The Hot Five

Apple Airpods Max

Apple Airpods Max

Would you pay £549 for a pair of giant macarons?

Razer Tomahawk

A gaming PC so powerful it’ll shoot Nazis by itself

B&O Beovision Contour

A modest-sized telly with an immodest speaker array

Cambridge Melomania Touch

Buds that last 50 hours… has Cliff even made that much music?

Vodafone Neo

A watch that’s smarter than your kids (no offence)

When Apple unveiled the original Airpods, everybody laughed. Nobody’s going to be seen dead with those toothbrush heads stuck in their ears, we scoffed. But who’s laughing now? Everywhere you look these days there’s a pair of those telltale white stalks – so while the over-ear Airpods Max are a bit of an acquired taste, it’s probably wise to stifle your chuckles.

With active noise-cancellation and an H1 chip in each earcup for Adaptive EQ and Atmos-esque spatial audio, you’re not going to be wearing these on your weekly 5K; but Apple does claim their knitted mesh canopy, telescopic arms and acoustically engineered memory foam will offer an ‘uncompromising fit’, which sounds almost menacing. Battery life is a decent 20 hours, there’s a Transparency mode that uses three mics on each side to let in a little of the world around you, and they’ll automatically pause your tunes when you take them off.

The one major issue? They cost £200 more than Sony’s stupendous WH-1000XM4S, which means they’re going to have to sound better than God’s farts to be worth the extra money – otherwise those laughs are going to be louder than ever.

As hot as… lightning-bolt bottom burps £549 / apple.com