Best Beats headphones
AirPods are an obvious choice for iPhone users, but Beats headphones might be a better alternative.
Apple has finally launched its own over-ear headphones in the form of the AirPods Max (you can read our review in iPad & iPhone User 165), but Beats headphones remain a solid choice – especially for iPhone users.
Although Beats headphones work with any Bluetooth device, many feature the great W1 and H1 chips also found in Apple AirPods, which make connecting with Apple devices easier than ever. It’s no longer the case that Beats headphones are only available to those with plenty of cash to splash either. The Beats Flex, for example, are available for under £50.
But which Beats headphones are right for you? Over the following pages, our expert reviewers test them for audio quality, fit, design, value for money and features.
1. BEATS STUDIO3 WIRELESS
Price: £299 from fave.co/3e1UjiD
It is a testament to the power of Apple that Beats headphones are now the go-to headphone choice for many an iPhone user. Bought by Apple in 2014 for £3bn, Beats are now seen on celebrities and people in the street daily by millions of people.
The Studio3 Wireless are the flagship (most expensive) model of Beats in 2021. As the name suggests, they are the third version of the headphones, adding the W1 chip from the AirPods and subtle improvements to design.
But are Beats best for everyone and all music genres? The products’ famously bass-heavy tuning is great for some tastes, but maybe not for all. We went into this review with open minds and open ears to see if the Studio3 Wireless are the over-ear headphones you should buy.
Design
You cannot mistake Beats over-ear headphones for any other brand. The overhead band is emblazoned with ‘Beats’ and each ear cup has the familiar curved lower case ‘b’ design.
The left ear houses physical buttons for volume controls and play/ pause. You can also double tap the play button to skip track or triple tap to go back. This is normal fair for inline remotes on headphones but pressing a big, clicky button quite hard on a premium headset like this feels a bit odd when touch controls could be an option. But at least the button is easy to find and works reliably.
The overear design here is extremely comfortable, even over glasses. Many on- and over-ear headphones of worse design dig in after extended listening sessions and hurt more than
they should. No such problems with the Studio3 thanks to the padded design around the ear cups that are deep enough not to squash your ears.
The headband is lined on the inside with a soft rubber that adds to the premium feel. Each side, as expected, is fully adjustable and is hinged to allow for stowing in the included carry case.
It’s slightly odd and outdated to see the headphones charge via Micro-USB. Given they are designed with iPhones and iPads in mind you would be forgiven for thinking Apple would have used Lightning or, more likely, USB-C. But in day-to-day use it isn’t an issue.
Audio quality
The Studio3 Wireless are powerful in the bass department and definitely have certain genres of music that they reproduce with better clarity than others. They are tuned to compliment electronic, dance and hip hop music especially – music with lots of bass and detail in the high end.
This means that tracks like Get Innocuous! by LCD Soundsystem, C.R.E.A.M. by Wu Tang Clan and Dr Dre’s own Still D.R.E. sound brilliant, the headphones exposing detail you simply won’t hear on cheaper cans.
Things are less impressive with guitar music. This isn’t to say the Beats aren’t still a good choice if you’re into rock, but the tuning can’t cope as well with the middle range occupied by electric guitar noise.
Nirvana’s Serve the Servants is quite muddy and flat, as the Studio3 struggles to give as full a sound as it can with synthesized instruments. The bass guitar is well produced on
Metallica’s Enter Sandman, but the headphones can’t quite cope with the thrash guitar throughout the track, over-peaking occasionally where they can normally reign in spiking frequencies with other genres.
But then Jimi Hendrix’s Voodoo Child (Slight Return) sounds great, with the often-lost bass guitar accurately separated in the mix. And acoustic guitar-led tracks like Never Going Back Again by Fleetwood Mac and Heart of Gold by Neil Young sparkle in all the right places.
This kind of criticism is nitpicking in the extreme and most listeners will overlook these slight shortcomings and may not even notice them in the first place.
The listening experience is also altered, usually for the better, by the active noise cancellation (ANC) built into the Studio3. ANC uses the mic built into the headphones to listen to the ambient noise around you. It then plays back into your ears the exact inverse signal, effectively ‘cancelling’ out background noise.
Headphones with ANC are popular among frequent flyers as it tunes out the loud hum of a plane but it’s also great in everyday use to muffle sound and allow you to enjoy the richness of the music reproduction on offer.
You can toggle ANC on and off with a double-tap of the power switch on the right ear cup. Beats quotes 22 hours of use with ANC on and an incredible 40 with it turned off. We found this promise to be pretty much bang on and only had to charge the Studio3 every four days or so throughout an intense testing period.
Beats brands its fast charging as Fast Fuel, and promises three hours of play from a ten-minute charge – also proven accurate in our testing.
If you’re out of power then you won’t be able to use ANC or Bluetooth for wireless listening, so there is a 3.5mm to 3.5mm jack cable in the box. You can plug in your the headphones and your device to continue listening and the cable has an inline remote for volume, play/pause and a mic for hands-free calling.
Compared to the similarly priced Bose QC35 II, the Studio3 lack adjustable ANC – you can only turn it on or off. But they do have voice assistant support for iOS and Android. Holding the left ear ‘b’ button down until you hear a chime will activate Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa or Bixby, whichever you phone has.
The headphones worked perfectly with every Bluetooth device we used them with, though pairing is much
simpler with an iOS device thanks to the clever W1 chip – simply turning on the headphones near an iPhone prompts them to communicate with each other. The firmware will also be updated on the headphones automatically if you’re using them with an iOS 11 device, otherwise you have to do it manually.
Verdict
The Studio3 Wireless are the most fully featured Beats headphones and can claim to be best you can buy. This also means they are the most expensive, but their RRP still undercuts similar products from Bose and Sony.
While working best with an iPhone or iPad it’s great that you could use them with any other Bluetooth device should you want to. Sound quality is close to as good as you’ll find on headphones for this price, but they may not be the ones to go for if your main musical love is loud, guitar-led rock music.
That said, it’s hard to truly fault the Studio3 and they stand out further thanks to exceptional comfort and class-leading battery life.
2. BEATS POWERBEATS (2020)
Price: £129 from fave.co/3c2Kajo Apple updated its popular Powerbeats sports wireless headphones in 2020, pitching them somewhere between the Powerbeats3 from 2016 and the current Powerbeats Pro. They offer the earbud design, H1 chip and (allegedly) audio performance of the latter at a more affordable price tag than either.
How well do they live up to this billing? Read on to find out.
Design
The Powerbeats have quite a chunky design – no slimline earbuds these. There’s a solid receiver unit on each side, with the in-ear portion projecting from one side and a large curved piece that tucks over your ear. The whole thing is finished in a single colour, either black, white or red, so we’ve lost the possibly less tasteful but sportier-seeming two-tone designs (such as black and lime-green) from the previous generation.
They stick out from your ears quite a long way, and the ear hooks push your ears forward a little too: a glance in the mirror put this reviewer in mind of the BFG.
The 2020 Powerbeats are rated IPX4 for water/sweat resistance. This very much falls into the splash resistance rather than immersion-proof end of the spectrum, but is a step up from the previous generation, which was not IP-rated at all.
The headphones receive audio wirelessly but there is a cable, designed to both keep the earpieces connected so they’re harder to lose, and to allow you to drape them around your neck if you want to look like a casual dude (or if they’ve just fallen out of your ears and you’re styling it out). This cable is not removable.
Anti-drop protection
You may have just counted two separate ways in which the Powerbeats counter the perils of gravity: a neck cable and over-ear hooks. You can add to that a very high security of fit, at least in my ears using the default buds (four
sets are included, so you ought to be able to achieve similar results). This meant that in my testing neither the cable nor the hooks had to support any weight: I’m fairly sure that the buds alone would have supported themselves in my ears quite happily, even when running.
In other words this is not just a belt-and-braces design, but belt-and-braces-and-unusually-tight-trousers. On the one hand that’s excellent news, as the chances of these things escaping the ear area are vanishingly small, but it also means you may well be living with the everyday annoyances of a neck cable and ear hooks unnecessarily.
Your feelings on this subject may differ, but I hate ear hooks, which are nearly always hard to put on and uncomfortable. In this case they’re not super-uncomfortable but they are very hard to put on, because the tightfitting earbuds themselves call for a twist to insert (exactly like the AirPods Pro) and it’s difficult to combine this with a hooking-over action.
Neck bands and cables are less of a bugbear for this reviewer, and would be my preference if presented as an alternative to the hooks. But again, this isn’t the most user-friendly example; it’s so thin and light that it doesn’t hang down properly on your neck, but instead sort of dances about and tickles it.
Beware also that you don’t apply a twist to the cable before inserting the ear buds, which is easy to do by mistake: I did so on my first run and the result was that the wire got bunched up on the right side and pulled annoyingly on my left ear, especially when turning my head to the right. Even once I worked out what had happened, I was reluctant to fix it because removing and re-inserting an earbud is a non-trivial hassle.
Controls
There’s a power button on top of the left bud – press and hold to turn on or off; hold for longer to reset, which I did once by accident, although re-pairing is very little hassle – and a volume rocker on top of the right.
The right earbud also has a play/ pause button (again, it’s a physical press-in button, not touch) built into the Beats logo on the side. This one is easy to miss: it looks exactly like the logo on the left bud, which does nothing.
The top buttons are placed rather awkwardly, and you may find, as I did, that you hit them accidentally when putting the buds on or taking them off,
since they’re where your fingers would instinctively go. At first, I kept blasting up the volume by mistake, although this became far less common as I got used to the headphones.
There are no controls on the cable, which is a change from the Powerbeats3. It was always a little inconvenient having to reach slightly behind you to get to these controls, so I can understand why they were ditched.
Ease of use
The Powerbeats feature the Apple H1 chip used in the Powerbeats Pro and both of the 2019 AirPods models. Like the W1 chip (used in the Powerbeats3 as well as the 2016 AirPods), the H1 is designed to make your life easier when setting the headphones up with an iPhone, and it was indeed a breeze.
They’re not quite as easy to set up as a pair of AirPods, because you have to press a button before they’re recognized, rather than just bringing them close to the iPhone. But it’s still a pleasingly frictionless process: a single button press followed by an on-screen tap.
The Powerbeats connect via Bluetooth and can pair with non-Apple devices too, although it won’t be quite so easy to do so.
There’s no ear detection, so you can take the Powerbeats out and the iPhone will carry on directing audio to them. I forgot this, and couldn’t work out why there was no sound when I was looking at Twitter on my iPhone hours later, but this will probably only affect forgetful people who are used to AirPods.
Audio quality
The Powerbeats offer excellent audio quality and power.
It’s our practice to always test headphones for several days as a minimum, because it often takes this long for the drivers to loosen up. This proved to be time well spent in this case, because the Powerbeats felt underpowered at first, with decent warmth and detail but little punch when tackling the bass-heavy bangers that are so key for exercise. Happily they upped their game.
Far from a weakness, bass is now the trump card. Playing One Minute to Midnight by Justice at a highish volume delivers a kinetic thump right into the brainstem. (You never get it in the pit of your stomach, but that’s not something to be expected from in-ears.) The fuzzy warmth of that track’s bassline was well presented too.
Jazz actually works well: it’s warm and rich and there’s plenty of deeper stuff to enjoy. The Powerbeats are capable of tackling the mids and high frequencies of quieter classical music too, and on one Glenn Gould recording I was able to pick up a bit of comparatively discreet humming that I hadn’t noticed before. They even made me feel like I was in the room with the speakers when listening to a podcast. But bass is what most impressed.
Noise isolation
The Powerbeats don’t feature active noise cancellation (ANC – the powered tech where headphones like the AirPods Pro monitor ambient sound and play the opposite waveform to cancel it out), but the fit is good enough that you get noticeable passive isolation. That’s simply the effect of plugging the ear canal.
It’s not as effective as ANC, but with the earbuds in, a fair bit of the outside world is blocked out. The main thing I was aware of when running was the sound of the wind, which appears to hit a pitch that pierces the insulation. But most other noise (including the chatter of children when wearing the Powerbeats indoors) was muffled.
Battery life
The Powerbeats 3 had a claimed battery life of 12 hours; one of the bigger upgrades for this generation is a claimed life of 15 hours. That’s a major jump, and justified in testing.
The very first run with the headphones lasted 41 minutes and saw them drop just 4 per cent in
battery level, from 50 per cent to 46 per cent. That would extrapolate to a full life of just over 17 hours.
Following a full charge, and playing at a variety of volumes – but mostly high enough to produce that excellent heavy bass effect – the headphones lasted 17 hours and 27 minutes before giving up the ghost.
They charge using a small (21.5cm, tip to tip) bundled Lightning/USB-A cable. This plugs into a Lightning port on the underside of the right bud.
Fast Fuel feature
The Powerbeats, like the previousgeneration models, have a quickcharge feature called Fast Fuel, designed for those who discover their headphones are out of juice just before they need to leave the house. The makers claim that a fiveminute charge will be enough for an hour of use.
They didn’t manage quite that much in testing, unfortunately: the first time they lasted 36 minutes from a five-minute charge (using the 10-watt adapter from an iPad), and the second time they lasted 46 minutes. Either way, that’s enough for a moderate run but won’t get you through a marathon.
Features
Aside from Fast Fuel, the 2020 Powerbeats support Audio Sharing, an Apple feature that lets you output the same audio from a single iPhone to two sets of headphones. This works with any H1- or W1-equipped chip, so this isn’t an upgrade on the Powerbeats3.
Thanks to the H1 chip, the 2020 ‘beats support Bluetooth 5.0 (up from 4.2 with the W1 chip) and the makers claim 30 per cent lower
latency than with the W1. The wireless connection was consistently reliable in testing. The H1 also delivers better talktime performance.
Finally, the H1 chips also means the headphones support Hey Siri. Speaking the trigger phrase out loud triggers Siri and allows you to turn up the volume, stop or start playback and similar simple actions on the headphones themselves, as well as reading messages, and so on, on the connected device. You can also press and hold the Beats button on the right earphone to trigger voice controls.
Verdict
The Powerbeats (2020) are a classy pair of Bluetooth headphones that will suit runners with a penchant for bass-heavy music. They’re good value for money, too.
They fit snugly, resulting in solid passive noise isolation and very little chance of them falling out of your ears; this is backed up by both ear hooks and a neck cable which might even be overkill, and do make the headphones difficult to put on and take off. Audio quality fulfils all the promises and the Powerbeats are particularly good at delivering that essential bass punch. But they’re not one-trick ponies, and gentler tracks were still rendered with warmth and detail.
Finally, battery life is excellent, and while Fast Fuel wasn’t quite as effective for us as the manufacturer predicted, it remains a useful option for quick-charge emergencies.
3. BEATS FLEX
Price: £49 from fave.co/3rdi3US Intended as a replacement for the earlier BeatsX, the Flex earbuds are available in four colours – Beats Black (which just looks like ordinary black, of course), Yuzu Yellow, Smoke Grey and Flame Blue – and cost just £49, which makes them the most affordable wireless headphones that Beats or Apple have ever released.
The Flex headphones aren’t ‘true wireless stereo’ (TWS) as the two little earbuds are still connected by a lightweight neckband that drapes over the back of your neck. However, many people prefer a neckband design – rather than the completely wireless design of Apple’s AirPods – as it’s easier to avoid losing them.
Design
Despite the low price, the Flex is a classy little package, starting with the elegant origami-like cardboard packaging, which has the instructions
printed on the outside and then unfolds to reveal the headphones and accessories neatly wrapped up in separate compartments.
The earbuds are extremely light, weighing just 18.6g, so you’ll barely notice them when you’re out and about. The neckband is made out of a sturdy material called Nitinol, and the two earbuds cling together magnetically when you take them out of your ears and hang them around your neck, so you never have to worry about losing them.
As you’d expect, getting started is really simple if you’re already in the Apple ecosystem: you simply press the Power button on the right-hand side of the neckband to automatically pair with any nearby iPhone or iPad that’s unlocked and has Bluetooth activated. You can control the headphones with your mobile devices, as you’d expect, but there’s also a second control module on the left-hand side of the neckband that provides volume and playback controls, and a mic for voice calls, all within easy reach.
Once you’ve paired the Flex with an iPhone or iPad it will automatically show up as a paired device on any other Apple device that’s logged in with the same Apple ID account. You can also use the Audio Sharing option to stream your music to a friend who has a compatible set of AirPods or Beats headphones.
This is all good news for Apple fans, but the Flex earbuds are surprisingly Android-friendly, too – or at least more so than the AirPods. Android owners can simply scan the QR code printed inside the box, and this will take them to the Google Play store where they can download the Android app for their own devices.
There’s no charging case provided with the Flex – which would be a lot
to ask at this price – but Apple says the Flex is designed for all-day use, and quotes 12 hours of listening time on a full charge. And, like other Apple and Beats headphones, the Flex has a ‘fast fuel’ feature that gives you 1.5 hours of playback time from a quick 10-minute charge.
A USB-C cable is provided for charging the Flex, and there are four sizes of ear-tips included as well, so most people should be able to find a set that provides a good fit.
Performance
There’s one thing to note, though, as Apple doesn’t make any mention of IP rating for water or sweat-resistance – and none of its promotional photos for the Flex shows them being used for exercise either. So the emphasis here seems to be more on general use when you’re out and about during the day, rather than on sport or exercise. But whatever you use them for, the Flex does deliver good sound quality for a set of headphones in this price range.
The deep bass on Bad Guy by Billie Eilish has a firm, rhythmic pulse that drives the song forward. There’s a nice crisp sound to the finger-snaps that punctuate the song, and the
Flex really captures the shrug-of-the-shoulders tone as Billy pronounces “duh...” halfway through. There’s plenty of detail, too, as the Flex picks up all the multi-layered harmonies on Queen’s Somebody To Love.
The Flex can even handle more delicate classical sounds, capturing the sad, mournful tone of the cello and violin as they slowly weave through the air on Max Richter’s On The Nature Of Daylight.
Verdict
It’s a strong performance from such an affordable set of headphones –
although you could argue that Apple is still profiting by no longer providing a set of headphones with new iPhones, thereby forcing many people to buy an extra set such as the Flex.
Nevertheless, if you do need an affordable set of Bluetooth headphones that provide good audio quality at a competitive price then the Beats Flex will fit the bill very nicely.
4. BEATS POWERBEATS PRO
Price: £219 from fave.co/384IPat When AirPods launched in 2016 they were the earphones that launched a thousand think pieces. They were mocked for looking like toothbrush heads, alien ears and criticised for their high price.
Fast forward to 2021 and cities in the UK are rife with AirPods. They are as common to see on your commute as the classic white iPod headphones were back in the mid-2000s.
The Apple-owned Beats is still making headphones as a separately to their parent company. The Powerbeats Pro are the first true wireless Beats and they are excellent because they take all the best things about AirPods and substantially improve the fit and audio performance.
In fact, aside from the enormous charging case, there isn’t much to complain about for most people – so long as you have an iPhone.
Design
From first wear they justify that premium though. I have always had issues with in-ear headphone fit and comfort but the Powerbeats Pro immediately felt great. Only once on a run did the right bud fall out, scratching it slightly but no other damage done.
They come with four tip sizes, and when paired with the adjustable ear hooks they are more flexible (literally and metaphorically) than many other wireless earbud and earphone designs.
The design is much improved from older Powerbeats like the recent wireless Powerbeats 3. Powerbeats Pro come in black, green, blue or white and are a much more refined and sleeker, modern design compared to the garish green older models. Even though you’re paying a premium at least you’re getting a premium looking product.
A downside to this excellent design is the case it comes in. It’s an absolute monster – though the ear hook design means it was never going to be as small as the AirPods dental floss sized enclosure.
But it meant that I realistically never went out without a bag when I took the Powerbeats Pro with me because they are too large and bulky to fit in a jeans pocket, and it doesn’t have wireless charging built in like the £199 AirPods do, so you’ll need to lug the included Lightning cable too.
Powerbeats Pro are geared towards “motivated athletes” according to Beats and the ad for them features sporting royalty Really Going For It to some tunes. Beats is expecting you to throw the large case in your gym bag and hit the treadmill. Its size does mean that when fully charged via the Lightning port it’ll provide the buds with 24 hours battery overall, and they go for a full nine before needing to be charged, which is excellent.
For this reason, the earphones are water and sweat resistant and I found that I could wear them for several hours on end before taking them out due to discomfort – much longer than other designs I’ve tested.
Each earphone has the same controls for play, pause and volume on them, a rare find in wireless earphones of all shapes and sizes. The physical buttons don’t take too much pressure to tap and means you can wear one rather than two for phone calls and still have all the controls.
It’s always a risk buying in ear headphones in case the fit doesn’t work for you, but I’m confident that the versatile design of the Powerbeats Pro will work for most people given I usually struggle yet they have been very comfortable for me.
The only slight issue will be if you wear glasses, as I do – sometimes for
a snug fit the ear hooks need to sit where glasses arms rest, resulting in the hook and arm tapping audibly against one another.
Audio quality
Down to business, then. And forgive me as I one more time compare the Powerbeats Pro to AirPods. I’m allowed, because they have the same H1 wireless chip to allow incredibly quick and reliable pairing with iCloud devices – iPhone, iPad, Mac (and iPod touch).
You need to have the Powerbeats in the case in order to pair them, but all this requires on iPhone and iPad is to open them near your unlocked phone, et voilà. It’s great and yes, it just works. This great connection is unfortunately exclusive to Apple devices in my experience. It is possible to pair the Powerbeats Pro with Android phones, and I did, but I found there to be drop outs and inconsistencies. They’re also a pain to manually pair after being spoiled with the simplicity of the Apple method.
The drop outs usually happened when the Android phone was in my pocket or bag, which is not much of a barrier for Bluetooth. I’d recommend considering other headphones if you won’t be using them with an iPhone.
Much like other Beats headphones, the Powerbeats Pro are set up for the low end, though are not quite as bassy as the over-ear Studio3 Wireless. Hiphop, rap, dance, EDM and pop sound great. Ooh Wee by Mark Ronson, We Don’t Care by Kanye West and The Space Program by A Tribe Called Quest sound brilliant with booming but not too loud bass, snappy high end and a good shine to the tone.
It’s not to say that other genres sound bad, but as ever the Powerbeats are not the best earphones if you are
all about guitar music. They struggle a tad to separate the mix, leaving Sweet Leaf by Black Sabbath feeling a little muddy. That said You Ain’t Worth A Dollar by Queens of the Stone Age is thumping in all the right places with good tone and levels.
I’m being a bit picky too. Powerbeats Pro are headphones for everyone, and the fact you can’t meddle with the tuning yourself (some rivals allow this via companion apps) shows that these are designed to be easily paired grab and go everyday headphones. And in that they succeed.
That clever H1 chips also allows for hands-free Siri. Just say “Hey Siri” with the Powerbeats on and it’ll start listening. I personally still feel a bit of a wally doing this, particularly when I find Siri rarely gets my query right but you might want the feature, and the trigger phrase does work every time. It means you can reply to messages at the gym without touching the earphones or picking up your phone, for example.
While the in-ear design means the Powerbeats have natural noise isolation to keep outside sound down by sealing the ear canal, there is no active noise cancellation tech here, but this is rare on earbuds.
Just be aware that on planes and loud trains you have to crank the volume to hear clearly. If you want full noise cancellation you should plump for over ears with ANC.
Verdict
The Powerbeats Pro are the best inear Beats yet and a fine choice if you have an iPhone and want excellent all-round wireless earphones. They are more expensive than AirPods, but they have better battery life, better fit and better audio. Connection issues arise when not used with Apple products and not everyone will like the design, especially the very bulky charging case.
5. BEATS SOLO PRO
Price: £269 from fave.co/3bbZYRn I personally don’t prefer on-ear headphones. If it’s portability I’m after, I’ll go for a pair of true wireless earbuds, or if I want the best sound quality for extended listening, I’ll use over-the-ear cans.
On-ear headphones certainly have their place, though. They tend to be more affordable than their larger overthe-ear counterparts, they’re smaller and easier to stuff in a bag, and often lighter and easier to wear for long periods. The success of the Beats
Solo series has made it clear: on-ear headphones have lots of fans.
With the Beats Solo Pro, Apple’s headphone brand has taken the very successful design of the Beats Solo3 and tweaked it in some meaningful ways, while also adding a stellar active noise cancellation mode. The result is a fantastic, if pricey, pair of on-ear noise-cancelling headphones. They don’t break new ground, but they’re probably the best on-ear wireless headphones for anyone with an iPhone.
Design
If you’re familiar with the Beats Solo headphone line, you’ll have a good idea what to expect from the Solo Pros. They’re on-ear headphones with thick, dense pads that come in a variety of colours – not as many as the Solo3 now do, but still, it’s a veritable rainbow array. You get white, black, grey, red, and two shades of blue.
I have a very small head. Every pair of headphones I have are set as small as they will go. The Beats Solo Pros are no exception, but they are still comfortable to wear even for several hours. The earpads are thick and dense, but not at all stiff. If I’m wearing glasses, my right ear starts to get a little sore after a while, but that’s a problem I seem to have with any pair of on-ear headphones, no matter the brand or design.
I had colleague, Roman Loyola, who has the largest head of anyone I know (hat size 7 3/4), try them on for a couple hours. He had to adjust them to maximum size and they were
still a few millimetres shorter than he would have liked (a problem he says is not unique to the Beats Solo Pros), but were still quite comfortable. We worried that, like so many other headphones he has used, they would wear out and break from being stretched beyond their intended design. Those with huge noggins should probably try before they buy.
The clamping force is significant, in part to help the earpads make a good seal that keeps out external sound, but I never felt like my head was being squeezed or that the pads were digging into my ears.
While they mostly look like the Solo3 headphones, a few details have changed. The Micro-USB charging port has been replaced by a lightning port (you get a black Lightning-to-USB-A cable in the box), and the 3.5mm jack for wired listening is nowhere to be found. You can buy a lighting-to3.5mm audio cable for under £15.
There’s a single button on the bottom of the left earpiece. Press once to toggle between noise-cancellation and transparency mode, press twice to turn noise cancellation off.
You won’t find a power switch or button anywhere on these headphones. When you fold them up, they turn off. Unfold and they turn on. Simple, but if you like to leave your headphones opened up on your desk, you’ll have to learn new habits.
The right earpiece has a small gap you can see from the side, because it’s actually a physical rocker switch. Click the top and bottom to adjust the volume up or down, or click the ‘b’ logo in the middle to play/pause music. Double-click to skip forward to the next track, triple-click to skip back, and press-and-hold for a second to invoke Siri.
I prefer these physical, tactile controls to the touch controls of my Sony WH-1000XM3. When you can feel something engage, it’s easier to use without looking at it. I like to wear noise-cancelling headphone when I do yard work, too, and touch controls don’t mix with gardening gloves.
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.
Audio 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 overthe-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
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.
Twenty two 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 per cent in half an hour, which would be enough battery to last an entire transcontinental 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 lawn mower and leaf blower to a quiet background whirr, and turned a screeching train ride 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 price, but now cost around £179. 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.