opinions. Relative to our Target Response Curve, the Max mimics the shape in the low to mid-range but becomes deemphasized in the highs.
This demonstrates why we feel the highs lack some luster. However, the on-point lows and mids result in a groovy listening experience that complements mellow genres like indie and R&B. It also sounds great with pop, alternative, soft rock, blues, jazz, and classical. EDM or rap lovers may yearn for more power and excitement in the bass and treble ranges.
Larger ears will appreciate the Max's spacious earcups.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
Comfort and Fit
The Max isn't the best for all-day comfort. It's one of the heaviest models, and the clamping force is too strong for some.
The longer you wear the Max, the more you feel the weight on your head and neck, and the pressure on your ears. If you wear glasses or sunglasses, it's even worse. Our testers averaged less than an hour of wear time with glasses and four without. Despite a strong clamp, their weight caused slipping with a deep back stretch.
After a couple of hours, we couldn't wait to take these off.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
The AirPods Max are solidly built with a stainless steel frame and anodized aluminum earcups. This increases the weight but enhances durability and gives the Max a sleek and sophisticated look. The earpads and headband have unique, breathable mesh that helps evenly distribute the weight and clamping.
The Max aesthetic is distinct and built with durable metals and breathable materials.
The earcups are among the most spacious, measuring 62 x 41 millimeters, so they should fit most ears. The earpads are replaceable to keep them fresh and clean. However, the easy interior access of the earcups has some users worried about condensation, commonly referred to as condensation death, which describes how sweat collects inside the earcups and potentially causes damage.
The earpads are magnetically held in place and can easily be removed to replace them should they get funky.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
It's unclear if this is due to manufacturer defects or consumer misuse, but like most headphones, the Max is not waterproof, and should not be used during heavy sweating. One tester has owned a pair since 2021 and hasn't had any condensation issues.
An important note: unlike its competitors, Apple does not offer an adjustable ANC or Tranparency mode.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
Noise Cancellation
The Max offers some of the best Active Noise Cancelation (ANC) in lab tests. However, our testers suggest other high-end competitors perform slightly better in the real world. Either way, the Max excels at blocking noise.
Six exterior and two interior microphones work with advanced computing algorithms to diminish exterior sounds by 33 decibels across the frequency spectrum.
While it's not absolute silence, it's close. Without music playing, we could barely hear keyboards, and the space heater. While music was playing, we couldn't hear microwave beeps or door knocks. Even passively (without ANC), the Max does an excellent job blocking background sounds. We were impressed with the Max's ability to block low, monotonous airplane hums or office chatter.
In a noisy cafe, most sounds nearly disappear. A sudden, high-pitch clash at 0:16 sneaks through; this is as good as it gets.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
Apple's Transparency mode is so good that it's like you aren't wearing headphones. You'll have surrounding awareness whenever you want it.
The AirPods Max is a top-performing headphone, but for $100-$200 less the Bose, Sony, or Sennheiser are also excellent choices.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
Ease of Use
The AirPods Max create polarizing opinions when it comes to user experience. Some people love its simplicity, while others hate its lack of customization.
Controls
In typical Apple fashion, the controls are minimalistic. Rather than buttons or a touchpad, the AirPods Max headphones have a dial that controls volume, media, and phone calls. It's super intuitive and consistent.
Simply press the Digital Crown once to play/pause music, twice to skip forward, or thrice to skip back. Turning the dial adjusts the volume, and holding it down summons Siri (or, just say, "Hey Siri").
Credit: Matt Lighthart
A noise control button opposite the dial (digital crown) lets you switch between ANC and Transparency modes or put the headphones into pairing mode. Your device's settings menu controls everything else, like enabling head detection, Passive mode, or a Bluetooth connection. Sadly, Android users won't have access to the iOS settings.
We missed having a power button to preserve battery life. The only option is to put them in the Smart Case so they enter an ultra-low power state. They will go into sleep mode without the case, but the Bluetooth remains active, and the Max constantly tries to pair with any nearby Apple product. Only stowing them in the case will stop this.
There's no app; all options are accessed directly through the iOS settings menu. Customizations are sparse: you can put the headphones in Passive noise canceling mode, turn on Head Detection, or set up Spatial Audio, but that's about it.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
Customization
The AirPods Max offers limited sound and noise canceling customizations, with no presets or EQ sliders. If you stream through Apple Music from an Apple device, you can access a few EQ presets, but they were built for the streaming service, not the headphones, so they don't impact the sound. There's also no option for upgraded Bluetooth codec support. You're stuck with the built-in sound mix. We do like the Personalized Spatial Audio, which provides a 3D listening experience akin to movie theater surround sound.
We evaluated the Spatial Audio feature on the Max with dynamic head tracking.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
The Max uses built-in gyroscopes and accelerometers to track head movements to personalize the audio to your ear shape. However, Spatial Audio only works when streaming Dolby Atmos content from services like Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, or Disney Plus.
The Smart Case is less of a case and more of a power control sleeve. For such a pricey investment, we wished the case offered more protection.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
Connectivity
The AirPods Max connectivity is so-so. Connecting to iOS is a breeze with One-Touch Pairing, holding them next to your iPhone and tapping “Connect.” However, you can't turn pairing off, so they'll try to pair with any device nearby if not in their case. The connection is reliable, with no dropouts. Connecting two Apple devices simultaneously using the Multipoint feature works incredibly well. Audio Sharing shares media with multiple devices or connects to an Apple TV.
The connection strength is strong, with a range of 131 feet in environments with minimal network interference.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
Android or Windows users aren't as lucky. The pairing process is cumbersome, and you lose Apple-only perks, and the Multipoint feature refuses to connect to Apple and Android devices simultaneously. Multi-OS users are better off with a different pair.
User review connectivity issues as a percentage of total one star reviews. Data gathered on 08/01/2024.
Our analysis of Amazon user reviews related to connectivity shows that only 0.6% of reviews complain about connectivity.
The 2020 Max charges via a Lightning to USB-C cable (shown here), while the 2024 Max charges via a USB-C to USB-C cable. There are no AUX ports, so you'll need an adaptor to enjoy in-flight entertainment.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
Battery
The AirPods Max battery life is unimpressive, with a measured playback of 22.8 hours.
They don't support passive playback, so you can't plug them into your device if the battery dies, but five minutes of charging buys 1.5 hours of listening.
Relative to premium competitors, the Max has one of the best call qualities, but several cheaper options are better.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
Call Quality
The AirPods Max performed above average for call quality, but this does not mean clear or minimal interference. It means the voices remain loud and clear.
Whether making simulated calls from a noisy or quiet setting, or actual calls from a private office, our caller's voice was easy to understand despite some distortion and background sounds. Our mock call from a simulated subway is the most stressful test we performed, while a recording without background interference let us evaluate the voice quality.
Here, the trains and loudspeaker announcements are audible, but the callers voice remains loud and doesn't cut out.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
We also made a mock call from a simulated office space.
Background hums, voices, and clicks all come through, but our caller's voice is clear with the Max.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
We made live phone calls to ensure accurate lab results.
The voices are slightly distorted and sound a bit robotic, though overall okay.
Credit: Matt Lighthart
While the clarity wasn't as good, we were happy with the result, and voices were loud and clear enough to converse easily.
Should You Buy the Apple AirPods Max?
If you love Apple products' sleek design and are looking for the most immersive listening experience possible, the AirPods Max is it. The sound quality is wonderfully rich, and the noise blocking is top-notch. However, this headphone has minimal customizations and isn't very comfortable. Plus, several competitors deliver high-quality sound and ANC at a significantly lower price. However, if you are an Apple loyalist, the Max integrates flawlessly into the ecosystem.
What Other Wireless Headphones Should You Consider?
The top competitors for the Max are the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones and the Sony WH-1000XM5. Both have excellent noise cancellation, sound quality, and customizations. They provide a more vibrant sound mix, with the Bose being the most dramatic. While the Bose are more comfy, the call quality suffers. Sony has outstanding call quality, but the fit is user-specific, and we'd recommend a try-before-you-buy approach. If you prefer a more natural sound or primarily listen to vocal or instrument-heavy genres like classical or singer/songwriter, consider the Sennheiser Momentum 4 for its mid-favored audio and impressive treble range.
Side-by-Side Comparison
Compare Apple AirPods Max versus top competing products:
—Genaveve Bradshaw, Rachael Lamore, and Lissette Velasquez
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