I really don't understand how these are $549. As others have pointed out, some people say the head band is not great. Others say the sound is solid but not exceptional. What makes these worth that much when there are so many options?
Mass market Apple products may be expensive but they are still great value. Look at the $499/$599 Macbook Neo for a recent example, but this generally covers iPhones and other Macs, as well as Airpods, Apple Watch etc.
Then there are the $550 Airpods Max, $3500 Vision Pro, $600 storage upgrades, $700 CPU wheels, $230 "iPhone Pocket", $20 polishing cloth...
In the latter category there is no effort to actually compete on price or value, because it is made for people who will blindly buy anything with an Apple logo on it.
Plus they give juuuust enough features to cover for the true purpose and give you plausible deniability. Same as most luxury items. None truly give the value of the cost (Is a Ferrari 10x as fast as a GR86? Carry 10x as much stuff? Go 10x as far on the same gas load? Etc etc etc)
"Oh but there's nothing like the experience of driving a Ferrari!"
But the market for that last 10% 1% 0.1% does exist. Like yes it's funny to make fun of middle aged guys who buy extremely expensive cars and who if actually tested couldn't tell the difference between a $60k sports car and a $160k sports car and there are plenty of businesses that prey on that lack of discerning taste to take advantage but it doesn't mean the difference isn't there at all.
That said, my first pair failed out of Apple Care and resulted in a full cost replacement. The APM sub is littered with stories of the BT module failing.
I’m sure it is ludicrous to some but I often measure value by utility and I go through entire workdays wearing this product.
I've tried Bose and Sony; in fact, I have two pairs of QC Ultras sitting in their boxes waiting to be sold. Neither sound as good, even after EQing them as close to the Harman curve as their software allows (with Apple products; I haven't tried them with AptX streaming) and both were slower at cancelling noise. The Bose headphones I tried got decent mics after an update, but they are still unreliable at times.
The Maxes are also heavy, but you don't feel it due to its being very nicely distributed across the head. I've seen scores of people run, walk, and work out in these. I even saw a child using them!
I can't stress how premium the Maxes feel. The cups, for example, don't deform even after hours and hours of wear (and sweat). Replacing them is trivial and they attach with magnets instead of adhesive and/or clips. The headphone band is also extremely strong; much stronger than it looks. They feel like $549. Meanwhile, Bose charges $499 for their QuietComfort Ultras with their slow noise cancelling processors (AirPods use Apple Silicon, which is unbeatable atm) and cheap, plastic body (though part of the headphone band has a chrome finish --- premium!)
All this said, Bose and Sony headphones are significantly easier to travel with, and they have power buttons. This was why I sold my AirPods Maxes the first go around (though I went back to them a year later for the reasons stated previously).
My ~6 year old Jabra headphones connect to two devices simultaneously, and can easily switch between a total of five at the touch of a button. My Pixel Buds do the same (called 'multipoint' and 'audio switch').
Yeah, things were more awkward in the mid 2010s, but I'd expect everything from the current decade to be able to do it without issue.
They also work natively with iOS's built-in noise reduction modes. No need for Krisp!
H2 chip enables smart audio switching when paired with Apple account + other Apple products. This is a feature that many people find valuable.
My H1-chipped USB-C Airpods Max (OG) seem to switch seamlessly between my iphone, ipad, and macbook pro already.
If you’re unsatisfied with Transparency mode on your gen1 then the gen2 will give you Adaptive which is a big improvement (especially so if you wear them outdoors or around other people). Same improvement that the AirPods had, if you’re familiar with that.
If you use them for videoconferencing, the lower latency and higher quality headset codec may be worth upgrading. They retain value on the used market so long as you unpair them from Find My an hour before you sell them and have a purchase receipt.
I suspect there might be some slight power savings for your transmitting devices if both sides support Bluetooth 5.3, but I would not expect that to be significant or advertised.
I see both of those lines as utilities for travel. Not sure why I can't shake that.
The Max's don't do anything particularly well. I work within the Apple ecosystem and the Airpod Max's plug seamlessly into it. So because of that they are my daily drivers.
As someone with an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and a Macbook, I never got into Apple's headphones. My Sony WH-something-4 that I bought refurbished 4 years ago are more than enough for me.
You want to be seen in public wearing this object
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/11/introducing-iphone-po...
That’s all you have to understand.
If you try to understand this stuff outside the context of fashion, you'll go around in circles (as I did).
If you see this through the lens of "people will pay anything to signal various things to others" and "you can charge whatever the market will bear" then it all adds up.
(Watch it, it’s fun)
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/mx572zm/a/apple-mac-pro-w...
They just work.
I mean there are other pieces of kit that probably just work as well but with these you don't need to do market research.
It's surprising how non-trivial even _adequate_ sound is still in 2026 and that's what these are guaranteed to give in any situation IMHO.
If you have only one Apple device probably no selling point as such.
In this case these are more expensive than I’d pay for headphones, but that just means I won’t have any Bluetooth headphones in this form factor. Been down that road before, non-Apple was a frustrating waste of money.
I mean FFS my AirPods are worse on Windows and Linux than in the Apple ecosystem, but are still better than the non-Apple ones I’ve tried, even there. It’s not even just the home-field advantage.
Windows and bluetooth is a really difficult combination. The problem is that for some reason if Windows detects a microphone on the Bluetooth headphone, it switches to a transport mode that a) allows the mic through b) makes the sound sound horrible. So disabling mics sometimes helps there.