Pros
- Strong noise-cancelling
- Neutral, clear presentation
- Excellent wireless performance
- Physical controls
- USB-C audio
Cons
- ANC suffers with wind noise
- No room for higher quality Bluetooth codecs
- Design better suited for smaller ears
The Studio Pro are a largely successful reboot of Beats full-sized headphones. They’re comfortable enough to wear with their soft, pliable earpads, though we would say they’re best suited for smaller ears. The space inside the earcups is a little compact and can pinch around the ears.
The design is more minimalist than before, and feels better constructed than the heavily plastic vibes of previous models, with physical buttons provided for playback, noise-cancellation and volume control which we liked. There’s no wear sensor so the headphones won’t automatically pause audio when taken off.
Like the other Beats headphones on this list, there’s support for Android and iOS with the ‘Find My’ functionality that searches for the headphone’s last known location: one-touch pairing on iOS and Google Fast Pair, and the ability to switch between devices within their respective ecosystems.
The Bluetooth performance is vastly better than the Studio Buds Plus and among some of the best headphones we’ve tested with barely any signal disruption. The call quality is solid but an area we feel there is room for improvement. While background noise was effectively muzzled, in busy areas we were told our voices sounded robotic and fuzzy.
The noise-cancelling is very strong though it comes with a few caveats. One is that the headphones are susceptible to wind noise, and the second is that noise leaks through when we turned our head. Otherwise the Studio Pro put the kibosh on the most noises we came across, including crying children. They’re an excellent choice for commuter journeys.
The transparency mode is very natural sounding but our only other issue is that there’s no room to customise the performance of the noise-cancellation to hear what we want to hear.
Battery life is claimed to be 24 hours but we found these headphones can go even longer streaming audio at about 50%. The headphones don’t sound as good at that volume level but you get more than 24 hours from each charge.
The sound quality is neutral with lots of detail and clarity. Some may feel that the Beats’ sound lacks character, but in our minds it serves to present music as is without much tweaking. Bass is weighty and punchy; midrange clarity is excellent, and while the treble isn’t as bright as we’d like, it is clear and detailed.
Plug them into a wired USB-C connection and they sound even better, able to support 24-bit/96kHz files. In this mode the Studio Pro sound more energetic, lively, and dynamic.
Reviewer: Kob Monney
Full Review: Beats Studio Pro
