While Beats claims it was very pleased with the headphone's acoustic design and ergonomics and wanted to unlock its full potential with new components, I think there's some room for improvement on the design front.įold-flat gripes aside, this was and still is a comfortable, durable headphone that's enjoyable to listen to and worked reliably with rock-solid Bluetooth performance. David Carnoy/CNETĪm I disappointed Beats didn't upgrade the exterior design of this headphone? Yeah, a little. The stitching on the earpads has been tweaked to make the pads slightly softer. As you're talking, you can hear your voice, which keeps you from talking too loudly. It's also worth mentioning this headphone works well as a headset for making phone calls. You won't hear that hiss when your music is on, but turn the music off and you hear it. It's almost as good at muffling voices in a open office environment as the Bose QC 35 II, but the Beats has a very faint hiss, while the Bose doesn't. It's significantly more effective than the previous model's noise cancellation. While the noise canceling is a slight step behind those of the Bose's and Sony's, I was still pretty impressed. I mainly used the headphones in the streets of New York and on the subway. Similar to Sony's MDR-1000X and new WH-1000XM2, the headphone also has a microphone on the inside of each earcup to calibrate the noise canceling to the fit of the headphone, adjusting for "leakage caused by hair, glasses, different ear shapes and movement of your head as you go about the day," company reps told me.īeats says the W1 chip is what allows the adaptive noise canceling to be always monitoring the world without draining the battery. Beats' new proprietary noise cancelling technology, which it's calling Pure Adaptive Noise Canceling or Pure ANC, is constantly monitoring your environment and calibrates the noise canceling to the sound around you, whether it's plane, train, restaurant or wind noise. The upgrade in noise canceling is more pronounced. The headphones fold up to fit in the same somewhat bulky hard carrying case that came with the previous model - but they don't fold flat. Or as fellow CNET editor Ty Pendlebury remarked, "It's really good headphone for people who listen to pop music." And the Beats is going to be a good fit for those who listen to a lot of EDM and hip-hop. For instance, it brought a little more energy to Rag 'n Bone Man's "Human" track. But the Beats was arguably the more dynamic, exciting headphone. That Sony has a little bit more transparency and may be the better headphone to listen to over longer listening sessions. In fact, the bass was arguably a little more articulate than the bass on Sony's WH-1000XM2, which is one of the best-sounding Bluetooth headphones. There's plenty of bass but it's not overpowering or boomy. These are relatively well-balanced headphones. It's not a huge difference - we thought the 2014 Studio Wireless sounded good - but it's noticeable.īeats' sound is well known for bass bloat, but on the Studio Wireless that's a thing of past. I compared this new Studio Wireless to the older version and this model sounds slightly cleaner, with better bass definition and a bit more natural sound. Stepped-up sound quality and stronger noise cancelingĪside from the battery life, the two big upgrades here are to the sound quality and noise canceling.
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