Demystified
What’s Apple not telling us about the AirPods Max!?
A detailed look at charging, battery life and the mysterious low power mode, with some surprises.
In typical fashion, Apple presented their high-end headphones with bold claims about the listening experience and battery life. Also in Apple’s notorious marketing spiel, it’s not entirely clear how things like charging, battery life, and the mysterious low power mode really work. And to be fair, as long as you get the claimed experience, you don’t need to care about the details. Unless you’re nerds like we are.
When we got our AirPods Max, we fell in love with the build quality, design, and seamless listening experience, but quickly realized that something is missing in the experience — a simple way to store and charge your headphones. With an elegant product like this, you don’t want to fiddle with a bra-like case all the time and tinker around with a cable. So we decided to design a charging stand ourselves. It has since been funded within 2 hours on Kickstarter is now available on www.themaxstand.com.
Since we naturally had to do our research on every aspect of charging and battery life, we needed answers to how things work in detail, and down we went the rabbit hole! So let’s look at what we found.
Charging
Other than saying that you get 1.5 hours of listening time when charging the AirPods Max for 5 minutes, Apple was pretty quiet on how long it takes to fully charge them. Since a charger is not included, people also started wondering what charger would be sufficient and if there’s any difference related to the charging time when using different ones.
Apple: “If you charge your AirPods Max for 5 minutes, you get around 1.5 hours of listening time.”
We tested a variety of different chargers with the AirPods Max. Beginning with older 5 watts and 12 watts chargers, up to the latest 18 watts iPhone and 96 watts MacBook Pro chargers as well as charging from a MacBook Pro directly.
Our test showed that there is no significant difference in how fast AirPods Max charge, no matter which of these chargers is used. This is to be expected since AirPods Max draw a maximum of around 3.2 watts according to our tests, therefore most chargers are sufficient to provide the needed power.
In the chart below you see how exactly the AirPods Max charge. From 0% to 50%, the AirPods Max draw around 3.2 watts. From 50% to 80%, the power draw is reduced to 2.3 watts. From there, the power draw is constantly reduced and curves down until they are fully charged. This way of charging helps preserve battery health for a longer overall battery life span.
The chart for the power draw suggests that Apple is probably using a typical charging method like CCCV (Constant Current Constant Voltage) or similar to quickly charge the battery to a certain point and then gently get it up to 100% to prolong the battery life.
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While the inner works are largely unknown, we can find some typical components inside the AirPods Max, for example a Tigris charging IC (TI SN2501A1). A variation of this integrated circuit has been used in various iOS devices for years. According to an article from “A One Mobiles”, this IC does more than only charging the battery. It seems to be capable of testing a variety of conditions and also decides when to power from the battery itself or using the external power source and when it’s safe to do so.
According to iFixit the battery itself consists of two cells with a total capacity of 664mAh, which fits our testing, where the total power draw was around 620mAh from fully drained to 100%.
If you leave the AirPods Max connected to power after being fully charged, they still draw around 16mA at 5.15V, which results in 0.08 watts, even when not being used, which is most likely the power draw of the internal components for managing sensors, charging and the Bluetooth connection.
To test Apple’s claim, we did charge the fully drained AirPods Max for exactly 5 minutes. This gave us 1 hour and 39 minutes of listening time, playing the Global Top 100 on Apple Music at 75% volume with active noise cancellation on. Apple lives up to its promise of 1.5 hours of listening on a quick 5-minute charge. In the chart above you can also see charging times necessary for typical use-cases based on our testing results.
Charging Summary
We were able to confirm Apple’s claim, that 5 minutes of charging gives you around 90 minutes of listening time. Also, they charge 50% in 30 minutes, to 80% in just under an hour, and a full charge took us around 2 hours. When it comes to different chargers, we saw no difference between chargers, likely because the AirPods Max only charge at a maximum of 3.2 watts. This means you don’t need to worry about which charger you’ll be using — almost any will do.
Battery Life
Apple claims that the AirPods Max will last around 20 hours under certain test conditions.
Apple: “Your AirPods Max can get up to 20 hours of listening time, talk time, or movie playback when you have Active Noise Cancellation and spatial audio turned on.”
In our test, we used fully charged AirPods Max and played the Global Top 100 playlist from Apple Music on an iPhone in a loop. We turned up the volume to 75% with active noise cancellation turned on.
The AirPods Max lasted around 22 hours, before they turned off and disconnected from the iPhone. In the chart below you can see that it took more than 1 hour to go from 100% down to 99%. While the rest of the chart shows a more linear discharge, the same behavior can be seen at the end, when it again took around 1 hour from 1% battery until they disconnected. Keep in mind, this relies on Apple’s displayed battery level and might not reflect the actual battery charge itself. The reasons for Apple deciding to display the percentage this way are up for speculation.
Even when the AirPods Max run out of battery and disconnect, you can turn them back on and get them to run for a while. In our test, we let them run out, put them in the Smart Case for about 18 hours and turned them on again, which gave us another 20 minutes of runtime until they fully stopped responding.
Battery Life Summary
Apple lives up to their claims and we measured around 22 hours of runtime vs. the 20 hours promised. As stated in the chapter before, charging them for 5 minutes also gave us 1 hour and 39 minutes of runtime, a bit over the 1 hour and 30 minutes claimed. In addition, you can usually squeeze a bit more runtime out of them after they turn off and you manually turn them on again. A nice little reserve.
Low Power Mode(s) and Battery Drain
When first launched, Apple said the AirPods Max will go into a low power mode when put into their Smart Case. This left everyone wondering how this works exactly, how much it helps to preserve battery, and if there are other ways to get them into the low power mode.
After a while Apple released a clarification, that the headphones will also go into a low power mode outside the case:
Apple: “If you set your AirPods Max down and leave them stationary for 5 minutes, they go into a low power mode to preserve battery charge. After 72 stationary hours out of the Smart Case, your AirPods Max go into a lower power mode that turns off Bluetooth and Find My to preserve battery charge further.”
Beside this they also added more details around the low power mode if the AirPods Max are put into the Smart Case:
Apple: “If you put your AirPods Max in the Smart Case when you’re not using them, they go into a low power mode immediately to preserve battery charge. After 18 hours in the Smart Case, your AirPods Max go into an ultralow power mode that turns off Bluetooth and Find My and maximizes battery life.”
We tested both — leaving the AirPods Max stationary outside the Smart Case and putting them in the case to see how much the battery will drain in comparison. When leaving the AirPods Max stationary outside the Smart Case for 12 hours, we saw a drop of 5% of displayed battery life. We also let them rest 12 hours inside the Smart Case and also saw a drop of 5%. According to Apple’s displayed battery level, although some rounding could have been applied, both setups seem to perform equally, and we didn’t see a major difference. The battery drain is roughly 1% every 2.5 hours. It remains to be seen how efficient the ultralow power mode is, which Apple claims to kick in after 72 hours outside, and 18 hours inside the Smart Case, but it’s unlikely to play a role in typical use cases.
When putting the AirPods Max in the Smart Case, they immediately go into low-power mode and disconnect the Bluetooth connection to your device. Apple claims they will also go into low power mode outside of the case after 5 minutes. We have no way to determine which power mode has been entered, but in our tests outside of the Smart Case the AirPods Max stayed connected via Bluetooth even after 5 minutes, indicating that there might be different “low power modes”. As described above there is no measurable difference in battery drain while idling inside or outside of the Smart Case though.
We saw a lot of mixed results in other reviews and tests out there, and our guess is that mileage may vary depending on a lot of factors, like temperature, firmware, connected devices, and how exactly the test is set up. Also, reports are coming up talking about massive battery drain overnight, something we didn’t experience in our tests or usage.
Battery Drain Summary
Our test showed an average battery drain of 1% every 2.5 hours independent of putting the AirPods Max in the Smart Case or leaving them stationary outside, which puts them at an estimated 1–2 weeks of pure stand-by time. Long term test will show if there’s a bigger difference when ultralow power mode kicks in after a longer time.
Triggering the Low Power Mode
Directly following the launch there was a lot of speculation about how the low power mode is activated when putting the AirPods Max in the Smart Case. Is it the orientation of the ear cups, the magnets that hold the Smart Case lid in place, or something else?
In the image above you can see how we applied a magnetic field viewing film to the Smart Case. Not surprisingly you can see two large magnets on the Smart Case body, and two on the lid to secure it when closed.
In the lower-left corner, you can see two additional magnets directly in the middle of the Smart case.
To test if these magnets are used to bring the AirPods Max into low power mode, we put two magnets close to the respective places on the earcups. As it turns out, this is exactly how the low power mode is triggered within the Smart Case, and it seems Apple has several hall sensors inside the earcups to detect this change of the magnetic field.
Triggering the Low Power Mode Summary
The low power mode is immediately triggered when putting the AirPods Max in the Smart Case, and two specific magnets are responsible for it. Leaving the AirPods Max stationary outside the Smart Case will trigger the low power mode after 5 minutes.
What about stands?
At the beginning, we mentioned that we work on a charging stand for AirPods Max, and of course we looked at the usual suspects out there to learn about the pros and cons of different stand concepts.
One aspect we realized in our tests was, that with some stands the head detection simply stays on, which means the music keeps playing, and phone calls end up on headphones you’re not actually wearing, so we ended up manually disconnecting the Bluetooth connection.
Another factor is the impact of some stands on the mesh headband and memory foam cushions. While we are not aware of any long-term tests, we recommend staying away from any stands that put pressure on them.
Above you see the different stands we tested and compared. Our stand, the Max Stand on the right, is now available on www.themaxstand.com and we think Max Stand makes the experience so much better — with easy charging, convenient storage, a minimal footprint, and beautiful display of your AirPods Max.
We hope you enjoyed reading this article and that it gave you some more detailed and interesting insights about Apple’s AirPods Max.
Thank you!
floating pixels team
