Yes, the Wireless headphones have a microphone. You can also use the “b” logo on the right ear cup to answer or reject phone calls. With Fast Fuel, a quick 10-minute charge provides 3 hours of playback. Studio3 Wireless headphones are engineered for all-day comfort. The holistic design is lightweight, durable, and comfortable, so you can get lost in your music. They give good sound cancellation and sound quality and also provide a good Bass.
Suffice it to say, the Studio3 wireless headphones have come a long way from when the brand was under Monster. These are on par with the likes of the Bose QuietComfort 35 IIs, and with a suggested retail price of $349.95, they’re not cheap. GearLab is founded on the principle of honest, objective, reviews. Our experts test thousands of products each year using thoughtful test plans that bring out key performance differences between competing products. And, to assure complete independence, we buy all the products we test ourselves. Pressing the play/pause button twice or thrice can also skip tracks forward and back.
However, they produce a lot of self-noise with the ANC on, which can be distracting if there’s no audio playing. The noise-canceling of the Studio3 Wireless certainly worked, but much like every other aspect of the headphones, it just wasn’t as good as other models. At the time of writing this review, Bose had just released their QuietComfort 35 IIs , which had flawless noise-canceling, beats solo pro wireless and objectively better sound quality. In comparison to the Studio3 Wireless, the noise-canceling is far superior, blocking out all outside distractions and ambience. The noise-canceling in the Studio3 Wireless allows for a lot more intrusion. If you want something more comfortable and with the best active noise cancelling for less than $400 USD, look into the Bose QuietComfort 45.
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. You won’t hear that hiss when your music is on, but turn the music off and you hear it. As for audio performance, on tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the headphones deliver powerful lows, and don’t distort, even at top, unwise listening levels. At more moderate levels, the lows are still quite strong, but the high-mids and highs are also balanced out nicely, for a crisp sound signature with rich lows. The Wireless are better headphones than the Skullcandy Venue Wireless.
The Beats Studio3’s weighted harmonic distortion performance is decent. At average listening volumes, they generally fall within good limits, although a spike between the low and mid-treble may produce minor distortion. At higher volumes, this frequency is within acceptable limits, which should result in a clear and pure audio reproduction. The Beats Studio3 Wireless are well-built and sturdy-looking headphones. Their ear cups are made from dense plastic that feels sturdy while their headband has a tough yet flexible metal frame. They’re a bit thinner and less robust than the Beats Executive, and the plastic coating on the headband is prone to scratches and scuffs, but their overall build quality feels high-end and well-made.
When you don’t have anything playing, it’s a distractingly loud white noise, though when you do it obviously disappears along with most other things in your environment. I think Sony has hands down the best and most effective noise canceling tech at the moment, and the Beats Studio 3 don’t really rival it. I can hear a lot more of the train noise on the London underground with the Beats headphones than I can with the Sony alternative. Even so, drowning out the hubbub of an open-plan office or some other simple task shy of taking a long-haul flight is no problem for the Beats cans.
The Studio 3s have a cozy and comfortable feel and can be worn for extended listening sessions. The Studio 3s have a ton of passive noise attenuation, which is to say that even when wearing them on your head without any tech being active, they do a good job muffling external sounds. This close contact also means they function a lot like simple ear muffs — which is brilliant in cold winters and kind of a nightmare in the summer heat. Close to the Studio 3’s $350 price are the $400 noise-canceling Bowers & Wilkins PX that I just reviewed and loved. The PX are vastly superior to these Beats cans when it comes to construction durability and quality of materials, but the Beats advantage is a collapsible design.
For comparison, Bose claims that their QC35 headphones can be used for up to 20 hours of continuous listening. We got 10 hours and 12 minutes on 100% volume with ANC switched on in our tests, so it’s easy to see how you could push them well past the 22-hour mark unless you want to blow out your eardrums. While Beats did create a good pair of wireless headphones in the Studio3, they pale in comparison to their main competitors from Bose and Sony. The Beats headphones have a bit more flair in their design, while the more austere look of the Bose headphones almost lends an air of formality.
The battery life of the Beats is about three hours longer than the Bose, but they don’t have a power-saving feature. On the bottom of the left ear cup is the 3.5mm input, so you can plug in the included audio cable with a mic and remote. And, no, it doesn’t end in a lightning cable, nor does it come with a dongle. Moving over to the right ear cup, you get the power button and five small LED lights that let you know roughly how much battery is left.