Amazon’s October Prime Day is in the rearview mirror, but that doesn’t mean you have to wait until Black Friday and Cyber Monday to score a deal. Case in point, Apple’s AirPods Max (USB-C) are still available for $429.99 ($120 off), at Amazon, Best Buy, and Walmart, which is their lowest price since July.
Apple’s latest over-ear headphones have a USB-C port, but the internal hardware and design are otherwise unchanged since they debuted in late 2020. The headphones received an update in March that added 24-bit, 48Hz lossless audio playback if you connect them to a source using the included USB-C to USB-C cable or a $39 USB-C to 3.5mm audio cable. Streaming services — including Spotify — have introduced lossless audio streaming, so you can take advantage of the feature even if you’re not sitting on a hard drive full of FLACs.
If you primarily use Apple’s gear, the AirPods Max fit neatly into its ecosystem. They’ll pair to your iPhone for the first time just by being near one another—no futzing with the Bluetooth menu necessary—and let you easily move from listening to audio on one device to another. You can use the AirPods Max with non-Apple devices, but they’ll work just like a normal pair of Bluetooth headphones.
The AirPods Max are made from premium materials: aluminum, steel, and fabric, which makes them stand out from the plastic used by Sony and Bose on their high-end headphones. Those materials are heavier however, so keep that in mind if over-ear headphones have felt uncomfortable to wear. That said, our reviewer found the headphones’ comfort to be “top notch.”
The AirPods Max sounded great in our original tests a few years ago, but its competitors have had years to catch up. Still, the headphones have a well-balanced sound, and you shouldn’t hear distortion when listening to music even when the volume is cranked up. Apple’s H1 chip will adjust the headphones’ EQ based on the seal around your ear, so the audio should be consistent. Read our review.
Pokemon Legends: Z-A is only one week away from launch, and while trailers and its news cycle stopped a while ago, the datamine "season" has now officially begun, thanks to the game's pre-load on the Nintendo store and a few copies in the wild. Unlike leaks, which can be volatile if the sources are not trustworthy or things change internally before launch, datamining is mostly very accurate because it takes information from the game's code. At the time of the so-called TeraLeak, everything pointed to 26 new Mega Evolutions in Pokemon Legends: Z-A, with Mega Zeraora being the 27th and allegedly scrapped. Now, a reliable dataminer by the name of Kaphotics on Twitter, who has provided a lot of data regarding Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, confirmed that data for Mega Zeraora is in the game, and also for Mega Darkrai and Mega Heatran.
Nintendo revealed three SNES games are arriving on Nintendo Switch Online today, headlined by a Mario game that was previously only available in Japan.
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