More than a year later and at twice the price of Bose’s flagship, do the AirPods Max give you the maximum value for your money? Or do the Bose 700 still stand a chance? Let’s get into it!
Audio
When it comes to sound, these two take slightly different approaches. We will just come and say this – the Airpods Max are the better sounding set of headphones. Clearly. The detail on these things is the best we’ve tested in noise cancelling headphones. Their design gives you a good soundstage. But they are a bit boosted in the sub-bass and a bit sparkly on the higher end whereas the Bose 700 goes for a more neutral sound with also kind of a slight spike in the treble.
It was a long time coming, but with their recent update the Bose finally lets you EQ the headphones via the Bose Music app. And even though it’s a 3 band EQ, we think it’s fairly well implemented for consumer headphones without getting too geeky. The Airpods Max however don’t give you an EQ option. They have a strangely hidden ‘headphone accommodation’ settings in iOS and we choose ‘Vocal Range’ since it attenuates some of that V shape. There’s also a compressor slider to reduce the dynamic range of these headphones.
So that’s it – quite simple for the sound really. The Airpods Max are a bit more detailed and better sounding to our ears, but if you don’t like the Airpods Max sound, the Bose might be a good choice with its neutral sound. Which CAN be tweaked via the EQ that wasn’t available at launch.
🎧 Buy the Bose 700 NC: https://geni.us/BoseNCH700
🎧 Buy the AirPods Max: https://geni.us/AirpodsMax
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Active Noise Cancelling
When you actively wanna avoid people, you can turn on active noise cancelling. The best cans for the job here are the AirPods Max. They are just able to cancel out noise all across the spectrum of frequencies, simply amazing! But we all know the AirPods Max costs you an arm, a leg and probably a kidney too. The Bose gives you almost the same quality for a LOT less. It does great at noise cancelling and we highly recommend them for people who need good noise cancelling but prefer to keep their limbs and organs.
Now how’s the transparency mode? Here again the Max is better, it’s almost like wearing nothing at all. The gentle breeze on your naked…
The Bose’s transparency mode is definitely no slouch, and are really up there with the likes of the best. But if you want the best of the best, the AirPods Max is your pick.
Build & Comfort
We have the silver version on both – and although we thought highly of the Bose in terms of solid build quality.
The AirPods Max just feel more premium.. In certain areas. The solid slabs of aluminium on the ear cups are just no match for the plastic ones on the Bose. The headband on the Bose is partly made of metal which gives it a solid feel. It also has some soft silicone on either side of it to help with grip and comfort. We’ve been using it for a while, so the headband now shows some wear and tear especially around the bits that stick out from the earcups. This is probably because of the friction against the earcups every time we adjust the headband. Although the AirPods Max’s headband also has metal, it also has a canopy mesh style headband which attracts lint and feels like it might rip if you scratch your head the wrong way while wearing them.
Before we talk about comfort. It’s good to know how much they weigh. The Bose comes in at around 250g, whereas the AirPods Max weigh almost 400g! The AirPods Max is definitely playing in the heavy weights. Although visualising a boxing match might make you feel a bit uncomfortable, are they really?
Well.. yes and no. The AirPods Max aren’t the most comfortable after wearing it for a long time, but, a big butt – adjusting those yokes helps because it fixes them in place. So take some time to really adjust them so there isn’t any unnecessary downward force on those hefty aluminium earcups.
Now the Bose 700 gets mixed opinions here at DHRME. Kevin feels they clamp a bit too hard and feel it pushing down on my crown after a while. Maybe he’s ‘boos’ because he had higher expectations after their QuietComfort series or he has a valid point. But Rohan felt that they were more comfortable than the AirPods Max. Your ears, crown and overall head might be different than ours. We’d be shocked if they weren’t. So keep that in mind since your mileage may vary.
And Rohan thinks that after many hours of using the AirPods Max, the initial feeling of the heaviness disappears, especially if you adjust the yokes just right. That bra case may suck for everything else, but at least it doesn’t take away the size adjustment you make to the headphones. And if that size is right, the pressure shifts from your ears to the crown, which as we said is super comfortable.
Calling
Now sit back and get comfortable. Click HERE to listen to some microphone samples so you get to experience how they both perform in different conditions. But you know the drill: read on for our conclusion.
In quiet conditions, they’re both a good choice. But in terms of voice clarity, the AirPods Max has the cleanest microphone, meaning that there is very little distortion to the speaker’s voice. The Bose sound very good. You can hear a bit of processing to the voice but we’d prefer these for our work calls any day of the week. Except on the weekends. We live in Europe.
In noisy conditions, Bose is king. It’s able to suppress the background noise the best while voices are still clear, maintaining voice clarity. The AirPods Max do a disappointing job at eliminating background noise, making the speaker’s voice hard to hear, especially when speaking softly.
When we talk about windy conditions, the win goes back to the AirPods Max. You hear a bit of the wind but the voice was clear. On the Bose you can clearly hear the wind, but not at all angles. And the clarity is also unreliable – because of the distortion at times.
Microphone quality gets you far in life, but they’re not enough for that true ‘vakman’ life. In terms of controls you can do the basics of answering or hanging up, volume controls and switching to noise cancelling mode. The Bose one ups the AirPods Max by offering a dedicated button to mute and unmute your microphone. Very handy.
If you want to go next level ‘vakman’ headphones, get the Bose 700 UC version. UC stands for ‘Unified Communications’ and is pretty much the same set of headphones but with a USB dongle which gives you better connectivity and microphone quality on Teams or Zoom calls. We’ve not used that version before but it’s an option if you want.
Design
We don’t have to talk too much about the design, because well – you have eyes. But when it comes to that ridiculous brassiere case of the AirPods Max, it holds the cups all right, but we’re not sure if it protects them. The Bose’s protective hard shell case is just so much better. And it’s not just how the AirPods case looks, but the fact that the soft case provides almost no protection to the headbands or even parts of the cup! You’re much better off buying a third party case, and hey why not just buy the Surface 2 headphones and use their case because – you know – you can afford the AirPods Max – so you’re probably rich!
Just about the only good thing about the Max bra case is that once you make those headband adjustments, they don’t need to be changed, since it doesn’t need to be put into a case. Whereas with the Bose, you will spend those valuable seconds every time you take them out of the case. Neither of these can fold, so in terms of portability, it’s a tie.
The AirPods Max is also kinda future proof, or at least we think it is. The detachable headband, earcups and cushions point to some sort of future where you can buy colors and mix and match these. And maybe we even replace parts? Dare we say it, Apple?
We spoke about form, but design is as much about function. And the Bose has this hybrid button and touch control which we call the ‘B-spot’. You can use the B-spot and buttons to control media. It’s a very good implementation and we like the Bose’s touch surface better than others we’ve tried in the past, including the Sony WH-1000 XM4. And while Apple’s controls may not be as extensive as what you get on the Bose, man are they solid! Literally and figuratively! The Apple Watch inspired digital crown has this beautiful stepless volume control that is literally at your fingertips! So much literalness in this review! Please give us a literal like!
What the Bose also gives you is an audio cable which reeks of lack of courage, so Apple doesn’t give you one in the box. But fret not, for a measly 35 dollars you can get a lightning to 3.5mm jack to connect to your iPho… wait to a device that still has that headphone jack hole thingy. In terms of sound, we didn’t really hear a big difference with the cable. You also can’t use the Max powered off, which you can with the Bose. And of course, charging is using lightning on the Max, vs the more standard USB Type C on the Bose. Although the charging port is different, the battery life is similar on both. 20 hours with noise cancelling on. Not the best, we’ve seen a lot better.
Now let’s talk about using these with multiple devices. Those of you watching this video on a device, probably have another device that you also use to navigate your digital life. So a phone and a laptop, two phones, or a tablet… well you know what devices are. The Bose can stay connected to two of those digital things at once. And it’s easy to pause on one and play on another. A bonus is that you can also see the list of devices in the Bose app and use that to switch. And those devices can be an Apple or a non-Apple one. The AirPods Max can do the automagic switching thing with Apple devices. So you get a pop-up on whichever device is active and you can easily connect to it. This is great on paper – especially paper made by Apple. But in reality, it’s meh. Hit or miss. Worst case you can easily change the audio output manually from your Apple device and that works well.
And irrespective of which device music is playing on, if you take off the AirPods Max the audio will pause and resume when you put them back on. This is generally a common feature on most flagship headphones these days. So we’re pretty dumbstruck to see that Bose doesn’t offer this.
The Bose Music app is capable, you can use it to tweak your headphones and connect to devices like we just said. You also can tweak ANC levels and the EQ. And this is an app that’s available on Android and iOS. The AirPods Max makes you feel right at home on Apple devices, with settings baked into the operating system and custom icons when you connect to them – that sort of thing. These settings are kinda limited though and good luck with trying to tweak them beyond what the Apple Gods decide to bestow upon you. In most cases, we are fine with this. A special mention to the AirPods Max for Spatial Audio which gives you a theatre like experience with head tracking meaning the audio will feel like it’s coming from wherever your device is even when you turn your head. Pretty cool but it only works on Apple devices and on select apps like Apple TV or Netflix but not on Youtube or Amazon Prime. At least at the time of making this video. And no matter how much Apple pushes this – it’s far from being the best thing since sliced bread.
Wrap up!
So at roughly half the price of the AirPods Max, the Bose 700 looks like a steal!
Bose has nailed all the basics and they do them very well. Sound quality, noise cancelling, comfort, design, phone calls, it’s got them all. So unless you’re looking for that little bit extra to stand out in terms of design, noise cancelling or just because you happen to be stuck in that beautiful walled garden that is the Apple ecosystem. We would recommend you save your money.
You’ve been getting the max out of your money and we’ve been DHRME. Namaste!