 So what is the best over-the-ear headphones? Is it the latest AirPods Max or is it the reigning champion of the Sony WH-1000, Mark Forrest? If you want my honest opinion, I think the Sonys are the winner. However, in this video, I'm gonna do a deeper dive on my reasons why and how you can choose between the two. So let's get to it. What's up, guys? It's your boy, Noah. It's your first time here. I make videos on the best tech and tips to help improve your health and productivity. If this sounds interesting to you, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. So I really wanted to see if the AirPods Max were better than the Sonys, especially with these being around double the price being at $550 versus the Sonys, which are around $278 right now on discount. And what I decided to do was actually rank both headphones on three categories. Design, functionality, as well as sound. So you can ultimately decide which headphone is best for you and the most value for your money. So let's go ahead and dive into the first category of design. From a size perspective, both of these headphones are averagely about the same size with maybe the AirPods Max being a little bit bigger. When you're looking at the Sonys, you're talking about a more high quality plastic type build with pleather interior lining on the headband as well as the ear cups. I'm not the biggest fan of these type of ear cups because of the fact that they do wear down a little bit. You're gonna have to replace sooner or later. And then from a physical button perspective, you're talking about their power button as well as their custom button, which can be used for Google Assistant, Alexa, or even cycling through the different noise cancellation modes. It also has a USB-C port right here for charging as well as a 3.5 millimeter jack for a hard wire. Now, when you look at the AirPods Max, these scream premium high quality all the way from the breathable mesh on the headband to the stainless steel telescoping arms. It has an anodized aluminum ear cups flipping over to the actual inside of the ear cups. If you're looking right here, that has a really nice plush memory foam-like material which is very soft on the ears and then they have this internal mesh inside. These are magnetic. And then from a physical button perspective, there's only really two physical buttons. As you see here, they have the digital crown which is actually pretty neat. I think this is the only other device that has a digital crown other than the Apple Watch. And then they have their noise cancellation transparency mode button here. Now, in terms of ports, they actually only have the lightning cable port. Now I'm a little disappointed in that because I like to have at least some sort of way to have a hard wire connection. And I think it's $40 to buy the adapter to make a lightning cable to 3.5 millimeter audio jack. Something that you should also think about is the portability. When it comes to the cases, you're talking about this little purse-like feature versus an actual case. So I would actually rather have a case to put in my backpack rather than this nice premium quality headphone being scratched up in my bag because all I have is a simple handle, right? Like, look at this. So the winner of the design category would go to the AirPods Max. They are a lot more high quality, very premium feeling. Now for the second category of functionality, I would say that they have very similar basic features. When looking at the AirPods Max, the main functionality sits within the digital crown as well as the noise cancellation button. For the digital crown, you can adjust the volume up or down. You can skip or rewind music. You can also activate Siri. And then for the noise cancellation button, this allows you to go in and out of transparency mode. So of course, when you're in noise cancellation mode, you can't hear anything. When you do transparency mode, you can hear the different surroundings just in case you wanna have a conversation with somebody and hear them. They also have 20 hours of listening time, whether it's watching movies, listening to music, and they have a really neat feature where if you charge it for five minutes, you can have up to an hour and a half of listening time. When you're looking at the Sony's, this is where you have a lot of control and customization. Starting off with the right ear cup where you can basically do a lot of different gestures such as swiping left or right for fast forwarding or rewinding your music. You can also swipe up or down to turn the volume up or down. It just seems like a very intuitive type of control. They also have a pretty neat speak to chat feature where if you're talking to somebody, your music will automatically either lower or stop while you're talking to somebody. In terms of battery life, it actually is a lot better than AirPods Max being at 30 hours of listening time. They also have a quick charge feature as well where if you charge it for around 10 minutes, you get around five hours of listening time. Now what I really enjoy about the functionality about the Sony's is that they have a dedicated mobile app. The endless app, you can adjust the adaptive sound control which basically detects what actions that you're doing. For example, it sees that I'm staying, but if you're transporting, you're walking, it would actually update and it will adjust the sound around you based off of what you're doing. You can also do the personalized noise canceling optimizer which ultimately kind of sees how the headphones fit on your ear and optimizes the noise cancellation based on that fit. Because you could just customize so much, the noise cancellation, there's so many different ways that you can adjust it and how it adjusts automatically. I really do think that that puts Sony at the top when it comes to functionality. For the last and final category, which is honestly probably the most important for a lot of you is the sound. I will do a live test of each just to let you know what I think. So starting off with AirPods Max, the biggest thing about these is automatically when I put them on, it already does like a noise cancellation for me. Like I can really barely hear anything right now in terms of environmental noise. Now moving to a quick movie, I'm gonna play Black Panther. Woman outside. Wow. Like I literally feel like Chad Bozeman RIP is like literally like right here and Lupita is like right here. Yeah. Like that is such an immersive experience. Like you just feel like you're in the actual movie and I love that. Like I think in terms of a media consumption, that is probably the best experience I've ever had. Now moving to the Sonys. Let's play the song. All right, so from a music perspective, I would say it's not that much different from the AirPods Max. I would say maybe the AirPods Max feel a little bit more immersive. Like I kind of feel like I was in a studio, but I think there's gonna be a big difference in the movie quality. So let me go ahead and pull up Black Panther again. Made a beat of a mess. And will there be any travel tonight to be seen? Okay. So from a movie perspective, it wasn't maybe as big of a difference than what I thought, but it is different. I would say the AirPods Max, I think it does give you that more immersive experience versus the Sonys. And I do think that the Sonys, I feel like I'm more just listening versus really just being immersed in the experience. I would say from a sound quality perspective, I would probably put the AirPods Max as the winner in this category. So you might be wanting to know, why did you say at the beginning of the video that Sony should win? Well, when you think about value, I don't think the AirPods Max do just that much more than the Sonys for double the price. I would also just say as well, when it comes to functionality, I think for me, and it might be a personal preference, but I love being able to adjust my noise cancellation to have my own personalized use of it and control of it. When you leave it to Apple, you're leaving Apple to be in control of the noise cancellation. And maybe you don't like that. I would also say that's a big deal breaker for me is the 3.5 millimeter jack. It means you could connect to your computer, you could connect to, you know, if you're doing a podcast, it just makes it a lot easier to connect to different things. Not everybody is just wireless yet. Yes, that is the future, but I would say not everybody's just wireless just yet. So my ultimate conclusion is yes, I do think the Sony WH-1000 Mark IVs are the better over the ear headphones in terms of value. Now I will say like I did enjoy using the AirPods Max, they were great, like they had amazing quality. The spatial audio was great. If you love Apple products, you're an audio file, you want the best audio experience where just you just feel like you're immersed, like you feel like you're in that Apple commercial and you also have the budget by all means, spend the 550, get the AirPods Max. So what do you think? Question of the day, AirPods Max or the Sony WH-1000 Mark IVs, which one do you think you would purchase and why? Let me know in the comments below. I hope this video was extremely helpful. If it was, go ahead and compile that like button, subscribe if you haven't already and I'll catch you guys later. You already know, embrace the hype. Woo!