There’s a lot to love about the AirPods Max. But two things that I struggle with are the lack of foldability and whether or not the audio quality lives up to the price.

On foldability: As a frequent traveler (this year aside), I value headphones you can fit in your pocket (the AirPods Pro are my constant companion) and, in the case of over ear headphones, those that can fold up into a relatively compact case, minimizing space in my suitcase or backpack.

Though the ear cups do swivel ninety degrees to reduce the height of the footprint, the headband does not fold over. Not a dealbreaker, but I am used to headphones that fold up, either into a ball, nesting the ear cups inside the band, or like the AirPods Max, turn ninety degrees, but then roll up inside the handle. As far as I can tell, the way the AirPods Max come in the box is as small a footprint as they get.

Next issue is the audio quality. Here are a few questions that I am digging into. I am not an audiophile, but if I was thinking about spending $549, these are things I’d want to wrap my head around:

• Will AirPods Max do a better job isolating me from background noise than AirPods Pro?

Surely the answer here is yes, though I will wait for the technical reviews to come in to be certain. And I’ll be looking at both noise reduction (subtracting the sound picked up by the microphones from the sound coming through the wire/Bluetooth) and leakage (sound that escapes the ear cups and might be picked up by my podcasting mic).

• Assuming AirPods Max use the AAC Bluetooth codec, are the AirPods Max as good as the highest end Bluetooth competing headphones?

I’m assuming that I’ll be listening to Apple Music on these headphones as my primary music experience. And my understanding is that AAC is the standard codec used by iPhone/Apple Music. So the max data transfer rate/cap is that of AAC, assuming I am listening via Bluetooth (I’m assuming wired listening offers me higher quality options, but I rarely plug in, I’m a Bluetooth listener).

There are a lot of articles on Bluetooth and codecs, but I found the headline linked article (H/T Saurabh Garg) particularly easy to follow. On AAC:

AAC is the audio standard for lossy digital audio compression. It also happens to be the license-free standard for YouTube, Sony’s PlayStation 3, and is preferred by Apple. If you have an Android phone, you won’t really benefit from AAC as its performance is unreliable: it’s a power-hungry codec that Android remains unprepared to handle efficiently. iPhone users do benefit from its higher-resolution playback though. It has a transfer rate cap of 250kbps, creating a file similar to that of a mid-quality MP3.

On that last phrase, “mid-quality MP3”: Will I notice the difference here, given how accustomed I am to listening to my AirPods Pro and my HomePod? Could I buy better Bluetooth headphones, of any stripe, to get better sound connecting to my iPhone?

I’ve been told that AAC is actually superior to MP3 (disagreeing with the article) and that, from an audiophile standpoint, AAC is very good. Also, Apple Music uses 256kbps. The combo of Bluetooth and AAC introduces that 250kbps cap. A very small difference, likely not noticeable.

And that “power-hungry codec” comment: Does not apply to an Apple device connecting to Apple headphones. They do the decoding in hardware, very power-efficient.

Again, I’m no audiophile. I’m eagerly waiting for reviews to come in, to get a sense of just how much Bluetooth listening bang I’d be getting for my bucks.

Per usual, if I’ve got anything wrong here, please do ping me.