Battle Royale (with Cheese): AirPods Max Vs. Cheap Headphones

Do you get what you pay for?

Joshua Beck
21 min readJun 6, 2021
Anker Soundcore Life Tune XR; Image by author.

When reviewers got their hands on AirPods Max, a lot of them did the exact same thing: they compared them to the “standard”, the headphones that people were already spending hundreds of dollars on. Sony’s XM4’s, for example. Most of them were asking the same questions, too: which sounded better? Or, more aptly, were the AirPods Max worth their high price tag?

That’s not what I’m doing here today. Not at all. I mean… what more could I possibly add to that conversation?

No, today I’ve decided to compare the AirPods Max to two of the cheapest over-ear headphones I’ve ever tried out on my head. You see, I’m not interested in finding out if the AirPods are worth spending an extra $100-$200 more; I want to find out if they are worth five times more than some good, cheap headphones.

I’m also doing this battle a little differently; I’m not going to be reviewing each of the headphones in this battle- for one thing, I’ve already reviewed the AirPods Max (which you can read here). Instead, I’m going to break it down into sections such as design, sound quality, etc., and so forth, and see how the AirPods Max compare to their cheap counterparts.

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