I did not expect to love the AirPods Max 2 so much, upon testing them. Nobody is more surprised than me that I chose Apple‘s new over-ears for Headphones of the Year at the TechRadar Product of the Year Awards 2026.
Bowers & Wilkins has won this award the last few years, and I even hovered over the excellent five-star HEDD HEDDPhones D1 for a moment. But despite being trailblazing cans from a pioneering new audio outfit (and for some, that will fit the bill perfectly) the D1 are open-back, wired, passive beasts. And the thing is, AirPods Max 2 just do so much more for the money.
Even though you, the readers, also voted the AirPods Max 2 for this award in our TechRadar Readers’ Choice Awards 2026, I’m certain there will still be some cries of discontentment about this. ‘Wait, so Apple’s AirPods Max 2, the set that look almost identical to the 2020 originals, and have lower battery life than any of the competition, and have no wireless hi-res codecs (and the wired lossless support also came to first-gen model anyway), and that still come with the weird headphone bra case, those won?’
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Yes. Yes really. And if you give me a few minutes, I’m going to explain why. That said, if you still want to comment below, I’m all ears.
Yes, AirPods Max 2 look similar to their 7-year-old siblings — they’re just that good
OK, so the lossless stuff with a wired connection isn’t new, and neither is the look of the things. But what has changed with these March 2026 issue cans is the inclusion of a new H2 chip and all of its computational wizardry. And this makes them punchier sonically, ups the ANC efficacy significantly (and it wasn’t at all bad beforehand, remember), and adds new perks such as Live Translation, Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness, Head Gesture control and the Camera Remote feature.
The one caveat is that some features require an iPhone 15 Pro or newer. Android owner? This isn’t your day I’m afraid, and I’m sorry about that — your closest pick would be last September’s Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (Gen 2).
But the box-fresh Apple Intelligence features genuinely make for an excellent, full-throttle music and call-handling experience that does everything you need and does it with minimal fuss, app consultations, screen taps or button pushing.
For me, the right way to go about Apple’s incredible implementation of ANC here is to deploy both noise cancellation and the Conversation Awareness toggle, which you’ll find with a tap of the AirPods Max bubble near the top of the settings tab on your iPhone, or by swiping down from the top-right of your screen, to get the Control Center.
What it means is that by default, you will not be interrupted, but when you speak up, music is automatically lowered and external noises are piped in as you need them. And I’m mentioning this specifically because so many rival headphones aim to offer this (ie. a cocoon of silence as a backdrop for your music, but with a decent bit of software that kicks in when you speak to take it all away and pipe ambient sound in) and don’t get anywhere near achieving what Apple has done.
OK so it’s not groundbreaking. But it is so, so good in your everyday work life — I implore you to try it, if you get the chance.
That said, if you take just one thing away from this particular feature let it be that the claim in the marketing release is true: the noise-cancellation in AirPods Max 2 really is 1.5 times better than before. It’s outstanding.
These headphones are almost deviously, head-shakingly good at isolating and melting away the noise from my surroundings, but without the wind-tunnel effect or pressure sensation I have occasionally found disconcerting or nauseating in other cans — the handful that offer ANC anywhere near this effective, at any rate.
I maintain that for emotive music or movies using Apple’s special (and decidedly specific) brand of head-tracked Spatial Audio with a backdrop of near-silence wherever I tested them, Apple’s AirPods Max 2 went straight to the top of a big pile.
Did I mention how comfortable they are? So many headphones start to dig in across the top of my head. That never happens with Apple’s slightly odd-looking but delightfully nonrestrictive mesh headband.
Simply put, they’re the headphones I started reaching for on the daily since I acquired them in March of this year, and they’re still the set I reach for now. I didn’t think this would happen, but it would be wrong of me to deny it, all the same.
Despite several other new releases resting on my desk at any given moment, it’s the AirPods Max 2 I always go for when the working day is done. And I was taught a long time ago that this can only mean they’re the best product you’ve currently got — we cannot argue with our own subliminal preference. I mean, that is as long as they haven’t run out of battery…
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becky.scarrott@futurenet.com (Becky Scarrott)
