The Bose has a bit more open soundstage and I felt I could hear separate instruments more distinctly. Or as fellow CNET editor Ty Pendlebury remarked, "It's really good headphone for people who listen to pop music."Ĭompared to my current favorite in this class, Bose's QuietComfort 35 II, it's something of a toss-up for sound quality. 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. Yes, this headphone works with non-Apple Bluetooth audio devices - I paired them to a Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus, for example - but their special pairing feature is limited to Apple devices running iOS 10 or later, WatchOS 3 or later or MacOS Sierra or later. Meanwhile, the Beats Fast Fuel feature gives you three hours of playback from just 10 minutes of charging. Turn off noise canceling and that number goes up to 40 hours. Battery life numbers vary with volume levels, so you may not get quite that amount, but I was able to consistently hit at least 20 hours of playback and sometimes more before I had to recharge (that's slightly better than the Bose QuietComfort 35 II battery life).