I think they are worth about $350, due to the great build quality and comfort. I listened for the first time today for about 1/2 hour at my local Apple store. I was impressed with the sound, but, they're still bluetooth, with all of the lower bitrate drawbacks thereof. I did discover that, using the $35 Lightning to 3.5mm audio jack sold by apple, they can be listened to wired, plugged into a Mac headphone jack. I'm assuming this will also work with the little white lightning or usb c to 3.5mm dongle plugged into an iPhone or iPad. I'm glad Apple has provided a "backdoor" method of listening to the AirPods Max in wired mode, so that lossless listening seems to be at least theoretically possible with them, of course assuming that the headphone jack is receiving minimally a compressed lossless feed, if not uncompressed. By the way, the staff at my Apple store advised that the purchase price includes perpetual free battery service, although this sounds almost too good to be true. This at least partially justifies the high price, if true.