Phil's Superpower of Enthusiasm

[MSRP $350, $150 on Amazon as of 11/13/22, paid $180 in August 2022] [ Tl;dr:  These headphones are weak in their MSRP range, but if you get them on a substantial sale, they’re great for use cases where you want some noise cancelation and a more durable headset that won’t break your heart if you lose or break them.] Scores: Cost-agnostic: 5 out of 10 Denalis Cost-sensitive: 6 out of 10 Denalis Beats Studio3 Wireless Beats Studio3 Wireless on a new ME-themed puck Intro. I bought my first pair of Beats headphones back in … 2014? I think? I was going on a train trip to Montana, and it was supposed to take something like eleven hours. I had a pair of Bose QC25s with really good active noise cancelation (ANC), but I didn’t want to deal with a cord while I was trying to sleep on a moving train. I’d been coveting the Beats Studio Wireless for a while (my car at the time had a 10-speaker Beats by Dre sound system that I’d absolutely fallen in love with), so the train trek was all the justi...

[Tl;dr: The Apple AirPods Max are a really good set of headphones with a rich feature set, broad utility, and all-around good sound. They do have a few flaws, and they’re REALLY expensive. I probably wouldn’t pay MSRP for them right now given the other options out there, but they’re still a really well-designed and built piece of hardware that are easy for people already in the Apple ecosystem. Scores: Cost-agnostic: 8 out of 10 Denalis Cost-sensitive: 6 out of 10 Denalis.] Sound. The sound is deep and rich, with really impressive bass and sub-bass response for a headphone. It’s still weird to hear the low bass rumble clearly without feeling it in my chest, but the response is nimble and crisp, with very little lagging or blurring even during sections with rapid movement (like Massive Attack’s “Paradise Circus”). It even does a pretty good job of reproducing some intentionally-mastered splatter (like in Robert Glasper’s “Treal” (ft. Yasiin Bey)). That said, the bass is a little punchy...