What happens when you blindfold four experienced music producers and have them listen to the same track on six different headphones, including Apple’s AirPods Max? Wired decided to find out. Here’s how that went.
Lights out, hands off, headphones on
When Apple released the AirPods Max in 2020, it was widely regarded as one of the best headphones on the market. But five years later, the lineup has seen no meaningful updates beyond a switch to USB-C and a few new color options, which has given the competition more than enough time to catch up. And then some.
With that in mind, Wired called in four experts for a bling test, pitting Apple’s headphones against Sony’s WH-1000XM6, Soundcore’s Space One Pro, Bose’s QuietComfort Ultra (1st Gen), Nothing’s Headphone (1), and Bowers & Wilkins’ Px7 S3.
To make things even more interesting and minimize the chance of bias, Wired took a few extra steps beyond blindfolding the experts, who were Isabel Gracefield, Ian Lambden, Steph Marziano, and Mike Kintish, all of whom are sound engineers, music producers, and all-around great fits for the job.
As Wired explains it:
“Each expert was interviewed separately and had no prior knowledge of the headphones or brands being tested. They were not allowed to touch the headphones while listening—anyone who has worn the AirPods Max will be familiar with the metal casing, for instance—and, in the interests of keeping it as fair and mainstream as possible, we only played them Blinding Lights by The Weeknd, which, with 4.9 billion streams, was, at the time, the most listened to track on Spotify. Cruel but fair.
ANC was turned on for all headphones—much to the annoyance of our experts—and we streamed at Spotify Premium’s 320 Kbps (the test was carried out before Spotify Lossless was released). This too elicited a less-than-positive response from our hi-res–loving team, but as this is how the majority of people listen, we deemed it the fairest assessment. Each pair of headphones was given a letter—A, B, C, D, E, F—and the testers were free to switch between pairs to compare and contrast.”
We won’t spoil the results, since Wired’s piece is very interesting and well worth your time. But, when it comes specifically to the AirPods Max, they fared relatively well against most of their competitors, claiming the top spot for at least one reviewer.
Feature-wise, its active noise cancellation and ability to keep vocals clear while maintaining a balanced range across instruments were often praised, while its weight was also frequently noted as a downside. Still, most reviewers considered it a reasonable trade-off given what it delivers.
Of course, this is far from an exhaustive test, and it may very well be that if Wired had selected any song other than The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights, the results could (and probably would) have been completely different. Still, this was a fun experiment, and it is worth checking out.
Have you compared the AirPods Max with other headphones? Let us know in the comments.
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