Comment by ex-aws-dude
14 hours ago
I don't understand how a pair of headphones can be $549 meanwhile the Macbook Neo is $599
The pricing on these always seemed a bit crazy to me, like the value is way off compared to other Apple products
14 hours ago
I don't understand how a pair of headphones can be $549 meanwhile the Macbook Neo is $599
The pricing on these always seemed a bit crazy to me, like the value is way off compared to other Apple products
Peripheral tech must have absurdly lucrative margins. I see it in my niche interests too. Cycling or golf gps are like hundreds of dollars. They are the same products they were 15 years ago: cheap lcd screen with a cheap gps radio and some severely underpowered cpu with noticable input lag. Designed to fall apart in a few years. Still same prices they always were, maybe they get away adding another $50 a year to the price on occasion. It is like they hit their price point and margin number and are perfectly happy making probably >60% markup on us who have no option otherwise. Yes we could potentially order prototypes trivially for cents a unit from same places in china the first party manufacturers go to, but minimum order is probably 1000 units.
That is literally the sole moat of these companies: minimum orders from china and the fact we can't spend the ad money they can to move that volume quickly. Not tech or offering a good deal. Just being there already with money and doing the inevitable. Being the more productive drug dealer quicker to move the kilo to the captured audience and bankrolled to get the next several and scale.
For cycling tech, if you're outside the US, check out Chinese manufacturers like iGPSport and Magene.
Picked up a spider-based power meter for around £290 and a big computer for £150. Both are great, and work just as well as their western counterparts costing significantly more.
Inflation calculator site says 45% inflation since 2011, USD.
How about moores law?
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Isn't this pricing pretty in line with other high end ANC headphones?
e.g. Bowers & Wilkins PX8 ($699), Focal Bathys ($849), Sony WH-1000XM6 ($399), Kef Mu7 ($399), Bose QC Ultra ($449)
That's not what they were saying and the same can be said for those listed. But that they can cost the same as a Macbook Neo which arguably has significantly more technology in it.
A Moto G also has more technology than a Nakajima WPT-160 typewriter (which is still in production) but the latter costs more. Comparing "technology for the buck" across totally different kinds of products and markets sometimes just doesn't make any sense.
First off, $150 more isn't a small amount to be considered "in-line" with the others. That's roughly 40% more.
The difference is also Apple neither has the audio legacy of those companies nor the quality of those products to warrant that kind of premium. To Apple, it is just another market they can go after, but a lot of those companies built their entire foundations on audio. You are not going to convince me Apple is in the same category as the company that invented the Walkman and CDs.
Also, if you look into the teardown videos, it's really a cheap driver from China - all plastic, not even using aluminium for the basket, just literally hard-glued onto the body. It's not repairable nor eco-friendly. It's anti-consumer. Sony uses Aluminium housing for their drivers and they are the cheapest in the lot.
Weird response. He said "I don't understand how a pair of headphones can be $549" and you responded "here are some headphones that are priced at $549".
Yeah. We know. It's just hard to understand how anyone can value headphones at this price. It's lunacy.
It costs that much because people are willing to pay more for better sound, better noise cancelling, etc, even if the returns are diminishing. Perhaps a $500 pair of headphones only sounds 3% better than a $200 pair. But people will still shell out for better headphones. Sometimes they just think it is better even if it isn't actually measurably better. The existence of numerous successful products on the market is evidence that this is a niche where people are willing to pay for such products.
It's kinda like, who decided that TVs and phones should cost the same? Or who decided that a khinkali should cost 3 times as much as a xiaolongbao?
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How much is your house worth? Whatever someone is willing to pay for it today. That's it. There's no right price. If they can cover costs and make a profit (or better yet a huge profit), then they're pricing it right. Sure, it doesn't work for you. It doesn't work for me either, which is why I don't have a pair. But they seem to be profitable, so there are enough people out there that want them. I just got off a plane a couple days ago and three people within one row around me each had AirPods Max on. Go figure. They're the new status symbol, I guess.
My Sony XM3's still going something like 8 years now. Incredible value.
I have a lot of Apple gear, these would be obvious next choice because of integration, but I struggle to justify why otherwise. They heavy, going to pain to repair and cost much more.
I mean, if we're talking any pair of headphones... a good Television certainly costs more than that, why should good sound be less worthy if investment?
Or Sennheiser momentum 4, 150 bucks and sound at least as good if not better, have absolutely huge battery compared to tiny apple one, more comfortable and generally work much better with non-apple ecosystem (also apparently they support multi-device pairing but I haven't used that one).
Don't pay the novelty price shortly after release, these go down quite a bit after introduction, ie last year Sony are basically the same device.
> Sennheiser momentum 4, 150 bucks
Where do you see these at 150? Lowest I see is 250.
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Sony actually listened and made the cups foldable again though
a link?
Different target markets. Audiophiles and wealth exhibitionists are much more willing to pay the large amount
Doubt audiophiles are really the target for the AirPods Max.
I'm a slight audiophile, enough to own a Schitt stack and lower-end planar magnetics, overall cost would be slightly more than the AirPods Max 2. I did try the previous generation and walked away with no emotional response either way to the quality of the sound.
The Apple tax makes me extremely skeptical that I would get $500+ worth of sound quality, however ANC upsets that equation quite a bit. For around the same cost I could get a much better set of DAC+Amp+Headphones but it would sound objectively worse in a noisy environment.
You also can't experience true lossless on any bluetooth audio output device, for what that's worth (many "true" audiophiles would fail an A/B test for AAC).
The previous generation were also REALLY bassy, and there's nothing wrong with that, bassy headphones are how to make things sound "fun" and that's why the likes of Beats make so much money. That categorically makes it not audiophile, though, because it just takes an EQ/pre-amp to achieve the same effect (which can be toggled on and off).
Ultimately, my most basic issue with these is that if you're willing to blow 500 bucks on headphones, then going modular (DAC+Amp+Headphones) will give you more room to explore something that you apparently really enjoy.
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As a (sane) audiophile, I happily use Apple devices for enjoyable listening. Their headphones have amazing clarity and soundstage for their size. If you keep in mind that AirPods are calibrated to your ears with your iPhone's FaceID camera, they provide nice, tailored sound.
I also have nice, but not over the top equipment. Yes, some of them sound nicer and more detailed (you can't compare large, 100W/channel bookshelf speakers with headphones, can you?), but for getting 95% of what they provide without any effort is pretty worth it.
Last, but not the least, Apple used Wolfson DACs in their iPods for most of their lifetime. Their replacement DACs are not worse than the Wolfsons, but probably even better.
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The AirPods lineup is actually reasonably popular on audiophile forums.
Sennheiser HD 800 S is $1700 and has been around for years. Or the Meze Elite Tungsten at $4,000 - if Apple can get 80/90% of the way there at $549, they'd be a steal for the right customer.
You can't compare wired and open back design with Bluetooth headphones.
Anyway, I own a Meze 109 pro, and cheap iems with 3M hearing protection that I use when my commute is too noisy. Replace nicely my old ANC headphones.
> cheap items with 3M hearing protection
Can I ask which, please?
The quality x price curve is not linear. Expensive materials and engineering often produce only incremental quality improvements, if any. Sometimes the improvements are only cosmetic. So Apple's headphones would need to be a lot closer to the best of the best than 80-90% in order to justify their price.
The feature that applies a hearing test as an equalizer setting make the APM sound pretty damn good, so much so it ended my 20 year long headphone-collecting hobby.
Before hearing-tuned EQ became a thing, trying headphones was like trying food. No matter what someone else said it was no guarantee you'd like the sound. Conversely, you might find a cheap pair that sounded spectacular to you. The APM will sound very good to just about anyone, with the hearing test EQ applied.
I think every headphone maker (or better yet, DAC maker) should have this feature. Audiophiles are often old, a hearing test EQ can make them hear music like they're 20 again, and they'll pay for it.
Just buy the good ol' HD-600, or some sealed cans, or whatever fits your head the best and use an eq profile from AutoEq.
As said, different markets. If you look from the same perspective, the last iPhone I ordered is 3x the price of a last generation MacBook Air.
$549 is pretty reasonable if the headphone has the sound detail it's advertising. Given how AirPods Gen 3 sounds, I'm sure that thing sounds pretty amazing.
You’re comparing their top-end luxury product from one category to their entry-level basic product from another category.
Premium products usually have higher margins.
Exactly.
If you want Apple-quality headphones to go with your MacBook Neo, the USB-C Earpods are $19:
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/myqy3am/a/earpods-usb-c
I've struggled to understand how Loop earplugs cost $25+ when you can get actual music-playing earphones for less than $10.
One is a fashion item, another is an education focussed laptop. People will pay a lot of money for how things look.
You should see the price of noise cancelling aviation headsets. Bose are killing it.
Price and quantity go in pairs.
As long as a pair exists on the demand curve, Apple can charge that price.
And _STILL_ the Sony MDR's are still ~$100.
It does look strange when you compare it directly to a MacBook, but headphones are a weird category
Same could be said about the Vision Pro, much pricier than their mass market alternatives, while being in-line with high end professional gear.
a lot of non apple headphones cost more... and many don't even sound better...
Well, in the market segment of Bluetooth ANC headphones, there's not that much. Bowers & Wilkins and Focal come to mind, both audiophile luxury brands and similarily overpriced.
On the other hand, the flagship Sony is quite a bit less than AirPods Max.
Doesn’t Sony have the best codec on Bluetooth? It definitely has worse noise cancellation than my AirPod, but afaik it should have better audio quality on paper.
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There are many. QCY makes a pair for ~$50, I think there are some other Chinese brands too. You really are paying for the brand.
You do, you just don't want to admit it because you think it may make you look ridiculous, but your intuition is correct - Apple sells tech jewelry.
Every single one of their products is overpriced to appear premium.