Apple Announces Next-Generation AirPods Max
In a surprise bit of news, Apple on Monday announced the AirPods Max 2. The high-end headphones, which cost $549 and will be available for purchase beginning March 25, is powered by the very same custom H2 chip found in the AirPods Pro 3, with Apple boasting the new silicon enables “more effective ANC [active noise cancellation], enhanced sound quality, and new features like Adaptive Audio and Live Translation.”
Finish-wise, the AirPods Max come in blue, midnight, orange, purple, and starlight.
“With the incredible performance of H2, AirPods Max are upgraded with up to 1.5x more effective ANC for the ultimate all-day listening experience,” Eric Treski, Apple’s director of audio product marketing, said in a statement included in the company’s Newsroom announcement. “The sound quality is remarkably clean, rich, and acoustically detailed—and when combined with capabilities like Personalized Spatial Audio, AirPods Max 2 deliver a profoundly immersive experience.”
The H2 chip, while ostensibly a minor “spec bump,” is in actuality a big deal. For one thing, AirPods Max have never been capable of driving features like Adaptive Audio and Live Translation; that they do now brings them to feature parity with their earbud siblings. Moreover, the advent of Live Translation in AirPods Max is a de-facto accessibility feature insofar as wearers can now accessibly communicate with other people in situations where a language barrier may prove insurmountable. Sometime last year, Apple sent me a pair of the then-“new” AirPods Max—in midnight, no less—so I could try out the Personalized Spatial Audio functionality. Alas, I never got around to writing about it, but I do use those AirPods Max all the time at my desk and like them better than the OG AirPods Max (in blue) I received as a birthday present back in 2022.
My quibbles with the headphones involve accessibility. Ergonomically, AirPods Max are decidedly not for the weak—literally so as they’re extremely heavy on my head. And yes, the USB-C port is a nightmare in terms of hand-eye coordination despite the nerdy drumbeat of One Cable To Rule Them All across one’s expanse of Apple products and beyond. I’m telling you, industry-wide standardization be damned, true innovation would be Apple designing a proprietary USB-C spec wherein the company somehow fuses MagSafe and USB-C. As a person with disabilities, actual practical benefits in everyday usage matter exponentially more to me than some pseudo-political interoperability standard. As it stands today, although there is a cromulent case for USB-C everywhere being a bonafide accessibility boon in terms of cognition, the usability sucks major ass unless you have typical visual acuity and fine-motor skills.
Yes, I said “sucks ass”—sometimes a well-placed curse word conveys the effect.
Anyway, AirPods Max obviously aren’t for everyone. They’re pricey, and sensory-wise, could be out for weightiness alone; regardless, I can confirm AirPods Max sound terrific and are worth the investment. Anecdotally, I see them everywhere on the heads of normal people, in the real world and on social media. To me, they can’t be that exorbitantly expensive if they’ve managed to somewhat pervade the cultural zeitgeist.
