Beats spent a decade being the headphone people bought for the logo, and somewhere along the way they got genuinely good, which makes the Studio Pro frustrating in a new way. These launched at $349.99 with custom 40mm drivers, adaptive noise cancelling that samples the room 48,000 times a second, and 24 hours of battery with cancelling on or 40 with it off. Ten minutes on the charger buys four hours. The real headline is connectivity: Bluetooth, a 3.5mm input, and USB-C with a built-in DAC for lossless playback up to 24-bit/48kHz. That last one was a first for Beats.
The sound is the best thing here by a distance. Measured audio quality comes in at 4.8 out of 5, a balanced signature with clear highs rather than the bass caricature the brand used to trade on. Over USB-C with the DAC engaged it’s better still. Cancelling is good rather than exceptional, deadening most commuting noise by somewhere between 50 and 90 percent with a proper seal, measuring around 25dB at 100Hz, which is decent but not the top of the market. Real battery came in at 31 hours and 25 minutes, comfortably beating the rating.
And then there’s the fit, which is where this falls apart for a lot of people. The central criticism everywhere is comfort: the ear cups measure 59 by 40 millimetres, the headband padding is thin, and larger heads and ears run into real discomfort well before the battery runs out. If your ears are small you may never notice. Mine aren’t, and I did. If they aren’t, this is a dealbreaker and no amount of good sound fixes it. The build also feels plasticky for $349, and the physical buttons are hidden behind the Beats logo and need enough force that pressing them breaks your seal.
Three ways to connect is genuinely useful: wireless for daily life, 3.5mm for a plane, and USB-C for lossless at a desk. But there are two catches worth knowing before you order. There’s no multipoint, so a laptop and a phone can’t both stay connected. And active noise cancelling does not work while playing over USB-C, so the lossless mode and the quiet mode are mutually exclusive. There’s no Apple H1 or H2 chip either, so you don’t get the instant-pairing magic AirPods owners expect, though these do work equally well on Android.
These are for someone with smaller ears who wants excellent sound and will actually use the USB-C lossless mode at a desk. Try them on first if you possibly can, because comfort is the whole gamble. Skip them if you need multipoint, best-in-class cancelling, or good call quality, since the microphone was described as disappointing. Against the AirPods Max the choice is longer battery versus better everything-else-Apple. The Studio Pro is a genuinely good-sounding headphone wrapped around a fit that only works for some heads.
Pros
• Sound quality scored 4.8 out of 5, balanced rather than bass-heavy
• USB-C lossless with a built-in DAC, unusual at any price
• Over 31 real hours a charge, plus fast charging
• Works properly on Android as well as Apple
Cons
• Small ear cups and thin padding, genuinely uncomfortable for larger heads
• ANC does not work while playing over USB-C
• No multipoint connection
• Microphone quality is poor for calls
Our score: 7.5/10