Most people don’t know this, but Apple is the owner of Beats By Dre. Beats headphones are just so unlike Apple products, and the Beats company operates separately, so in this article, we’ll just call them Beats headphones. The Beats Studio Pro were released about two years ago. They had the potential to be better than the Airpods Max with a better case, USB-C, lighter weight, a better battery, and a lower price, but of course, there was a catch. In this article, we will review the Beats Studio Pro headphones and decide if they are still worth the $350 price tag.
Review
The Beats Studio Pros are over-ear noise-canceling headphones. They are in the premium price range, which includes Sony’s and Bose’s top flagship headphones. The build quality is very nice, some sections are made of metal and some are made of plastic, which makes these headphones very light, the earcups are also nice and soft. The Beats Studio Pro headphones come in seven colors, Black, Deep Brown, Navy, Sandstone, Moon, Dune, and Earth. These headphones can be folded and fit into a nice case that comes in the box and has some pockets for cases.
On the left ear cup, there are physical music controls, and on the right ear cup, there is a power button with a set of battery indicator lights. You also get a headphone jack on the left-hand side, which is something you don’t get in the Airpods Max. On the right side, you have a USB-C port, which means faster charging speeds. The design is very simple, they removed the shiny metal parts, the text on top of the headphones, and the Beats logo in most places, and I like this look over the previous generations. The Beats Studio Pro headphones use Bluetooth 5.3, and the microphone quality is great.
These headphones have very narrow earcups, and the mesh inside actually touches your ears. They have 40 hours of battery life with noise cancellation off and 24 hours with noise cancellation on. The Active Noise Cancellation is top-notch, and the user experience is more or less the same with Android and Apple. You need to get the Beats app for Android, and that will let you tweak the settings. There is an EQ, but only when you’re plugged into the source via USB-C. There are three EQ profiles, the signature profile, which is the default one. An entertainment profile, which has more bass and dramatic highs, and then a conversation profile, which boosts the frequencies of human voices. To switch between profiles, you need to plug everything in and press the power button twice.
The Beats Studio Pro headphones don’t have on-ear detection, which honestly doesn’t matter much, but many other headphones in this price range do have this feature. These headphones were made by Apple, and I’m surprised they don’t have Apple’s H1 or H2 chips in them, as previous generations did have H chips. The headphones can instantly connect with your iPhone, and then you can connect them to your iPad and your Mac, but they won’t have the instant switching capabilities that you see with Airpods. No H chips mean that the transparency mode isn’t going to be that good either. The headphones will show up on the Find My app on your Apple Devices, but they won’t keep pinging in the background like the Airpods, so in Find My they will show up in the last place they were on and connected.
Verdict
Overall, the Beats Studio Pros are a nice, comfortable pair of headphones that are light and flexible. The dark colors can easily get fingerprints, and it can be quite hard to clean them. With USB-C, you can plug directly into your source for lossless compressed audio. The bass is great, but the midrange could be better. The only thing I really want in these headphones is custom EQ, and I hope that gets included in the next generation.
If you want some good quality headphones with great active noise cancellation and battery life, then the Beats Studio Pros are a good choice. If you can’t decide what to get, take a look at our headphone buying guide.