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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

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 them 16 years ago. Granted they are not wireless but I can and have repaired them with parts directly from Sennheiser. I doubt I will be able to do that with the AirPods Max which is a concern. At this price point I expect them to last at least ten years and there is no chance a battery will last that long so if it is not replaceable I can't see why I would buy these over an alternative in the same price range. Sure they have some "cool" features but that does not justify a product that will most likely have a battery in need of replacement in 3-4 years becoming worthless. Edit: OMFG They use Lightning for charging not USB-C?! WTF are Apple doing :(

nikisweeting 6y ago
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.
- satysin 6y ago
  That is a good experience that unfortunately I didn't have with my daughters Beats that lasted ~3 years before the battery was down to around two hours. Granted this was before Apple purchased them so perhaps things have improved since then. My daughter now has a pair of Sony XM3 that she loves but she will no doubt want these. Lucky for me she is now 18 so can buy her own expensive headphones :D
- stevehawk 6y ago
  Has Apple made a product in the last five years with a replaceable battery with minimal, or even moderate hassle?
  - jiofih 6y ago
    All of them, the hassle is just going to an authorized service provider. Most of the time the entire device is replaced but do you care? The end result is even better.
deleted 6y ago
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kart23 6y ago
I don't understand apples 'proven audio engineering'. The airpods pro don't sound good and cost $250. Incredibly muddy vocals, bass is washed out, and they just don't make music sound good. I need to crank the volume sky-high before they start to sound ok. A $15 pair of sony wired earbuds beats them out in terms of sound quality. The ANC is meh, I can still hear people talk in the background, and theres a decent amount of audible static. For the good reviews, I'm incredibly disappointed. Their laptops do sound miles better than the competition though, and the homepod is great for the size. I don't know if I have a defective pair or what, because they don't sound good at all.
- drak0n1c 6y ago
  I think that reputation comes from Apple's historical care for iPhone audio engineering which used to have a massive advantage over Android when it came to latency, quality, and dev APIs.
cruano 6y ago
I'm already on my third set of AirPods so I don't have much hope on battery life
gnicholas 6y ago
Agree that Lightning for charging is crazy for a new product in 2020. With regard to the battery, I expect apple will replace it for you at the Apple Store, probably for around $75. I believe they'll do it for iPads (including Pro) for $100, and in fact they give you a completely new (refurb, honestly) unit. So you also get a brand new screen with no scratches, which is nice. I don't know if they'll do replacement units for headphones, but wouldn't be surprised.

nikisweeting 6y ago

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.

satysin 6y ago
That is a good experience that unfortunately I didn't have with my daughters Beats that lasted ~3 years before the battery was down to around two hours. Granted this was before Apple purchased them so perhaps things have improved since then. My daughter now has a pair of Sony XM3 that she loves but she will no doubt want these. Lucky for me she is now 18 so can buy her own expensive headphones :D
stevehawk 6y ago
Has Apple made a product in the last five years with a replaceable battery with minimal, or even moderate hassle?
- jiofih 6y ago
  All of them, the hassle is just going to an authorized service provider. Most of the time the entire device is replaced but do you care? The end result is even better.

deleted 6y ago

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kart23 6y ago

I don't understand apples 'proven audio engineering'. The airpods pro don't sound good and cost $250. Incredibly muddy vocals, bass is washed out, and they just don't make music sound good. I need to crank the volume sky-high before they start to sound ok. A $15 pair of sony wired earbuds beats them out in terms of sound quality. The ANC is meh, I can still hear people talk in the background, and theres a decent amount of audible static. For the good reviews, I'm incredibly disappointed. Their laptops do sound miles better than the competition though, and the homepod is great for the size. I don't know if I have a defective pair or what, because they don't sound good at all.

drak0n1c 6y ago
I think that reputation comes from Apple's historical care for iPhone audio engineering which used to have a massive advantage over Android when it came to latency, quality, and dev APIs.

cruano 6y ago

I'm already on my third set of AirPods so I don't have much hope on battery life

gnicholas 6y ago

Agree that Lightning for charging is crazy for a new product in 2020. With regard to the battery, I expect apple will replace it for you at the Apple Store, probably for around $75. I believe they'll do it for iPads (including Pro) for $100, and in fact they give you a completely new (refurb, honestly) unit. So you also get a brand new screen with no scratches, which is nice. I don't know if they'll do replacement units for headphones, but wouldn't be surprised.