The AirPods Max impressed us overall, despite its high $550 price tag, but there was one troubling weakness: in January, AirPods Max users suffered an unexpectedly large drain on the battery, with reports of batteries going from 100% to zero overnight began to emerge.

Now it appears that Apple has taken steps to correct this issue with the latest firmware update, and anecdotal reports indicate a significant improvement.

Tech writer Jason Cipriani backed this up with a tweet saying, "No fancy graphs, but I'm seeing the same thing: the latest firmware for the AirPods Max fixed battery drain."

To be clear, the battery drain issue was particularly critical due to the AirPods Max's design quirks. Instead, the AirPods Max headphones enter a low-power mode when left in place for five minutes or docked in the included Smart Case.

After prolonged periods of inactivity, the AirPods Max would go into an even more aggressive ultra-low power mode, which appeared to work well in our initial tests, although it appeared unnecessarily disruptive to users.

In addition to fixing the dreaded battery draining bug, Apple appears to have taken steps to improve stamina more generally: according to 9to5Mac's testing and code analysis, the time it takes for the AirPods Max to enter ultra-low power mode has been reduced from 18 hours to about 30 minutes. The site also found that the headphones no longer crash when connected to devices running iOS 14.5.

Unfortunately, Apple has no way to manually update the AirPods when new firmware becomes available. However, if you connect the AirPods Max to a charger and connect it to your iPhone via Bluetooth, it should update automatically.

You can check from your iPhone to see if the firmware has been updated. Head to the Settings app and find the Bluetooth menu; the AirPods Max should appear in the list of devices and press the "i" next to it. In this panel, you should see the firmware version number; if it reads 3C39, your AirPods Max is fully up-to-date.