Beats Studio Pro review: Outdated design, updated sound

Take the Beats Studio Pro out of its case and you’ll notice, well, honestly you won’t notice very much at all. The new headphones, while reengineered on the inside, look practically the same as the older Beats Studio3. They even weigh the same. It’s classic Beats.

Yes, they’re classically plasticky, but with a touch of sophistication thanks to the colourways. We’ve been testing the dark brown variety, but you can also get the headphones in navy, black and sandstone. There’s also a new side-zip opening soft shell travel case. It feels hardy and protective, though it’s a little bit finicky to slide the Studio Pros inside.

To be frank, they don’t look like they should cost as much as they do, given the creaky construction and the pretty forceful clamp on the head. The ear cushions themselves are made from a new softer memory foam, featuring synthetic leather, and zero seams or stitching on the outside for more durability. While we found them to be very comfortable, our ears did get warm after a couple of hours of use in the sun.

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The Studio Pros are unapologetically Beats in their design, and that well-oiled identity trickles down to the controls. The left ear cup retains that “b” button, which is used to control playback, volume and your voice assistant. There’s a tiny little power button on the right ear cup, which is used to switch between active noise cancellation and the new transparency modes. Holding down the power button for three seconds turns it on, while a double click cycles through the different cancellation modes.

Part of us wishes that Beats would shed some of its branding because it all feels a little outdated. The loud, clanky Beats physical controls are so 2010, and many have moved on to touch buttons, dials and fully-aluminium constructions (not just the sliders, which are now metal), and that power button is way too small for comfortable double clicks.

The feature set, too, is a little lacking. Frustratingly, there’s no on-ear detection sensor in the Beats Studio Pro, so they won’t pause or resume automatically when you take them off your head. It’s a big omission given that practically every other headphone at this price point includes the feature, which is a massive quality of life upgrade and helps preserve battery.

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Again, Apple has opted for a Beats-designed processor, making it work better with both Android and Apple devices. Oddly, Apple users also miss out on multipoint switching – a feature that Android users are able to take advantage of. For those not in the know, multipoint connectivity lets you switch between devices automatically, meaning that when you’re listening to music on your laptop and get a call on your Google Pixel, your audio will be re-routed to the Beats Studio Pro, so you’ll never have to take off your headphones to chat. While you get automatic device switching between your iPhone and Apple Watch, it won’t automatically switch between your iPad, iPhone and Mac.

Apple has also included one-touch pairing for iPhone users and Google Fast Pair for Android users. It works with Find My on Apple and Find My Device. The only real difference in experience between the two is that Apple users get access to “Hey Siri”, receive over the air updates and access spatial audio. Android users need to download the Beats app to fully customise the headphones or update the firmware. They won’t get head-tracking audio either, but do get spatial audio via Dolby Atmos.

Head-tracked spatial audio is a really fantastic feature, which we loved on the AirPods Max, and love just as much on the Beats Studio Pro. They make you feel like you’re in your own little three-dimensional soundscape, with music enveloping you. We loved how this worked on immersive audio dramas and podcasts from QCode.

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Despite the slim feature set and the outdated design, when Beats gets something right, it gets it really right. Active noise cancellation (ANC) and transparency mode is a particular highlight.

ANC is adaptive, which means it adapts to the sounds in your environment to control the sound. And it’s impeccable. Just as good as the AirPods Max, and very nearly as good as the Sony WH-1000XM5. It killed most of the low-frequency sounds in our environment, from passing trains to the typing on our keyboard writing this article. Weirdly, the ANC and transparency modes don’t work when you’re plugged into your computer using USB-C, however, so you lose a pretty critical feature if you want lossless audio.

Transparency mode is decent. We could hear most environmental sounds, albeit with a slightly muffled reproduction. It’s still a lot better on the second-generation AirPods Pro, but there are zero hissing sounds in the background – common on many headphones with an ambient mode – and we could hear enough outside sound that we felt safe walking down the street as our tunes bopped softly in the background.

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Something that Beats has done very well is outgrow its style over substance image. It’s now less style, more substance. The sound on Beats’ headphones just keep getting better with every iteration, and the Beats Studio Pro are impressive-sounding headphones indeed.

They feature a new integrated digital processor and a whole new audio architecture in the form of its 40mm custom dynamic drivers. Apple says that this new architecture reduces distortion by up to 80 per cent compared to the Studio3, while the digital audio processor helps with balance and detail. We did notice this when listening to our music.

At once overly-processed, the Beats Studio Pro offer crisp and detailed sound over Bluetooth. Vocals on Lorde’s Mood Ring were crisp and clear, while the guitar plucks were detailed in amongst the mix. Although the bass didn’t jolt us like it used to on older Beats headphones, it’s more controlled and you still feel the heavy pulse in your bones on tracks like DVRST’s Dream Space.

These headphones sounded just as good when listening to podcasts and watching films on our iPad. Action films with explosive sound design was phenomenal and voices came across clear. These are superb-sounding headphones, adequately putting to rest the idea that Beats are purely a fashion statement.

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And it’s a good thing they’re so perfectly tuned. You can’t really mess with the sound at all – there’s simply no equaliser settings available when used wirelessly over Bluetooth 5.3 (AAC or SBC). The only way to adjust the sound is to plug it in via USB-C.

Doing so steps the sound up to another level because you not only get access to lossless, hi-res audio, but you can also play with the equaliser settings and pick between different sound profiles. There’s Beats Signature, which is best for all sound types; Entertainment mode, which boosts certain frequencies for movies and games; and Conversation mode, which is good for boosting vocal clarity on calls and dialogue.

It’s a shame that you can’t use these features wirelessly, but it’s no big deal if you need to plug in and have an Android device. There’s one annoying quirk to these sound profiles – you only know what profile you’re using by looking at the LED lights on the right ear cup. That’s unsurprisingly quite tricky to do when you’ve got them on your head. We just ended up learning the rotation of each profile as we cycled through them by double clicking the power button.

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Now, there’s something interesting about the USB-C cable, and it has nothing to do with the sound. Apple hasn’t included a USB-C to lightning adapter in the box, so you can’t actually use it with an iPhone unless you have an adapter already. This kind of hints that the rumour that the iPhone 15 will be ditching lightning in favour of USB-C from September is true.

Call quality has also been improved massively on the Beats Studio Pro. Our voices always came across clearly in both quiet and noisy environments, and the other person never heard sirens or the barking dog in the background.

Battery is a little less impressive. It still only lasts 40 hours on a single charge, though you now get an extra two hours of battery life with ANC turned on, so that’s around 24 hours of battery life with ANC instead of 22 hours on the Studio3. That’s good, but not great. Plenty of wireless headphones can last 50 to 60 hours these days. The Fast Fuel feature is nice, however. It gives you an extra four hours of listening time with a 10-minute charge.