Apple unveils ultra-premium over-ear AirPods Max headphones

Apple's new AirPods Max promises to high-fidelity audio, Adaptive EQ, Active Noise Cancellation, spatial audio and up to 20 hours of battery life.

As speculated, Apple unveiled the premium AirPods Max on Tuesday (December 8), probably the last product for the year 2020.

The new AirPods Max comes with an over-ear headphone design. It boasts a breathable knit mesh canopy, which spans the headband. It is designed to distribute weight and reduce on-head pressure. It also features a sturdy stainless steel headband frame, which is also flexible to fit comfortably for a wide variety of head shapes and sizes. Add to that, it has telescoping headband arms, which can smoothly extend and stay in place to maintain the desired fit.

Also, Apple claims that each earcup comes with a revolutionary mechanism that balances and distributes ear cup pressure, and allows it to independently pivot and rotate to fit the unique contours of a user’s head.

The ear cushion is made of acoustically engineered memory foam to create an effective seal to deliver good sound output. Apple has incorporated Watch-inspired Digital Crown, but bigger to offer precise volume control and the ability to play or pause audio, skip tracks, answer or end phone calls, and activate Siri.

AirPods Max sky blue model. Credit: Apple

Inside, the AirPods Max houses an Apple H1 chip with 10 audio cores and a 40-mm custom-designed dynamic driver that promises to rich, deep bass, accurate mid-ranges, and crisp, clean high-frequency extension.

It offers five modes including the Adaptive EQ (equaliser) to adjust the sound to the fit and seal of the ear cushions by measuring the sound signal delivered to a user and adjusting the low and mid-frequencies in real-time.

Also, each ear cup features three outward-facing microphones to detect environmental noise, while one microphone inside the ear cup monitors the sound reaching the listener’s ear.

If you press the noise control again, it gets in to transparency mode, which upon activation, will allow users to listen to the outside environment's sound. It primarily comes in handy while crossing a road.

The new AirPods Max. Credit: Apple

Apple AirPods also boasts spatial audio with dynamic head tracking to place sounds virtually anywhere in space and promises to deliver an immersive, theater-like experience for content recorded in 5.1, 7.1, and Dolby Atmos.

As far as the battery life is concerned, it promises to deliver 20 hours of high-fidelity audio, talk time, or movie playback with Active Noise Cancellation and spatial audio enabled. Also, it supports fast charging. With just five minutes of charging, it offers around one and a half hours of listening time.

Like the iPhones, the AirPods Max doesn't feature a 3.5mm audio jack but will promises seamless and lag-free wireless connectivity with all the Apple devices (iOS/iPadOS 14.3 or later, watchOS 7.2 or later, tvOS 14.0 or later, and macOS Big Sur 11.1 or later versions). Unfortunately, there is no official word of Apple's new headphones are compatible with Android devices, just yet.

AirPods Max pink model. Credit: Apple

Apple AirPods Max comes in five dual-tone colours-- silver, space grey, sky blue, pink and green for Rs 59,900. The retail package comes with a lightning-to-Type C cable for charging and also an odd-looking Smart Case. The latter puts AirPods Max in an ultralow-power state that helps to preserve battery charge when not in use.

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