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Comment by tingol | Hacker News Reader

But you are brainwashed, thinking you need metal on your head instead of plastic which is far superior and lighter. You literally convinced yourself that an inferior product is great. Not that beats are the top of the line, they never were, but using AirPods Max vs Sony 1000MX4 is night and day.

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I own Sony 1000XM3s, and have since they were released. I've really enjoyed them. However, I like my AirPods Max much better, mostly because of their better UX around pairing/multiple devices and better onboard controls (digital crown vs. touch gestures).

I also own older Sony Bluetooth headphones, Sennheiser HD-650s, a pair of Bose QC-20i, and several other headphones ranging from cheap to mid-range. I'm confident I can judge what I personally prefer.

Don't you think that comparison is unfair, as the Sony' are priced much lower, is there even a same price alternative to APmax?

Oh, I definitely think the comparison would be unfair if price weren't part of the comparison. I'm just arguing that for me, the price premium of the AirPods Max is worth it, because they have things about them that make them more valuable to me. I'm by no means arguing that Sony's are bad. I've been very happy with them.

> But you are brainwashed, thinking you need metal on your head instead of plastic which is far superior and lighter.

What a strange sentence. Most reasonable people would probably agree nobody "needs" neither plastic nor metal on their head, but rather when enjoying music or other sonic entertainment pick one or the other for any number of reasons, probably not including that they've been brainwashed into thinking they need this or that material to do it.

Their point (I think) is that plastic is a better material choice in this context.

The original assertion that one product in better because they use "premium materials" like "metal" falls into the same trap of "Things made of metal are better than things made of plastic", which is a nonsense schtick that Apple's been selling people for years.

Well regardless, the ease with which people take up arms against anyone who like something different from them is strange.

There are no objective truths about metal or plastic as a material for headphones, just what people prefer. I love the metal. But apparently, enjoying my headphones means to some that I've been brainwashed. I find the assertion ludicrous on its face.

That's true in theory but often wrong in practice.

You could conceivably make products with such as thing as "premium plastic" (some companies/products do), but the overwhelming experience people have with plastic is that it's often cheap injection molding, breaks easily, doesn't look good, etc.

You could also build crap with metal, so of course there's nothing inherent to those materials.

But the perception isn't entirely wrong.

This seems to have missed that I also talked about repairing cheap plastic Beats headphones recently. I don't really care if my headphones are made out of plastic or metal. I do care that they don't break easily. As a heuristic, for consumer products, those made out of metal are generally more durable than those made out of plastic. There are of course very strong plastics, used to make very well engineered devices, and also junk made out of metal. But as a stand in for all the details that would explain why one consumer widget is more durable than another, "it's made of metal not plastic" is pretty decent, and I'd argue well-understood by most people.

Worth noting that I'm an engineer, and have designed through to manufacturing things made out of both metal and plastic. I'm not unaware of the subtleties.

Oh, I agree, durability and reliability are important, and it can be harder to get those right using plastics. Personally, I enjoy the fact that every single part on my Sennheiser HD25's can be replaced easily, and they're made of plastic.

I just dislike the "Oooooo metal! Must be good!" when it's a lot more complicated than that.

To be fair from an environmental point of view alone the non plastic version is superior let alone for other reasons.

I'm not really sure what the point you're trying to make is considering that Apple already sells premium plastic products... the AirPods.

Most "audiophile" is placebo. We did tests with higher end speakers, $2000-5000 stuff, nothing crazy from Maggies to Marlos, to B&Os to compared effects of amps, preamps, cables. We did a regular test and most of us felt the higher end stuff sounded better. Than i decided to do a blind test. The cheapest stuff usually win.

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