Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsGreat set of headphones. Comfortable and music sounds great through them.
Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2018
This is the third "Beats Headset" in our household. The other two are still in use, just by other members of the family. (each prior generation gets passed down/etc).
But I had been using a pair of generic padded headphones while my wife was using the Beats Solo2 and recently upgraded to the Beats Solo3. I found them to be comfortable, but wanted larger ear cups since I didn't like pressure on my ears too much. So when Prime Day rolled around, I picked up a pair of these on sale. Nice.
So, my impressions:
Package: top notch. Typical Apple minimalism, fit and finish. The only thing I would nit pick is that the headphones were collapsed inside of the egg shaped hardshell, so one of the ear pads had dented a bit due to being constantly pressed against the inside of the arch. Not a problem, but just a nit pick.
Comfort: the ear pads were not large enough to completely encompass my ears. However, they are more comfortable, for me, vs the Solo3. So definitely a plus if your head/ears are a bit bigger. This will help.
Setup: Turn it on by holding down the power button... place near an Apple device, and it shows up. Accept the pairing and you're good to go. It was painless and worked just like with the AirPods.
Sound quality: After having spent a good deal of time exposed to high frequency sounds(data centers) I think that I'm not a good judge of "awesome sound reproduction". The padded cups and the tweaking that Apple/Beats did definitely causes the output of the headphones to favor the lower end of the audio spectrum. So things of a strong deep thump nature will definitely be felt. The higher frequency sounds sounded alright for several of the pieces I played. The mids feels a bit muddied, but that could be due to either the heavy bass-leaning configuration or the dampening effect of the headset and the ANR.
Ambient Noise Reduction: so I didn't know this, but each time you turn these on, the noise reduction is turned on by default. I had the headsets on for a while with no music playing, and wondered how to turn it on, when I read that it starts by default. You can disable it after powering it up with a double push of the power button or from the bluetooth device info screen on your IOS device. When this happens, there is a beep/tone to indicate a state change, a momentary dip in audio output from the internal change, and then all of a sudden, I heard a humming sound. I thought they were defective and then realized that it was the sound of the HVAC in the room. .... I had never even noticed it. I spent a few minutes walking around the room and seeing how it worked, turning it on and off again. Basically, it seems like it measures and figures out the frequencies of the surroundings and then counters those frequencies. There IS a noticeable drop. Box fan in one room... can definitely hear it. Turn on ANC and then it dips down to a very very quiet repeating whoosh whoosh. The music when played like this feels more like music being listened to in a quieter room. It's definitely not just white noise.
Heat: I can see how the design might result in sweaty ears. :) And I don't see myself running/jogging with these. But then again, they aren't Beats Jugging Headphones. They are studio headphones. So I'll leave the running music activities to my Air Pods... and let's face it, if I'm out on the sidewalk/etc, I WANT to be aware of my surroundings.
All in all, I really like them. I went with matte black mainly because it was nice and plain.
Update: after a week of use, really liking this headset. I can get about three nights if sleep use out of it before needing to recharge. I think that for people who are sensitive to noise when they sleep, the ANC is great for giving you that “quiet room” experience. If you want to play a little very quiet music or white noise over the ANC, that works too. Really cool.
Love not having to deal with a cord when I’m listening to music and working at my computer.
Haven’t used the headset mode more than a few times, but seems okay.
