Apple airpods max VS Sony XM4:-
Should you buy the airpods max the sony xm4 or the Bose 700 which pair are the true king of active noise cancelling headphones for 2021 well stay tuned because we’re going to be getting to the bottom of this with amc tests microphone quality tests sound quality tests all for your listening pleasure so you can easily decide for yourself instead of just taking my word for it then at the end of the article I’ll be crowning the true reigning champ so hit those affiliate links at the end of article for the latest price on these and please try not to fall off your chair when you see the price of the airpods max it’s not easy but it is possible I’m mark I’m here to let you know what’s worth buying before you buy it so let’s get stuck in hope you guys are staying safe and healthy wherever you are in the world this does feel like the wrong time to be comparing anc headphones in depth considering that in 2020.
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| Apple airpods max VS Sony XM4 |
We’ve spent more time at home than ever but nevertheless we’re gonna crown a winner here anyway in the hopes that we’ll be able to use one of these pairs of headphones on a flight somewhere exotic maybe because currently an exotic trip to me means going to the supermarket anyway in round one we’re jumping straight into the battle of build quality and design needless to say the airpods max have the worst case out of all three contenders here I’m sure you knew that already but I just wanted to get this out of the way even calling it a case feels like a massive overstatement.
Comparison of build quality:-
They’re basically a pair of glorified underpants for headphones worst of all you have to use it I’m not joking but we’ll get to that pure madness shortly in round three but on pure build quality alone the airpods max beat the xm4 and Bose 700 hands down due to their almost zero plastic build we’ve got a cold matte aluminium finish on each ear cup a sturdy silicon and stainless steel headband with the button controls worthy of being on a thousand dollar Smartphone okay stress test time and during my stress test the airpods max proved themselves to be the most flexible and sturdy pair by far with zero signs or sounds of creaking whatsoever so yes the airpods max win on pure build quality,
But that’s only half of this round because when it comes to build and design the airpods max are a bit of a fail for some very very basic reasons for starters they don’t fully fold up like the xm4 can and whilst the Bose 700s can’t fully fold up either at least they have an actual case to help salvage some shred of realistic portability those aluminium earcups are also to blame for the fact that the airpods max are the heaviest out of all three by far only further worsening their case for portability to me great design not only looks good but it’s practical for its intended use too case in point the fabric mesh on the headband how quickly do you think that fabric mesh is going to last before it becomes discoloured better yet how on earth am i supposed to clean it when it does spoiler alert you just can’t needless to say i 100 regret buying these in silver and white so bear my regrets in mind when considering buying any of the color ways apart from space grey these are one of the least transportable heaviest most easily tarnished headphones.
Apple airpods max VS Sony XM4:-
I’ve ever tested and for those reasons they come in last place for the build and design round despite actually having superior overall build quality because i mean what’s the point in having a high-end build if it only makes the practical use of the product worse the xm4 come in first place with their no-nonsense fully foldable durable and incredibly lightweight design with the Bose 700 not far behind in second place simply because they don’t fold up in round two it’s time for a battle of fit and comfort and this round is a close call whilst the earcup padding on all three here appears to be of a similar thickness as you compress that padding you’re actually gonna hit a hidden piece of plastic much sooner on the Bose 700 and airpods max meaning that that padding isn’t nearly as thick as it looks now that doesn’t really affect comfort all that much but it will definitely affect your chances of getting a perfect seal for better amc sound quality and reduced sound leakage the padding on the xm4 is by far the thickest being able to be compressed right down flush with the earcups meaning it has more padding to play with when it comes to moulding to the contours of your face particularly at the back of the jaw where things get a little bit tricky so with all that being mentioned it’s no surprise that on the air pods max i get a pretty lazy seal and the back of my jaw as they just don’t have that deep padding to fill in all those gaps and crevices which isn’t also helped by the rectangular shape of the ear cups with the Bose 700 the clamping force is a little stronger meaning you can definitely feel their presence slightly more though this does help them to form a complete seal,
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| Apple airpods max VS Sony XM4 |
But the real nail in the coffinfor the airpods max in this round is their weight you can just feel that weight so much more on your head when you’ve got them on that doesn’t necessarily make them super uncomfortable but with the xm4s and 700s by comparison their lightweight makes it very easy to forget that you even have them on so again that’s another win for the xm4 with the 700s in second place and the airpods max in last place having a pair of heavy headphones on your head is never preferable to a light pair and the earcup padding whilst comfortable just isn’t as good at creating a seal compared to what you’ll find on the xm4 and 700.
Apple airpods max VS Sony XM4 (Battery):-
When it comes to battery life in round three things are pretty simple until we get to the airpods max at the end and it becomes really confusing during my testing the airpods max promised 20 hours overall and they did just about deliver on those figures with anc on the Bose 700 managed 21 hours playback before dying a little above the 20 hours advertised believe it or not the xm4 achieved 33 hours of battery life with anc on during my testing that’s well over the 30 hours claimed so yep it’s an easy win for the xm4 when it comes to longevity offering far longer playback and offering superior quick charging speeds the airpods max should come in second place but there’s one little issue here you can’t turn them off if you were hoping you could hide that underpants case in a draw to never see it ever again think again the case is the only way you can put these into low power mode.
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| Apple airpods max VS Sony XM4 |
Which is the closest we can get to turning them off so naturally me being me i had to test this so what i did was i left the airpods max out on my desk all night connected to my iphone and not in the case and i left it there for 10 hours and when i came back in the morning they were still actively connected to my phone via Bluetooth and had dropped in battery by around 10 percent i mean what a waste of battery not just on the headphones but also on the phone it was connected to as well but perhaps worst of all putting them in the case doesn’t even prevent battery drain either because we’re not turning them off we’re just putting them into low power mode so it just slows the battery drain but thankfully putting the headphones in the case does disconnect from your connected Bluetooth device they should just power off after a period of inactivity or hopefully one day apple will figure out how to invent a power button so that puts the airpods max firmly in last place with the both coming in second place just simply by having a power button I mean what a mind-blowing feature because I think we all know that that is the best way to do it okay,
So first up we’ve got the sony xm4 there’s a lot of cars going past not particularly windy today although i say that and it’s actually become really windy suddenly so we’ve got quite a lot of background noise how is my voice over all that background noise i know these are not the best compared to the Bose 700 so how will they fare let’s listen to the Bose 700 next so you can compare with the airpods max blast hopefully saving the best until last but we will see and here’s my protest of the both 700 is it better you should be able to hear a noticeable improvement in clarity on my voice because these did fare much better when i compared the xm4 and the 700 in one of my previous articles but the big question will it be these interesting looking things i guess you’ll find out in just a sec so here’s a microphone test of the big boys the airpods max.
Apple airpods max VS Sony XM4:-
I just like to draw attention to how stupid i look with two pairs of headphones around my neck one pair one really eccentric pair on my head but the important thing here is cancer microphone quality sound because there is a lot of cars going past right now it’s not too windy at the moment does my voice sound clearer than on the 700s I’ve already checked and the difference between the xm4 and 700s is very clear that the 700s are better but will it be clear that these sound better than the 700s this is a bad look so I’m gonna get back indoors asap and let you know i think it’s pretty clear that the xm4 come in last place here with some audible crackling noises at points and an overall muffled sound the 700s come in second place with great clarity on my voice at all times and amazing background noise cancellation but the surprise first place winner is the airpods max and it is insanely good when it comes to focus on my voice if you listen closely you can hear those cars whizzing by slightly more than on the 700s plus.
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| Apple airpods max VS Sony XM4 |
Somehow those bird chirping noises somehow got picked up and massively amplified along with my voice which isn’t ideal but even still it’s undeniable that the airpods max offered superior clarity on my voice consistently when compared to the 700s and the xm4 in round five i’ll be ranking all three pairs based on overall functionality features and usability now all three contenders are sporting bluetooth 5.0 here but the xm4 are the only pair of headphones to support anything higher than sbc or aac offering the support of the ldac audio codec the xm4 and 700s also have custom equalizer settings through their respective apps allowing you to tweak the sound signature to your liking the xm4 have auto pause in play when you lift the left ear cup or remove the headphones entirely whereas the airpods max have a sensor in both earcups meaning you can lift either the left or right ear cup to pause and resume playback of course with the Bose 700,
Apple airpods max VS Sony XM4:-
There’s none of that no auto pause and play to speak of okay let’s break this next part down the xm4 have 360 reality audio and the airpods max have a spatial audio both aim to offer an immersive 3d like audio experience so what’s the difference on which is better well they sound kind of similar but they’re actually for very different purposes so with 360 reality audio on the xm4s you’ve got to remember that you can’t just use it with any audio it must be used in conjunction with special 360 audio files from streaming services like tidal or deezer however with spatial audio on the airpods max the focus is much more on article aiming to create that cinema like experience and as long as your article streaming service supports 5.1 7.1 or dolby atmos so that’s voodoo hbo go hulu amazon prime article you can use spatial audio no problem remember to note that netflix is currently not supported here and also that spatial audio doesn’t currently function when listening to music at all so whilst they might initially sound similar both are actually very different for different purposes so it’s hard to say which is actually better.
It depends on what you’re looking for there’s no hogwarts style wizardry on the 700s unfortunately the xm4 and 700s both have multi-point pairing meaning you can pair to two devices at a time and seamlessly switch between them without having to manually unpair from the first device to then connect to the second device for example now airpods macs have audio sharing which sounds kind of similar and works in a similar way but during my testing this only worked between switching from my iphone to my ipad when trying to switch between my iphone and macbook it just would not allow me to connect to both at the same time it would always kick off one device when i connected to the other one.
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| Apple airpods max VS Sony XM4 |
So clearly multi-point pairing is superior here also working with both android and apple devices unlike audio sharing another thing that the 700s and xm4 have in common is the ability to toggle between varied levels of anc whereas with the airpods max it’s either on or off you don’t have any in between which is pretty weak from a pair of 550 headphones this round is a clear win to the xm4 thanks to the support of ldac custom equalizer settings speak to chat true multi-point pairing and for having adaptive sound control which will i haven’t mentioned this already it will automatically toggle between anc and transparency mode depending on your location which is pretty damn cool the airpods max however provide literally the least functionality a pair of anc headphones could provide with spatial audio being their only real selling point here which personally i’m not going to be using all that much but let’s see how these rankings change when it comes to one of the big realms a and c so make sure you’re followed and let’s head out and do it right now noise cancelling ten okay.
Apple airpods max VS Sony XM4:-
So the xm4 were the king of anc before the airpods max came out but now they’re still the king of anc headphones compared to the 700s which did an amazing job the xm4 just managed to block out a wider range of frequencies resulting in an overall reduction of background noise volume the airpods max falls short of even coming anywhere close to the xm4 and 700s not really reducing background noise volume nearly as much demonstrated by the fact you can still so clearly hear individual cars passing by so that puts the xm4 in first place the 700s in second place and the airpods max last yet again failing to justify their high price point it’s time for the final and most important round sound quality but before we get knee deep here make sure you’re following me on my blog and twitter where we debate important i thought in terms of pure sound tuning neither of these headphones sound remotely similar when it comes to bass the xm4’s entire bass range is boosted so that’s going to give you bass with excellent punch and thump with great attack and full bodied low end rumble too on the airpods max only the low base is emphasized meaning that yeah bass sounds pretty thick and deep it just doesn’t emphasize the pulsating heartbeat and rhythm of the song quite so much on the other hand the Bose 700 have a moderate bass boost but it’s not nearly as overbearing or noticeable as it is with the other two options which some will definitely prefer the mid-range of the xm4 is also slightly emphasized which gives vocals and melodies a greater chance of being heard over that killer base the airpods max on the other hand have a very flat mid range which isn’t a bad thing on its own but it unfortunately makes vocals a little pushed back which leaves them being overshadowed on tracks with heavy bass which is far from ideal the 700s are pretty flat when it comes to mids too but as they have a less intensive bass boost.
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| Apple airpods max VS Sony XM4 |
vocals fortunately remain center stage here at all times in terms of treble the xm4 have an emphasis in low and mid treble which whilst that prevents high notes getting lost in the mix they do then lack that extra sparkle and detail that the airpods max treble undoubtedly provides the Bose 700s are fairly flat in low treble but also lacking a little in mid treble which does make elements like symbol crashes and high hat hits sound a little bit dull for casual listening there’s no denying that the xm4s still offer the most well-rounded most people-pleasing sound signature never failing to liven up any music genre with punchy bass that always gets your head nodding yet still retaining clearly audible vocals and highs at all times but of course you’ve got to remember that on the xm4 and 700s you also have the ability to completely customize their sound signature as i’ve already mentioned through custom equalizer settings this makes stock sound tuning far less important on these two headphones than if there were none to speak of which is the case for the airpods max where you’re just stuck with the sound signature that apple gave you when it comes to soundstage there’s not a lot to separate these three pairs of headphones though i feel like the sound signature on the xm4s helps to accentuate the separation of vocals and instruments when compared to the other two contenders but what about pure sound quality not sound tuning.
Apple airpods max VS Sony XM4:-
Well if we’re getting geeky about it how can the airpods max all the Bose 700s both with sbc and aac ever really beat ultra hd audio files and ldac or the xm4 they just can’t and that’s a fact not my opinion but of course you do have to be using an android device and be streaming audio from specific streaming services to make the most of this when using aac and listening to your average audio files sound quality and fidelity is otherwise very similar across the board the xm4s win the sound quality round not just because of their awesome stock sound signature but also thanks to the support of ldac allowing you to enjoy high quality audio files which is an undeniable objective win here the Bose 700 come in second place vocals first may not be the most exciting audio experience but the sound signature is yours to tweak as you please in the Bose music app and trust me a little extra bass and treble boost goes a long way for casual listening here the airpods max come in last place here with their one size fits all sound signature as i said they’re probably the best for watching movies but as i rarely watch movies or tv on my own it’s not something that I’m personally looking for so which pair are the king of anc headphones well there’s no surprise winner here you’ve seen every round for yourself yes the sony xm4 retained their title as reigning champion with superior sound quality battery life amc functionality fit and great portability mic quality is their only achilles heel otherwise they would have actually won every single round hands down i don’t know.
Why but it pains me to put the airpods max in third place i don’t know maybe it’s just the amount of money that i spent on them maybe it’s because i just had such high hopes for these but they rarely came close to even matching the top players here their design is far from practical or portable their battery life infinitely slowly drains and forces you to use their terabyte under pounce case which doesn’t even turn them off anc is incredibly weak for the price they offer extremely limited functionality outside of spatial audio if you’ll even use it you’re stuck with the stock sound signature and overall they just offer such bad value for money microphone quality is the only real thing to get excited about here but once you remember how much they cost it’s hard to drop 550 dollars just for that while sacrificing everything else that the xm4 and 700s bring to the table so yes the airpods max are basically just a glorified advert for the xm4 and at this price a real turn off which is ironic because you can’t turn them off now you’ve watched this article you definitely need to check out my comparison review of the Bose 700 and xm4 as they go head to head by clicking here or you can check out the best afc headphones by clicking over here so pick one of those and i will see you in the next article.