Beats Studio3 Wireless in Midnight Black

[MSRP $350, $150 on Amazon as of 11/13/22, paid $180 in August 2022]

[Tl;dr: These headphones are weak in their MSRP range, but if you get them on a substantial sale, they’re great for use cases where you want some noise cancelation and a more durable headset that won’t break your heart if you lose or break them.]

Scores:

Cost-agnostic: 5 out of 10 Denalis

Cost-sensitive: 6 out of 10 Denalis

Beats Studio3 Wireless

Beats Studio3 Wireless on a new ME-themed puck

Intro. I bought my first pair of Beats headphones back in … 2014? I think? I was going on a train trip to Montana, and it was supposed to take something like eleven hours. I had a pair of Bose QC25s with really good active noise cancelation (ANC), but I didn’t want to deal with a cord while I was trying to sleep on a moving train. I’d been coveting the Beats Studio Wireless for a while (my car at the time had a 10-speaker Beats by Dre sound system that I’d absolutely fallen in love with), so the train trek was all the justification I needed. I then used them pretty consistently for the gym and then dog-walking until March of 2022, when they stopped taking or holding a charge. The Beats Studio³ Wireless (BSW) came up on sale in August, and I decided to take another shot. Beats is now an Apple-owned brand, so I particularly wanted to see how well they played with iPhones, Watches, AppleTVs, etc. given the struggles the original had with connecting to several of my iPhones over the years.

Sound. These are a mixed bag, sound-wise. The soundstage is remarkably wide and distinct, almost to the point of detriment. The Edge’s guitar riff at the beginning of “Pride (In the Name of Love)” by U2 is almost distractingly far to the left in the mix, and a few other tracks sounded … odd during testing because I was used to a less separated mix. Overall, it’s good sound, and my impression has suffered due to the amount of time I’ve spent listening to the (truly excellent) AirPods Max and Pro2 lately.

The bass on these is solid, though it starts to feel hollow the farther down sound goes. By the time you hit things that would normally be covered by a subwoofer (like the repeated five note bass sequence in Massive Attack’s “Paradise Circus”), the sound is there but quiet and distant and doesn’t have any weight behind it. The BSW also struggle a little bit with rapidly changing or complex bass riffs like Janet Jackson’s “Got ‘Til it’s Gone”; the woofer is not nearly as nimble as some other headphones in this category like the Bose 700s or the B&O Beoplay H4s. Conversely, the kind of bass you get in mid-90’s hip hop is almost too forward: the bass in Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin’” is harsh and a little splattery at moderate volume listening.

Mid-range is pretty good, reproducing vocals reasonably well though I think the resonance on male vocals is a little clearer.

Treble is generally crisp without being harsh or sibilant, and generally well balanced with the mid-range/vocals at normal listening levels. The BSW handles the gamut of sounds on Yo-Yo Ma’s “1B”, from the upper range all the way down to the lowest notes, and captures the sense of urgency and acceleration through the last half of that track. It does a good job of reproducing the slightly-jangly guitar on Vampire Weekend’s “2021”, and even gets the intentional splatter in the mix right.

These are definitely headphones best used at moderate to high volumes, and for music like hip hop, EDM, and rock rather than classical, jazz, or sparser R&B. You’ll lose a little on the very bottom-end, but the rest will be presented pleasantly.

Standard disclaimer from other Bluetooth reviews: It's still Bluetooth so you're always getting a lossy signal and it gets more complicated when you start using the on-board mic for phone calls.

Noise canceling. This is why I bought the original Beats Studio Wireless, and these live up to that legacy. It’s not the best ANC out there, but it’s also not the worst. I think both pairs of AirPods do better, as does the Bose 700s, but the BSW don’t generate any overpressure and are much more comfortable for me to wear for long periods as a result.

The biggest knock on the noise cancellation is that there’s no way to turn the ANC off or down; if these headphones are turned on, the ANC is running full-power. This seems like an oversight on a pair of headphones that retails for $350, especially because most competitors have this capability, whether hardware (a button on the Bose 700, for example) or software or both (AirPods let you change this either in your phone settings or by customizing an external button).

Spatial audio. I don’t really notice any difference between playing ATMOS tracks and non-ATMOS tracks. The BSW use a W1 chip instead of the H1 or H2 chips you get in the AirPods Max and Pro2 respectively. The sound stage is already almost distractingly wide, so I wouldn’t buy these thinking you’ll get a lot of use out of spatial audio through them.

Controls. They’re really good and can be access wearing gloves, even thick ones. The left earcup has a large button (labeled with a “b”) that functions as a play/pause button, can be multi-tapped to skip forward and back, and a faux rocker switch around it that controls volume. The power button is on the bottom of the right earcup, and once you know where it is it’s easily and intuitively accessed.

Connectivity. If you’re in the Apple ecosystem, it is pretty straightforward. If you turn them on near an Apple device, they’re automatically recognized and asked to pair. And once they’re paired with something associated with your iCloud account, they’ll easily connect to everything else that is (for example, I’ve never used these with my MacBook but they show up in its Bluetooth list with a charge measurement). If I walk into my kitchen and want to pull audio to them from my AppleTV, it’s really easy to do so.

They connect to non-Apple Bluetooth devices as easily as any other Bluetooth headphone.

Comfort. They’re pretty comfortable, even after a couple of hours. They’re reasonably light, have decent clamping force, and fit well around my ears. The ear cups definitely get warm after a while, but that’s true of most headphones.

Construction. They’re light and plastic, with vinyl ear covers. The band feels more sturdy than things like the Bose 700s, but they definitely feel like they’d break if you step on them or drop them too far. Unlike the Bose 700s or the AirPods Max, these do fold for easy transportation in the provided carrying case.

Beats Studio3 Wireless in Carrying Case

Charging is standard micro-USB, unfortunately. Here’s hoping that future generations go with the USB-C standard that Apple is going to have to implement among their branded products. They’re also relatively low-profile (physically, not style-wise), so they fit easily under a hood for those of us who live in a rainforest and have a dog that requires many, many walks (though they do not carry an IPX rating for water or dust).

Appearance. They’re stylish. That’s always been a part of the Beats aesthetic, and Apple hasn’t changed that. They come in four or five colors, thought I don’t see their trademark red color which is a little surprising.

Value. These are a terrible value at their MSRP of $350. For that price, I want substantially better sound quality and much better passive and active noise cancelation, particularly with such strong other offerings in this market. It’s a broad category that includes the Bose 700 ($379), Bose QC35 ($360), B&O Beoplay H4s ($300), Sony WH-1000XM4 ($250), and the AirPodsPro2 ($240), all of which I think crush the BSW on sound quality and noise cancelation.

That said, at the $150 price range they’re at now, these are really competitive. They’re easy to use and durable, and if I lose or break them they’re pretty easy to replace. They’re my go-to gym and dog walking headphones for a reason.

Overall. These are fine headphones, and I use them daily for very specific things. I wear them for three of Denali’s four daily walks, and they’re perfect for going to the gym because they attenuate external noise without totally blocking it out. I will probably never grab them outside those specific use cases because I’ve got better pairs for almost everything, but they’re perfect for those kinds of applications and they will continue to hang by my back door for ease and convenience.

Carrying case

#reviews #headphones #apple #anc #bluetooth #spatialaudio #overear #cans #beats #meh