Beats Solo Pro
The Beats Solo Pros come with a soft carrying case that looks like a big fat squat pill. It’s fine for what it is, but it’s really bare-bones – I would prefer at least a small pocket inside to hold a charging cable – and it’s very soft and squishy. It will protect your headphones for dust and scratches, but not from getting crushed by all the other junk in your bag. A slightly rigid case would have given me a little a little more peace of mind.
Sound quality
Beats have a reputation for being bass-y. ‘Bass forward’ is the charitable description. With the Solo3, Beats dialled back the bass boost a little, but it was still obvious. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the tuning of the Beats Solo Pros have more in common with the company’s Studio line. There’s no overwhelming bass at all. Of course, tracks that are bass-heavy do have the appropriate thump (at least, as smaller on-ear headphones go), but at no point does the low end crowd out the mid or high frequencies.
My headphone and speaker test playlist is comprised of all sorts of music: modern pop, hiphop, R&B, classical, 1990s rock, metal, you name it. No one genre stood out as exceptionally well represented – everything simply sounded as it should. If you won’t buy Beats headphones because you don’t like how they always boost the bass, it’s time to update your expectations.
For the size, they offer remarkable clarity and immersion. There’s just no way a pair of on-ear headphones are going to compete with the larger drivers of a really good pair of over-the-ear
headphones, or the perfect seal created by great in-ear monitors. But at this size and price, I was duly impressed by the precision and clarity on offer.
Colour me surprised that the Beats Solo Pros seem, if anything, a little quiet. I often had them turned up quite a bit further than other headphones to get equivalent volume, and could even max them out without blowing out my eardrums. There’s probably no reason for most headphones to get as loud as they do, but I wouldn’t mind a little more oomph here.
The headphones picked up on my “Hey Siri” commands just fine, though I found I had to speak up if I was on a busy city street. Call quality is excellent with the noise cancelling doing an excellent job of
drowning out the world so you can focus on the caller. The people on the other end of my call said I sounded great, though, of course, noise cancelling doesn’t work for them, so they would often hear a lot more background noise than I would.
Battery life and charging
The Beats Solo3 were renowned for their epic 40-hour battery life, and the Solo Pros continue to deliver that same longevity. But turn on noise cancelling or transparency mode and you’ll lose almost half your play time.
22 hours with noise cancelling enabled is still quite good. That’s multi-day battery life even on a long trip.
In my testing, I was able to use them for a few hours a day for about a week before I had to plug in.
Speaking of plugging in, when your headphones are nearly dead you can get three hours of play time with a 10-minute charge. I went from nearly dead to about 35 percent in half an hour, which would be enough battery to last an entire trans-continental flight with noise cancelling enabled.
Noise cancelling performance
Noise cancelling technology has come a long way from the days where you could say “there is Bose and then there’s everyone else”. Other brands have been able to deliver top-quality noise reduction and impressive sound quality at the same time, and we can add the Beats Solo Pros to that list.
On-ear headphones are always going to have a bit of a disadvantage over the sound-isolating capabilities of over-the-ear headphones or in-ear buds that create a good seal, but the noise cancelling on offer here is top notch. It successfully dulled my lawnmower and leaf blower to a quiet background whirr, and turned a screeching underground journey into a quiet, comfortable commute.
There’s no calibration step necessary (or even possible) for the ‘Pure ANC’ noise cancelling of these Beats headphones, and no way to adjust the strength of the effect. When it’s on, it’s on, and it continuously monitors outside sound and sound inside the ear cups with internal microphones, making thousands of adjustments per second. I was worried that this automatic adjustment wouldn’t give me what I wanted,
and I would miss some manual noise control. In practice, ‘it just works’ (to borrow an overused phrase). It went from in the office to a busy outdoor street, walking past a construction site, to a coffee shop interior, and then a train platform all without ever sounding wrong. The continual adjustment simply feels natural and smooth, the whole world blending into the background.
As most do most noise cancelling headphones these days, the Solo Pros have a ‘transparency mode’ that leaves noise cancelling enabled, but pulls in some of the outside environment along with it. It lets you more easily hear traffic, people talking to you, or announcements over a PA system. Such modes often make everything sound tinny and distant, but I didn’t
get that from these headphones. Transparency mode has a more natural and pleasant sound than the similar function on most other headphones I’ve tried.
Verdict
At £269, the Beats Solo Pros aren’t cheap. That’s a high price for a pair of simple on-ear, walking-around headphones and ventures into ‘serious listening cans’ territory. The Beats Solo3, with no noise cancelling and no hands-free ‘Hey Siri’ support, debuted at the same £269 price, but now cost £90 less. These sound better, have a nicer design, and active noise cancellation.
For Apple users these are especially nice. The H1 chip means hands-free Siri support, easy AirPod-style pairing to your iPhone, and syncing to other Apple devices through iCloud. For non-Apple devices, it’s just another Bluetooth headset that you have to pair manually and hold down a button on the earpiece to bring up your digital assistant. They still sound as great, but using a Lightning cable to charge will feel proprietary and annoying to those who aren’t in the Apple ecosystem.
The Beats Solo Pros don’t really do anything new. There’s no groundbreaking technology on offer here, and no brilliant new design. We’ve seen all these individual features and functions before, and the design, while nicely tweaked from the Solo3, is
still very familiar. If you’re looking to be inspired by innovation, you’ll won’t find it here. If you want very good, very simple everyday on-ear headphones to use with your iPhone, the Beats Solo Pro fits the bill nicely. Michael Simon
Specifications
• Bluetooth 4.0 • Rechargeable Lithium Ion battery • 179mm • 267g