Pre-orders for Apple's AirPods Max 2 open today, March 25, with shipping expected in early April. The headphones cost $549 — the same price as the original AirPods Max, which launched in December 2020 and had not been updated since. The gap between generations — five years and three months — is the longest in Apple's current product lineup, and the update, while meaningful internally, is conservative externally: same design, same materials, same price, new chip. [1]

The new chip is the H2, which Apple has already deployed in the AirPods Pro 3 and which enables the features that justify the update. Active noise cancellation is 1.5 times more effective than the original, according to Apple. Adaptive Audio, which blends noise cancellation and transparency mode based on environmental conditions, is now available. Conversation Awareness — the feature that lowers audio volume when the wearer speaks — arrives on the Max for the first time. And the headphones now support Personalized Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking, which adjusts the soundstage based on the listener's head position relative to the audio source. [2]

The missing feature is more notable than anything included. The AirPods Max 2 do not support lossless audio over a wired connection, a limitation that audiophile communities have criticized since the original model launched with a Lightning cable that could not transmit Apple's own lossless codec. The Max 2 ships with USB-C — an improvement over Lightning — but the codec limitation persists. At $549, the headphones remain a premium product competing against Sony's WH-1000XM5 ($348) and Bose's QuietComfort Ultra ($429) with a price advantage held by neither. [3]

The broader context is Apple's March. The company has announced eight new products this month: iPhone 17e, MacBook Air with M5 chip, MacBook Neo (an entirely new laptop line), iPad Air with M4 chip, MacBook Pro updates, and now the AirPods Max 2. The blitz is unprecedented. Apple traditionally stages one or two product events per quarter, choreographed with the precision of a keynote. This March has felt less like a product cycle and more like a clearinghouse — as if the company decided to ship everything that was ready at once. [4]

For the AirPods Max 2 specifically, the question is whether the H2 chip and improved noise cancellation are sufficient to justify a purchase for owners of the original. The answer is probably no for existing owners and probably yes for anyone who has been waiting. The Max 2 are what the original should have been at launch: Apple's current audio chip, USB-C, and the software features that define the AirPods ecosystem. That they arrive five years late, at the same price, with the same aluminum-and-steel design, is less a failure of innovation than a confession that the original got the hardware right and the internals wrong. [4]

Pre-orders are available at apple.com in midnight, starlight, orange, purple, and blue.

-- DAVID CHEN, Beijing