I was wrong about the AirPods Max Smart Case

Here I am at 10:38 PM, having only gotten home a short while ago and scrambling to find something that I can write about quickly for Blaugust today, but something still worthwhile. I don’t want to just phone it in. So I went scrolling through my many many many items in Drafts that I’ve tagged as potential blog post ideas. Tonight you get to hear about how I actually don’t hate the AirPods Max case.

I’ve had a pair of AirPods Max for 3 or 4 years now. However long they’ve been out since I picked them up shortly after launch. They’re certainly the best sounding headphones I’ve ever had, but I can’t call them my favorite headphones of all time. The weight and shape are both just a bit large for my head, and I’ve never been able to fully get used to that. But I’m not here to talk about the AirPods Max themselves — that’s a post for another day. No, I want to talk about the case for the headphones that shipped in the box with them. Yes, that one. The outright derided and eagerly mocked, “brassiere-shaped” bit of silicone-like Smart Case. (Which I only remembered by looking this up that it’s called the ‘Smart Case’.)

When it first came out, nobody seemed to like the Smart Case — me included. It felt kind cheap for such expensive headphones, only covered the ear cups, and (since the headphones don’t fold up in any way) didn’t reduce the size of the headphones for travel. I thought my primary use of the case would be to protect my costly purchase when on the go, and this one only covered a portion of them, for crying out loud. I almost immediately splurged on a Waterfield case that at least protected the whole widget, and looked and felt good while doing so.

But in the years since, I’ve used that Waterfield case less and less. I just don’t tend to bring my AirPods Max on many trips and that case is overkill for around the home. But you know what case does a great job around the home and for local travel? The flippin’ one that came with it! It provides casual protection for the more fragile and critical ear cups, while leaving the connector band exposed, perfect for grabbing as a handle!

Some other things I’ve come to like about the case include how easy it is to slide the AirPods Max in and out. There’s no zipper to fiddle with, just a simple magnetic flap (naturally) that holds the case around those earcups. And, despite a brief controversy shortly after launch regarding the AirPods Max battery life (people were finding that they didn’t go into sleep more reliably or quickly enough so the headphones were constantly out of charge), nowadays the battery life seems to be a total non-issue. After a firmware update that adjusted how quickly and to what degree the AirPods Max fell into a power-saving sleep mode. Chief among those triggers for sleep mode is when the headphones are slid into that case with its particular magnet arrangement. If the AirPods Max are in the case, you’re obviously not using them, so it’s ideal to have them power down. It’s essentially solved the battery issues that I was facing.

These days, I think rather fondly of the AirPods Max case. And I’m happy to admit that my negative first opinion has proven out to be wrong. If there were just one thing that annoys me still today is that it’s not obvious enough which way the case goes on. I know to match up the charging port with its cutout on the case, but I do it the wrong way often enough that I think Apple should have made it more apparent. Otherwise, I’m quite satisfied with that funky thing.

---

This is post #6/31 for Blaugust 2024.

Blaugust Reviews