OK I did it, I bought the $37 AirPods Max dupes –and I’m absolutely fuming

C’mon, you’ve wondered about this too, right? I can’t be the only one. I mean, what if the dupes are just as good, for less than a tenth of the price? I see enough people wearing them every day to at least make me consider the notion.

What if the folk who made the 2020-release Apple AirPods Max have moved on, and agreed to impart their wisdom upon someone else? Someone with, say, a convenient production line and possibly even offering a bigger cut?

After all, AirPods Max are no spring chickens these days. Despite still being top-of-the-range at Apple Park in 2025 (and still sitting pretty in our best over-ear headphones guide even after all this time), very little has changed in the five years since their release. Apart from some USB-C audio software, the now-mandatory USB-C port and a few new finishes, it’s a case of ‘not broke, no need to fix it’ from the Cupertino giants.

So, in the five long years since their release, who’s to say that they haven’t been successfully cloned for much (much) less than Apple prices?

Wentronic YO1 (AirPods Max dupe) headphones in blue with AirPods Max nearby to compare and contrast their looks, outside on a sunny day — (Image credit: Future)

The $37 question: are we wasting money and has Wentronic got this?

I decided to find out. Hit up Amazon and there are (let’s call them what they are) several bare-faced AirPods Max dupe options available.

My $37 / £29 purchase isn’t even the cheapest choice listed(!), but it is the cheapest option I found available in blue, a hue closest to my purple AirPods Max (seen in the following images).

First impressions: the build

Ready for a quick game of spot the difference? Say you were looking at me from 50 meters away, you might have a hard time deciding whether I’m wearing legit AirPods Max or a copycat set, and I get that there’s value in that for some people.

However, while the Max’s trademark almost-oblong ear cups are a nice enough silky-smooth finish and boast almost identical measurements on the Wentronic option, there’s a seam running around the cups of the Wentronics that cuts through the buttons and ports, making the build feel flimsy. Gone is the silent silicone headband with the bouncy mesh across the crown, in favor or a more traditional padded band, with noisy extension arms.

It’s here, on the rotation mechanism, that you’ll find indicators for the left or right ear cup (rather than in the stitching inside the cups of the originals), which makes you realise that although the rotary crown button has been attempted here, it’s on the left ear cup rather than the right. Padding? Different; thicker and described as “soft protein” rather than the AirPods Max’s memory foam and woven fabric design. Mic placement? Different again – and hard to deduce because they’re tiny pinholes on the Wentronic, rather than notable, mesh-covered pill-shaped solutions on the Max.

It’s not all bad news though: on this left ear cup you’ll find a power button, in between two other physical buttons, plus a 3.5mm port beside the USB-C charger – things the originals don’t have that many wish they did. You even get a 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable in the box and I tried it with power off. Yup, these headphones work as passive wired cans! There’s no USB-C passthrough (the bundled USB-C to USB-A cable is just for charging; I also tried using my AirPods Max USB-C to USB-C cable and no joy).

Also, while the headband feels cheap and its visible screws will no doubt collect grime over time, unlike AirPods Max the ear cups actually fold up into the headband here for easier transportation – although there’s no case supplied and no ‘headphone bra’ to copy Apple’s either (which absolutely nobody will miss).

The pairing process and setup

Obviously there’s no H1 chip here (Apple doesn’t give those away) so you’re not getting any Apple ecosystem perks – don’t expect an image to appear on your phone asking to pair and configure, and there’s no companion app here to make up for it. Nevertheless, pairing to my iPhone works just fine and the Bluetooth 5.3 chip does its job to maintain connectivity throughout my listening.

A female voice prompt registers a press of the crown button to scroll between ANC on and off, or to access Siri on my iPhone, and the three other buttons on the outside edge of the left ear cup work to pause, play, skip forward or back and alter volume – if you long-press the top or bottom of the three. But that crown button does not actually rotate here, so you’re not getting volume tweaks in the same way as with AirPods Max. Yes, that watch-style button could’ve just been a button – it’s kind of just for show in the Wentronic headphones.

Although the headband starts to bore in just a little over longer listening sessions and the clamping force feels odd, like it’s pushing down to my jaw rather than over my ears (they’re a little big, honestly), overall it’s not a bad build quality, and the few differences over AirPods Max are often welcome.

So how do they sound? Not so positive here I’m afraid…

Sounding board (or more pertinently, sounding bored)

The best that can be said about the noise cancellation here is that the Y01’s passive noise nixing isn’t bad, despite the bizarre-feeling clamping force. The active noise cancelling performance is subtle at best and limited to ‘on’ or ‘off’ – there’s no transparency mode.

Call handling is very poor, with callers too quiet even with the volume maxed out, and call recipients saying I sounded “very muffled, then occasionally less muffled but very tinny”.

And the sound? Well, they do make sound and they are able to stream my playlists, so if that does the job for you for $37 / £29 and the aesthetic is what you want, they deliver. And actually, the stereo imaging isn’t bad in very pared back, conversational or acoustic tracks. But let me be clear: the audio overall is often crackly through the treble, bloated through the bass and overwhelmingly flat dynamically.

Stream Bryan Ferry’s Sensation and it’s immediately apparent when switching between the AirPods Max and the Wentronic Y01 which outperforms the other for energy and cohesive timing across the frequencies. I know AirPods Max should annihilate these cheap alternatives given the massive price difference, but it’s enough to make me irritated here.

My advice? Don’t be fooled

We’re often encouraged to believe certain consumer goods are a genuine bargain – the real deal masquerading in a cheaper form factor. You’ve likely heard that a Skoda Fabia is essentially a Volkswagen Golf in different dress; L’Oreal makeup is made in the same factories as Giorgio Armani; dupe perfumes smell just as good as the designer brands minus the fancy bottle price and slick marketing. I could go on.

Whether or not these water-cooler type conversations actually hold water is not what I’m here to prove. What I want you to know that while every effort has been made here to make the Wentronic Y01 look like a set of AirPods Max, that is the sum total of the effort. These headphones do not sound good. And it makes me angry because love or loathe their eccentric looks, everything about Apple’s AirPods Max is the hard-won result of meticulous testing and research, with the sole aim of making a set of wireless over-ears sound incredible – albeit in 2020. So, the Wentronic Y01 do feel like a big misrepresentation of that good work.

I would urge you to pay just a few dollars more for the Sony WH-CH520 – or in fact anything from our best cheap headphones roundup and get vastly superior audio. I really would like you to know this, because I think a set of headphones should be an audio device first, and a wearable accessory second.