How it’s done
You put these on your head, we put them on the bench.
Apple Airpods Max
With a name like AirPods, we had to know: will the AirPods Max be serviceable to any degree? Or did Apple spend a good chunk of the $900 price on over-engineering them into knots?
MAJOR TECH SPECS
• Two 40 mm Apple-designed dynamic drivers
• Two colour-matched magnetic ear cushions
• Two Apple H1 chips
• Eight microphones for active noise cancellation
• Bluetooth 5.0 with support for the Apple-friendly AAC codec
KEY FINDINGS
• Along the bottom edge you’ll find a few holes, but none are the round 3.5mm kind. Instead, wired listening is handled by the Lightning port, pulling double duty for listening and charging.
• The first step in disassembly is removing the magnetic ear cushions. Underneath the ear cushions: holes! And are those screws? We’re not fighting glue yet. These are already looking like a promising departure from the rest of the AirPods we’ve previously scalpeled into submission. The less-than-good news is, they’re Pentalobe screws. Luckily we came prepared for just about any kind of screw thanks to our Marlin screwdriver set.
• Those screws got our hopes up, but they behave strangely. They turn a little way in each direction, then stop. If you forcibly remove them like we did, you’ll be rewarded with the sound of loose pieces rattling around inside the earcups – which remain sealed shut. The next round of frustration: adhesive. That’s right, releasing the locks and/or removing the screws isn’t enough. There’s no clearance at all for prying these things out by the edges – you’re going to do some damage. Since we’ve already removed the screws, we use a dental pick to hook under the screw holes and pull. Finally, we’re in! With the screws removed, the drivers flip out, revealing a pair of repair-friendly spring contacts underneath. To our relief, both cells are fastened with screws. Even better, they provide power via a single, iPhone-style pop connector – no solder here.
• Next, the logic board. There’s a unique board in each side – we extract both. Behind the two exterior slits on the lower corner of each can is a plastic air channel, which passes through to the cavity behind the driver. Presumably, this is the ventilation system that gives those drivers their distortion-free oomph at higher volumes. Hiding beneath that antenna line on the left ear cup is a big antenna. We thought this might be a counterweight, to offset the batteries in the opposite earcup – but it weighs next to nothing. The upper microphones are secured with metal brackets, screwed, and plastic-riveted into place.
• Any good headphone headband has to tilt, spin, and connect the earcups. Apple uses a wraparound flex cable in the rotating portion of the joint, with clever routing and built-in strain relief – then switches to spring contacts for the connection to the headband. Despite the joint’s complexity, you can detach the entire headband with just a SIM card removal tool or paperclip. Fully assembled, a poke in the right place compresses two tiny springs in the joint, freeing a clamp that secures the headband.
• AirPods Max Repairability Score: 6 out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair). The ear cushions attach (and detach) magnetically. The headband detaches from earcups with a poke from a paperclip or SIM card tool. Drivers and battery are secured with screws and use repair-friendly board connections. While screws are preferable to glue, the sheer number of screw types here is baffling. Pentalobe screws and adhesives guard the earcups.