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Comment by headmelted | Hacker News Reader

$549 a pair. Yikes.

I'm fairly confident I've reached my own personal peak for Apple pricing. As a spectator I've no doubt these will sell massive numbers but I'm curious to learn what the market will bear for Apple's products.

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$549 today isn't as much as $549 was 10 years ago or even 5 years ago. The world is getting wealthier. Money is getting cheaper. We've just printed trillions of dollars this year to keep the good times rolling baby. We live in an era where people would rather pay $549 for a set of headphones than save it in a bank account or save for a house, cuz there's no way in hell they'll ever be able to afford a house. So why not blow it on experiences and shiney stuff instead of clinging on to a dream that can never be realised? That's the mentality of a lot of Apple's target market.

“Think different” I guess..

Don't worry in a few short years you'll be able to lease your Apple Car and Apple House.

/s-sortof.

meanwhile the last time the federal minimum wage was raised was in 2009, to $7.25 an hour. At that rate, you'd need to work ~76 hours to afford these headphones.

From a company that priced a monitor stand at $1000, this is at least more functional. But for most people, a pair of $30 headphones will be just as good, albeit without the status symbol element.

Realistically, a premium product like this one is not targeted at minimum wage earners.

I'd agree regarding the $1000 monitor stand not being targeted - but they're wireless headphones - Apple sells consumer electronics. of course they're targeted, at least for desirability (not so much price point)

And my reply was mainly to highlight the parent comment of > The world is getting wealthier. Money is getting cheaper. We've just printed trillions of dollars this year to keep the good times rolling baby

does not actually reflect the reality of most workers; who's purchase power has only decreased.

For comparison, Sony's WH-1000XM4 which are currently widely considered the state of the art in the active noise cancelling over-ears, will cost you anywhere between $300-$400 depending on where you are.

(I was very surprised the price can vary that widely, actually. On Sony's US page they're $279, while in the EU they're €380 which is about $460.)

A few weeks before black friday I picked up new 1000XM3 for a $100. These better be something amazing for that price

i had both the sony wh-1000xm4 and now use the sennheiser momentum 3. via bluetooth i have the same problem on both my macbook pro and iphone: they lag. i watch a youtube video (on ios in the app; on osx browser or a video app) and the sound is a few ms behind (very noticeably though).

any idea what's going on there and/or if apple would solve this somehow with airpods max?

I sometimes have the same issue with my Bose QC35, usually resolved by turning the headphones off and on again.

I think that's some iOS peculiarity, or non-standard latency compensation implementation. On Android all bluetooth headphones I've tried seem to work fine for non realtime applications, and many (like Sony's great wf-1000xm3) have none or barely perceptible latency in games.

i have this on osx as well though. will try on an android phone, thanks.

I’ve been hovering on the XM4s waiting for these to be announced. I very much like my regular AirPods, but at £549 I’m definitely going to get the Sonys for £349.

I’m sure the AirPods will be more convenient in some ways, but as I’ll be using them almost entirely inside the house, I’m willing to forego that considering the huge price difference. I much prefer the visual style of the Sonys too; not that that matters all that much.

I’m interested to see reviews of the AirPods to see what they’re like on the sound quality front though.

The only real inconvenience is Bluetooth connecting and disconnecting. It's clunky on my WH-1000XM3's compared to my AirPods Pro, and I often find myself hunting for the device the Sonys were last connected to so I can reconnect to something else. But, unless the AirPods Max (terrible name) turn out to be stunningly good, the added convenience isn't worth the massive price difference to me.

I believe the XM4s support being paired to multiple devices at once, which is the main reason I’m going for them over the XM3s

I bought the M3 right when they came out for about 320€ (I think they were 380 but there was a deal). And got a reimbursement about a year later because of technical problems. Because I really liked them I bought them again and the price then was about 180€. And I’d say the M4 don’t add so much to warrant the difference over the M3 at their current pricing. In any case, Apples product will never see deals remotely close to this. (Maybe 50€ off if the stars are perfectly aligned)

They are regularly available in Europe for around 300€ (360$), really good deals are around 250€ (300$) [these prices are with VAT].

Don't forget US prices aren't quoted with VAT, where EU prices often are

~always. It's illegal to quote prices to consumers for most things ex VAT in the EU (you're allowed show the ex VAT price, but you must show the inc VAT price as the primary price).

Thanks for this insight, I was not aware of this difference. As far as I can see though, this doesn't account for the drastic difference, given the average sales tax in the US is roughly 7% [0][1]. On top of the $279, the price would then end up at about $300.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_taxes_in_the_United_Stat...

[1] https://www.aarp.org/money/taxes/info-2020/state-sales-tax-r...

Wait what? So the US price isn't what you end up paying?

Depends on where you live. Some states don't have VAT ("sales tax" in the US), others do, still others have higher sales tax depending on the city you're in.

My experience with the WH-1000XM3 was awful. Sound cancel feature wasn't that great, couldn't pair with multiple devices at the same time and have the audio switch seamlessly between the two, and I also didn't want to have to trust Sony with my listening data. Call me paranoid if you'd like, but smart headphones are basically pumping out information about what we're listening to or hearing around us, and if I was going to trust any corporation to be user-centric on privacy in this regard it'd be Apple.

If Apple's headphones have high audio quality and a seamless experience across multiple devices and cool features prepping the way for VR/AR (the way other comments have suggested) then I'd buy a pair.

> I also didn't want to have to trust Sony with my listening data

This is tinfoil hat stuff. What are you expecting to happen?

I'm not expecting anything to happen, but advocating for user privacy isn't about having anything to hide or expecting anything to happen. As far as I'm concerned, the most rational position is to expect user privacy as a primary feature of any services/products we use, particularly if they don't need to be relaying any data in the first place.

I mean, perhaps if Facebook made a pair of headphones would you accept that it's not quite tinfoil hat stuff to be interested in user privacy? We should never trust any centralized authority or corporation with data if we can help it.

Especially if you consider the inherent issues with Bluetooth call quality. No matter how good their microphones in them are, they will mangle the audio back to the 90s. $549 seems entirely detached and I am baffled, even as an ANC enthusiast.

I did hear Rumours (I never looked into it) that there will be an upcoming feature in bluetooth that will allow for higher quality. I believe currently the tradeoff is audio quality vs latency. My bluetooth headphones (Sony) switch between high quality but ~500ms latency (guess), to low quality but no noticeable latency when doing calls.

True, Bluetooth 5.2 is introducing LE Audio that will use a new codec (LC3) and should enable higher audio quality also for calls when microphone from the headset is in use.

Whatever protocol Apple uses for calling with Airpods + Apple devices isn't the same as the usual bluetooth call codec.

Yeah, they use their own proprietary protocol over Bluetooth Low Energy (which you can basically use as a raw packet transport).

For some reason the Bluetooth consortium was years behind the ball in standardizing a high quality bidirectional audio transport, versus the phone-quality "Hands Free Profile" and "Headset" Profile using 90s era codecs (uni-directional is fine since it uses a higher quality "Advanced Audio Distribution" profile).

The consortium launched Bluetooth Low Energy audio last year (or maybe this year?), but I'm not sure if it's actually shipping in anything yet.

Yeah, whenever I use Bluetooth headphones that have a microphone with my PC I have to be sure to disable all of the headset profiles so it doesn't switch to dial-up quality as soon as an app requests microphone access.

An update to that spec would be much appreciated.

I'm skeptical if the protocol makes that much difference, the experience with Beats X basically felt the same as any normal BT headphones, AirPods definitely felt less fussy and more seamless despite them both using the same W1 chip.

My theory is the AirPods start getting ready for syncing as soon as you open the case/detects you touching them, while the Beats X had a traditional on button and were entirely unimpressive to me.

I was referring more to audio quality. Airpods seems to be able to act in headset mode (audio + microphone) without killing the quality of the audio you are listening to. Most headphones switch to a very low bitrate mode when you activate the microphone.

Have you used Bluetooth headphones this decade? And airpods in particular? There’s not really any problem with audio quality they sound pretty much indistinguishable from wired headphones in real world use (sure if you’re sitting alone in a quiet room with an audiophile setup listening to FLAC files because 320kbps mp3s aren’t high quality enough, then you may want something else).

call quality still sucks because of HFP. That hasn’t changed for over a decade.

This is just demonstrably not true. Bluetooth Hands-Free mangles the sample rate to 16 / 24 kHz. See this video for a collection of pretty much all common devices from "this decade". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifmGS_WWk7o

Saving others the time: this link doesn't cover any Apple headsets.

My AirPods reportedly sound like shit on calls and the same is true for any AirPods [Pro] user I've been on a call with.

I use FaceTime Audio for calls to family because it sounds so much better than VoLTE. FT Audio sounds like you're in the same room as the person, even over non-Pro Airpods.

You are referring to listening, but the recording quality of all of Bluetooth earbuds is abysmal.

I have a co-worker who moved from Bose to AirPods. I wish he still had the Bose headphones - he sounded better, and they filtered out his swallowing noises.

In the same boat. Love music, love hi fidelity headphones, very enthusiastic about wireless for home office use, not at all interested in these.

“One touch set up” is just not a feature anywhere on my Venn Diagram of excitement.

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