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0 pointsfsloth9d ago0 comments

Well, if you buy only one pair it does work really nicely with all Apple kit. So you get really nice cinematic sound from Apple TV (for my non-prosumer ears), and effortlessly can switch between phone, laptop etc. The sound is really good for video calls.

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.

0 comments

zamadatix9d ago

The Apple Beats Studio Pro should meet this reasoning for $170 (on Amazon, $350 on apple.com - guess that explains the AirPods Max pricing) & the battery lasts twice as long. I have 2 near my Apple TV just so everything plays nice together.

Marsymars9d ago

The Beats Studio Pro doesn't use the H1 (or H2) chip, so is notably missing automatic device switching, if that's a thing that's important to you.

wahnfrieden9d ago

The sound is worse

genthree9d ago

Yeah I basically don’t trust anyone but Apple for wireless audio because every time I’ve tried allegedly-good non-Apple Bluetooth audio devices, they’ve been a ton worse, so bad I ended up barely using them.

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.

fslothOP9d ago

FWIW Sony's wh-1000xm3 and later are suberb.

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.

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