Here Sorry if I missed something but please clarify me. Varchar mean variable length character and when the length of a character is not defined then we should use varchar.

Now if I have to create a tablewith a column with varchar datatype, should I take varchar(n) or varchar(max) ? All I have read till now shows the difference with max length of the column. Say If I have the column length with max at around 400-500, what will be the downside of using varchar(max) ?