Of course you don't need to spend $500 to buy headphones that do their job. There are plenty of great headphones to buy. For me, I have some beats flex which are great for small portable phones which also are well integrated with the Apple devices. Before them, I had some nice Sennheiser wired phones.
The promise of the Airpods Max is to be very high quality headphones, which are in that rough price range. On top of that the complete integration into the Apple universe and some nice functions like the spacial audio, which had been well received with the AirPods Pro. Which are much cheaper, if you are not aiming for the highest audio quality.
The promise of the Airpods Max is to be very high quality headphones, which are in that rough price range. On top of that the complete integration into the Apple universe and some nice functions like the spacial audio, which had been well received with the AirPods Pro. Which are much cheaper, if you are not aiming for the highest audio quality.