Apple-owned Beats has done it again – made a high-end headphone that makes Apple’s own $550/£499 AirPods Max 2 look like a bad buy. And in the same way the 2023 version of the Beats Studio Pro raised the bar, Beats has now launched Beats 360 – a $350/£300 noise canceling headphone with a rather neat trick.
Not only can you change the color of the earcups, but you can change the headband, too, and various add-on Cushion Kits are available for $/£50 – but for a limited time they’re a mere $/£10 to get you started. We’ve seen interchangeable parts before of course, with Dyson’s OnTrac, Audeze Maxwell 2 and Beyerdynamic’s recent Aventho Y just a couple of examples.
Beats 360 sit above the older Studio Pro and are available in four ‘core’ colors – black, cloud (grey), pink and sky (blue). These are ‘Performance Knit’ finishes – so fabric – with extra kits available in pink, sky, navy and volt – a flourescent green. Volt caught my eye in particular, but I also think the navy would work pretty well too. A couple of leatherette options – known as UltraPlush – are also available in black and cloud.
These headphones are the ones that were teased by various players at the FIFA World Cup, so we’ve seen some of the colors before.
Beats is suggesting a 1.75x improvement in the noise cancellation over Beats Studio Pro which wouldn’t be too much of a challenge, even though I’ve been a big fan of those headphones over the last three years and have often carried them around because of their compact fold-down size. Adaptive EQ is also on board, though these headphones don’t use an Apple chip. Instead they use custom Beats hardware – probably to ensure complete compatibility with Android (including Fast Pair and Find Hub), which is a Beats mainstay.
Apple users get the same compatibility that they would from AirPods, with full Siri, device switching and spatial audio support. Nine MEMS microphones are on board, eight for Active Noise Cancellation and three for voice pickup, with two shared.
And as with other Beats products, Beats 360 boast sweat and water resistance with an IPX4 rating – making them a rare high-end headphone with this kind of rating.
Battery life isn’t amazing but will be enough for most, with up to 32 hours of battery life with ANC and Personalized Spatial Audio on. As you’d expect a five-minute Fast Fuel USB-C charge provides up to an hour of playback.
Beats adds that 360 features 80 percent recycled plastic in multiple components, including the ear cups, speaker enclosure and internal components.
Read the full article here
