Teardown confirms USB-C and Lightning AirPods Max have the same internals
A teardown analysis confirms there are no major internal changes between Apple’s new USB-C AirPods Max and the discontinued Lightning-based model.
Repair wizards over at iFixit have taken apart Apple’s revised AirPods Max announced in September 2024 alongside two new AirPods 4 models and AirPods Pro 2. The teardown analysis confirms what we’ve suspected: After nearly four years, Apple only swapped Lightning with USB-C and made new colors.
“Compared to the first version of the AirPods Max, there’s not much different here,” iFixit notes. “Other than the obvious USB-C swap, the internals look nearly identical. There are some visible tweaks to the board housing the charge port, but otherwise, nothing appears to have changed.”
USB-C and Lightning AirPods Max have the same hardware
The $550 over-ear headphones “are bordering on repairable,” the repair site says, giving them a 6 out of 10 on its repairability scale thanks to “a relatively easy disassembly process.” Aside from USB-C charging, the revised AirPods Max now come in midnight, starlight, blue, purple and orange color finishes while the previous color options are no longer available.
We think the AirPods Max are a terrible value unless you really want premium over-ear Apple headphones and don’t care about the latest features such as Adaptive Audio, Voice Isolation, Adaptive Noise Control and Personalized Volume.
These headphones are stuck with Apple’s first headphone chip, the H1, which doesn’t have enough processing power for the latest computational audio features. Most of Apple’s audio features in iOS 17 and iOS 18 require its H2 chip, which powers the AirPods Pro and AirPods 4.
AirPods 4 teardown
iFixit also tore apart the new AirPods 4, finding no major internal differences from the previous AirPods 3 besides the H2 chip powering the latest earbuds.
Like prior AirPods, the new AirPods 4 (with or without active noise cancellation) are a “nightmare to take apart,” so iFixit gave them a repairability score of 0 out of 10. According to iFixit, the AirPods 4 charging case has a 345 mAh battery, the same as the AirPods 3 charging case.
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2024/10/02/usb-c-airpods-max-teardown-ifixit/
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