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AirPods Max

apple.com

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Re: AirPods Max

#451

Post by hocuspocus »

perfectstorm wrote: post #405
blantonl wrote: post #308

For all the complaining about the pricing here, just set a reminder to yourself for 1 year later, when the pandemic has waned and some workplaces begin to return to normal. Then take a visual survey of how many people are wearing these in those hip open office development workspaces. You'll see the pricing didn't matter at all. You'll probably be wearing a pair yourself when you do that visual survey.

I have a feeling that this 'allows' Bose and Sony to raise their prices causing everything to normalize around $500 price range. Remember the original pixel (or nexus)? they were priced around $350-$400 and look where they are now ($700).

I don't really see how that would work. The Sony XM3 and Bose QC35 II were regularly under €180 (VAT included) in the past days. Who's going to suddenly pay more than twice for the same?

And the original Nexus was expensive. So was the original Pixel. You can't really draw any conclusions from Google's inconsistent smartphone lineup and pricing over the past decade.

Cheap Nexus phones: 4, 5, maybe the 5X if you waited a bit.

Expensive Nexus phones: 1, S, Galaxy, 6, 6P.

Expensive Pixel phones: all of them except the 'a' line, sometimes ridiculously so given the poor experience.

Re: AirPods Max

#452

Post by sombrero_guitar »

eertami wrote: post #113

$549!? That puts it in the same price category as: Sennheiser HD660S, Audeze LCD-1, Beyerdynamic DT1770/1990, Grado RS2e, among many many others. Honestly, I don't understand why you would buy these when there are a lot of established professional audio companies offering better sound at a cheaper price. At least airpods have a unique selling point in their portability and ux but I don't see how this benefits over-ea…

The Airpods Max is more comparable to something like Sony WH-1000XM4, Bose 700, or B&O Beoplay H9. You can't really compare wired openback headphones to headphones that are meant to be worn in public on the go. However, even among the wireless headphones with active noise canceling, the Airpods Max are more expensive than their competition. The closest in terms of features and price is the Beoplay H9 and that is $50-100 cheaper depending on where you buy it. To many people the extra integration with Apple products is worth paying the difference. For other people, especially those not all in on the Apple ecosystem, the cheaper competitors are a better option. However, comparing it to products in a different class is not a very good argument.

Re: AirPods Max

#453

Post by thanksforthe42 »

eertami wrote: post #113

$549!? That puts it in the same price category as: Sennheiser HD660S, Audeze LCD-1, Beyerdynamic DT1770/1990, Grado RS2e, among many many others. Honestly, I don't understand why you would buy these when there are a lot of established professional audio companies offering better sound at a cheaper price. At least airpods have a unique selling point in their portability and ux but I don't see how this benefits over-ea…

It's a marketing tactic. The goal is to be unaffordable, this way people create goals to buy it and show off to their friends.

This has been Apple's marketing since the 2000s.

The product quality is secondary to the price. Even the users don't want everyone to afford it. They want to be seen as unique.

Re: AirPods Max

#454

Post by oblio »

mmaunder wrote: post #190
eertami wrote: post #113

$549!? That puts it in the same price category as: Sennheiser HD660S, Audeze LCD-1, Beyerdynamic DT1770/1990, Grado RS2e, among many many others. Honestly, I don't understand why you would buy these when there are a lot of established professional audio companies offering better sound at a cheaper price. At least airpods have a unique selling point in their portability and ux but I don't see how this benefits over-ea…

These are not professional reference headphones. The goal isn’t predictable EQ for mixing music that will be played on a huge range of outputs. These are consumer headphones that provide wealth and status signaling for the wearer with enough audiophile “reasons” to pretend that is not the case.

It's not only that. It's also peace of mind when you're not knowledgeable about the product category you're looking at.

Most other big brands have frequent howlers: Google, Samsung, Sony, etc.

Re: AirPods Max

#455

Post by arvinsim »

If this sell out despite the price, then it just proves that people will buy anything as long as it has an Apple logo on it.

Marketers and influencers out in full force.

Re: AirPods Max

#456

Post by nikisweeting »

satysin wrote: post #437

The price is high at $549 however given Apple's proven audio engineering I will give them the benefit of the doubt on sound quality on par with similarly priced headphones from Sennheiser, etc. I mean have you heard the speaker quality on the 16" MacBook Pro?! Literally no other laptop sounds as good. My biggest concern is if they are user serviceable. I have a pair of Sennheiser that cost around £700 when I bought t…

Six years in and my BackBeat Pros have over 1000+ cycles and still last 15+ hours out of their original 24hr. I don't notice a functional difference, I still recharge them about every 3 days.

It's not 10 years but the experience of owning a lithium-battery powered pair of headphones has not degraded as much as I was expecting. Hopefully the Apple batteries are replaceable though, it would really suck to have a $550 pair of headphones that you have to keep tethered to a desk.

Re: AirPods Max

#457

Post by kristofferR »

gwd wrote: post #237

Actually I'm surprised nobody's asking about a wired headphone jack. Without one, you won't be able to watch movies on planes, which is a pretty significant use case for over-the-ear noise-cancelling headphones. Probably gaming as well -- I don't do a ton of gaming, but StarCraft basically doesn't work over Bluetooth (probably due to buffering requirements).

Bluetooth is enabled while in Airplane mode, so I don't get your point frankly.

Gaming latency is true though - when I use Bluetooth headphones on my TV, Game Mode gets automatically disabled.

Re: AirPods Max

#458

Post by sudosysgen »

clajiness wrote: post #344
hajile wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But my Shure IEMs offer better sound isolation and better sound quality and cost less money.

I'm shocked by how many people claim to be able to state absolutes about a product that they've never tried. How do you know your headphones offer better sound isolation and better sound quality?

Physics. Shure headphones have very thick foam eartips and thick, well sealed, flush, headphone shells.

As for audio quality, there's really not much better that can be done than the good Shure headphones. I suppose it's possible, but quite unlikely.

Re: AirPods Max

#459

Post by dkonofalski »

eertami wrote: post #113

$549!? That puts it in the same price category as: Sennheiser HD660S, Audeze LCD-1, Beyerdynamic DT1770/1990, Grado RS2e, among many many others. Honestly, I don't understand why you would buy these when there are a lot of established professional audio companies offering better sound at a cheaper price. At least airpods have a unique selling point in their portability and ux but I don't see how this benefits over-ea…

>offering better sound at a cheaper price

This is what drives me nuts about stuff like this. How can you even say that? There's no way that you've tried these headphones so how can you possibly say that? Apple has gotten rave reviews with regard to audio quality in the Airpods Pro and the Homepod and Homepod Mini so why wouldn't they take that expertise and put it into these?

Re: AirPods Max

#460

Post by sudosysgen »

londons_explore wrote: post #116
perardi wrote: post #85

I am a total apologist for the price of the AirPods and AirPods Pro. I have tried a lot of wireless earbuds. Jabra, Samsung, Jaybirds, Anker…and none of them have the combination of bullet-proof pairing, keeping a connection, audio quality†, and sound cancelling†. †(AirPods Pro, for these.) But hoo boy, $550 is a lot for more traditional headphones. The price premium for earbuds feels right to me, as you have to do t…

> bullet-proof pairing, keeping a connection, audio quality That'll be because Apple products use a custom protocol to iPhones, whereas all other brands have to use basic bluetooth, which has crappy sound quality, arbitrary restrictions, poor handling of weak signals, lots of delay, and is hard to pair. Apples walled garden doesn't allow third parties to design or use their own protocols, or use apples protocols, so…

All of the other brands on Non-iPhone use AptX and AptX HD, which works quite well.

But yes, on iPhone Apple exploits their position to kneecap competitors.

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