To be sure, these over-ear headphones appear to pack in a lot of impressive features. The headband has pressure-distributing fabric to prevent them from hurting the top of your head, and the earcups are cushioned with memory foam. The right earcup has a control dial, very much like the one on the Apple Watch, that gives the user access to a variety of functions including pause/play, forward/back, volume control, call answering and Siri. And of course there’s an active noise cancellation (ANC) button as well.
As far as audio quality is concerned, the AirPods Max uses computational audio like in the HomePod Mini, which allows it to produce higher-quality sound than a typical speaker of its size. The headphones also have an H1 wireless chip, the same as in the AirPods, AirPods Pro, and some Beats by Dr Dre products. These chips (there’s one in each earcup) provide a range of features including adaptive EQ, transparency mode, spatial audio and ANC.
