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You can get some really really good headphones for 500 dollars... even some basic custom IEMs for that price. Somehow I feel like the audio quality and build q

You can get some really really good headphones for 500 dollars... even some basic custom IEMs for that price. Somehow I feel like the audio quality and build quality is not going to be as good as the companies that actually make headphones for a living. Edit: Also, the fact that these don't fold, and that they're supposedly for using in public, make these even less attractive.

dagw 6y ago
I don't think Apple is even going try to claim that they can compete with other $500 headphones in pure audio quality. Their pitch is entirely going to focus on design, easy pairing that just works every time, and clever audio processing 'magic' like spatial audio.
Someone 6y ago
I won’t make a claim about this product (might not even if I had heard them), but Apple does make headphones for a living. https://macdailynews.com/2018/11/05/apple-is-the-worlds-leading-headphone-maker/ https://macdailynews.com/2018/11/05/apple-is-the-worlds-lead... (2018): “When its three headphone brand categories are combined (EarPods, AirPods, Beats – an Apple company) Apple has the leading market share in headphone ownership with 24%. Sony is second with 22%, followed by fellow traditional CE stalwarts Panasonic and Bose” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-27/apple-ceding-wireless-earbuds-market-share-even-as-airpods-grow https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-27/apple-ced...: “The AirPods have come to define the true wireless (TWS) earphones category, with Apple accounting for nearly half of all sales in 2019 and expected to grow to 82 million units this year, according to Counterpoint Research data. More affordable alternatives from Chinese rivals, however, have eroded Apple’s lead and the Silicon Valley company now finds itself with just over a third of the market, at 35%”
adamlett 6y ago
Somehow I feel like the audio quality and build quality is not going to be as good as the companies that actually make headphones for a living Audio quality? Maybe not. Although it probably depends on how you precisely define audio quality. I’m not aware of any competing headphones that have a feature equivalent to the directional audio that these AirPods have. But build quality? Apple will give any remotely comparable product a run for its money. Very few companies can match Apple’s expertise when it comes to mass producing hardware products with high-end materials and matching build quality. I think it’s close to a certainty that any headphones that are undeniably nicer than these ones, will also be significantly more expensive.
- ianhowson 6y ago
  I honestly think that audio quality is consistently poor on Apple stuff and they try to patch over it with EQ boosts and marketing. AirPods are better than EarPods, but they're still in $25 earphone range. AirPods Pro are nice, but you can get wired IEMs for <$100 that sound just as good. In that price range you can get Pinnacle P1 ($200) or ER4XR ($250) which dump all over them. I use AirPods Pro daily, not for quality, but for convenience. HomePod is probably the biggest disappointment I've ever heard. $300 and it sounds like a plastic box, despite "computational audio". At $550, you're solidly in headphone big leagues. Beyer DT770 or DT990 are close to perfect and they're <$200. Beyond that point you're hitting diminishing returns in audio quality; double price is going to get tiny marginal improvements in quality. I'm eager to hear them but I can't imagine them outperforming DT990s, despite costing twice as much. (Yes, none of these options have bluetooth or ANC. Get an ES100 for BT. If noise is a problem, get IEMs or AirPods Pro.)
  - adamlett 6y ago
    When it comes to audio quality and red wine I am completely unable to appreciate the quality differences over a certain minimum threshold, which is quite low (at least as measured by price). Maybe I would be able tell the medium level stuff from the very high end if I was allowed to compare them to each other in an undisturbed environment, but if I then had to guess which was the more expensive, I would likely get it wrong a good chunk of the times. I usually tell people that my senses are just not acute enough, but secretly I suspect that most people who claim to be able to appreciate the differences that I am unable to, really aren't either and are at best just experiencing the placebo effect. The fact that you report to be disappointed by the audio quality of the HomePod, a product that a lot of reviewers praised first and foremost for its audio quality, does nothing to relieve me of this suspicion. Who knows whether or not I am right or not? What I am quite certain of, is that I'm not likely unique when it comes to not being able to appreciate the small differences in quality that cost the most. Which is to say that for me and a lot of other people, it seems pointless to get hung up on whether one pair of very good headphones sound marginally better than another pair of very good headphones. Unless you're working in a studio as a sound producer, at a certain point the audio quality simply ceases to be the most important attribute of a pair of headphones. I don't know if it's true that you can get a pair of wired IEMs that sound better than the AirPods Pro, but even if it is, it's irrelevant, because the AirPods Pro sound fine to most people who buy them. Through the years I've owned several different brands of headphones in the price range $100–$150 that I bought because reviewers claimed they were extraordinarily good value for the money when it came to sound quality. And maybe they were, but I've hated most of them for getting mostly everything else wrong: Wrong length of wire, wrong placement of microphone and buttons, and just horrible build quality.
rimliu 6y ago
Can you expand on build quality? Do you mean that apple does not know how to build quality hardware? Or materials are cheap? Or do you mean something entirely different by the build quality?
- torgian 6y ago
  Take a look at the headband. It’s going to fall apart in a year with constant use. Almost every other pair of headphones in this price range offers replaceable headbands, and many of them can be customized with off the shelf products.

dagw 6y ago

I don't think Apple is even going try to claim that they can compete with other $500 headphones in pure audio quality. Their pitch is entirely going to focus on design, easy pairing that just works every time, and clever audio processing 'magic' like spatial audio.

Someone 6y ago

I won’t make a claim about this product (might not even if I had heard them), but Apple does make headphones for a living. https://macdailynews.com/2018/11/05/apple-is-the-worlds-leading-headphone-maker/ https://macdailynews.com/2018/11/05/apple-is-the-worlds-lead... (2018): “When its three headphone brand categories are combined (EarPods, AirPods, Beats – an Apple company) Apple has the leading market share in headphone ownership with 24%. Sony is second with 22%, followed by fellow traditional CE stalwarts Panasonic and Bose” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-27/apple-ceding-wireless-earbuds-market-share-even-as-airpods-grow https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-27/apple-ced...: “The AirPods have come to define the true wireless (TWS) earphones category, with Apple accounting for nearly half of all sales in 2019 and expected to grow to 82 million units this year, according to Counterpoint Research data. More affordable alternatives from Chinese rivals, however, have eroded Apple’s lead and the Silicon Valley company now finds itself with just over a third of the market, at 35%”

adamlett 6y ago

Somehow I feel like the audio quality and build quality is not going to be as good as the companies that actually make headphones for a living Audio quality? Maybe not. Although it probably depends on how you precisely define audio quality. I’m not aware of any competing headphones that have a feature equivalent to the directional audio that these AirPods have. But build quality? Apple will give any remotely comparable product a run for its money. Very few companies can match Apple’s expertise when it comes to mass producing hardware products with high-end materials and matching build quality. I think it’s close to a certainty that any headphones that are undeniably nicer than these ones, will also be significantly more expensive.

ianhowson 6y ago
I honestly think that audio quality is consistently poor on Apple stuff and they try to patch over it with EQ boosts and marketing. AirPods are better than EarPods, but they're still in $25 earphone range. AirPods Pro are nice, but you can get wired IEMs for <$100 that sound just as good. In that price range you can get Pinnacle P1 ($200) or ER4XR ($250) which dump all over them. I use AirPods Pro daily, not for quality, but for convenience. HomePod is probably the biggest disappointment I've ever heard. $300 and it sounds like a plastic box, despite "computational audio". At $550, you're solidly in headphone big leagues. Beyer DT770 or DT990 are close to perfect and they're <$200. Beyond that point you're hitting diminishing returns in audio quality; double price is going to get tiny marginal improvements in quality. I'm eager to hear them but I can't imagine them outperforming DT990s, despite costing twice as much. (Yes, none of these options have bluetooth or ANC. Get an ES100 for BT. If noise is a problem, get IEMs or AirPods Pro.)
- adamlett 6y ago
  When it comes to audio quality and red wine I am completely unable to appreciate the quality differences over a certain minimum threshold, which is quite low (at least as measured by price). Maybe I would be able tell the medium level stuff from the very high end if I was allowed to compare them to each other in an undisturbed environment, but if I then had to guess which was the more expensive, I would likely get it wrong a good chunk of the times. I usually tell people that my senses are just not acute enough, but secretly I suspect that most people who claim to be able to appreciate the differences that I am unable to, really aren't either and are at best just experiencing the placebo effect. The fact that you report to be disappointed by the audio quality of the HomePod, a product that a lot of reviewers praised first and foremost for its audio quality, does nothing to relieve me of this suspicion. Who knows whether or not I am right or not? What I am quite certain of, is that I'm not likely unique when it comes to not being able to appreciate the small differences in quality that cost the most. Which is to say that for me and a lot of other people, it seems pointless to get hung up on whether one pair of very good headphones sound marginally better than another pair of very good headphones. Unless you're working in a studio as a sound producer, at a certain point the audio quality simply ceases to be the most important attribute of a pair of headphones. I don't know if it's true that you can get a pair of wired IEMs that sound better than the AirPods Pro, but even if it is, it's irrelevant, because the AirPods Pro sound fine to most people who buy them. Through the years I've owned several different brands of headphones in the price range $100–$150 that I bought because reviewers claimed they were extraordinarily good value for the money when it came to sound quality. And maybe they were, but I've hated most of them for getting mostly everything else wrong: Wrong length of wire, wrong placement of microphone and buttons, and just horrible build quality.

rimliu 6y ago

Can you expand on build quality? Do you mean that apple does not know how to build quality hardware? Or materials are cheap? Or do you mean something entirely different by the build quality?

torgian 6y ago
Take a look at the headband. It’s going to fall apart in a year with constant use. Almost every other pair of headphones in this price range offers replaceable headbands, and many of them can be customized with off the shelf products.