- Okay, these headphones actually had the chance
to be the best Apple headphones ever made by a mile.
They'd basically be like AirPods Max
but lighter weight, actually folding,
with a better case, with USB-C,
and a longer battery life, and cheaper.
So yeah, of course there's a catch.
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What's up? MKBHD here.
I have a feeling that most people
just don't think about the fact
that they kind of maybe forgot that Apple owns Beats.
Like they bought Beats for billions of dollars
and own and run them as a company now.
And that's one of the craziest things
about these headphones,
is if you took the Beats logo
and just erased it from the side of these headphones
and replaced it with an Apple logo,
these would be insane.
They're just so un-Apple-like.
But instead they just seem to operate super separately.
So we'll just call these Beats headphones,
but these are their new $350
over-ear noise-canceling headphones.
It's right in that premium tier of like,
you could get the Sony Mark 5s
or you could get the Bose QC 45s,
and these kind of slot right In alongside those.
I want you to listen to all of the ways that these new Beats
are actually just straight up better
than Apple's flagship AirPods Max.
So first of all, with the design,
even though they're not metal everywhere,
I would actually argue build quality is nicely done
and will actually be probably preferred
by most people over the AirPods Max.
Most headphones are plastic for a reason,
and in this case that means
they are much lighter than the AirPods,
and the ear cups are still quite soft.
They're a very flexible, comfortable pair of headphones
to wear for a long time,
for like a flight or something like that.
And then they actually fold up,
so they're much easier to travel with,
and they fold into this actually reasonable case
with pockets for cables
and even this little zippered pouch inside for,
well, I actually don't know what that pocket is for.
Maybe another cable?
Whatever, it's there if you want it.
And that's a huge win for these
for just daily practicality and usability over this.
Basically the overall design is, honestly,
you can tell already it's very similar
to the previous generation from a few years ago.
It's got the physical music controls on the left ear cup
and a power button
with a set of battery indicator lights,
which is nice, on the right.
But it's also a bit more tame,
like it's a bit cleaner all the way around.
Like they've removed some of the shiny,
the chrome bits and the Beats branding
that used to be a little more obvious.
Like the text that used to be on top of the headphones,
that's now gone.
The only downside I could really find
is these darker matte colors really pick up fingerprints,
like, extremely easily, and they're hard to clean.
And then the shallower ear cup
might be a little more fatiguing.
It doesn't feel quite like on-ear headphones,
but they're kind of right in between on-ear and over-ear.
So the mesh on the inside is actually touching your ear.
Otherwise, yeah, I'd say these Beats,
the design is, dare I say, classy.
Then there's the headphone jack on the left side,
another thing AirPods Max doesn't have,
and it also does come with a nice little,
I think this is a three-foot aux cable.
So if you're plugging into your source,
these headphones will do that.
And on the other side, the right side,
a USB-C port, not a Lightning port.
And through that USB-C,
again, the most un-Apple-like thing with these,
you can plug,
it comes with this USB-C to C cable.
It's kind of short, I don't know, maybe two, three feet,
but you can plug directly into your source
for lossless compressed audio.
So I can plug this into my Pixel, it charges them,
and that's the highest bitrate audio that these can achieve,
which of course won't happen with an iPhone,
'cause that's a Lightning port.
They have longer battery life than the AirPods Max.
They're rated for 40 hours with noise cancellation off
and 24 hours with ANC on,
plus fast charging will get you
like four hours of listening
in 10 minutes being plugged in.
And the cherry on top is they're, like, $200 cheaper.
I think if we stopped right here,
this would be the best Apple headphones ever made,
certainly the best Beats ever made.
But we can't stop right here,
because these headphones do have a few interesting,
how do I say it, quirks about them.
A few quirks.
So first of all, there is no on-head detection,
which isn't necessarily something I care about,
but in the world of all the other
$350 over-ear noise-canceling headphones out there,
they pretty much all have it,
so it was kind of interesting to see that these don't.
But then even more interesting,
these lack any Apple chips.
So these don't have any H1 or H2 chip in them.
Which to be fair, is also true about, you know,
the Sonys and the Bose of the world.
But this is made by Apple
and previous Beats headphones
have literally already had a H chip in them.
So it's just kind of weird
that these just don't have it suddenly.
So what does that mean to not have the chip?
Well, they're still Bluetooth headphones,
Bluetooth 5.3 actually,
and they still Fast Pair to an iPhone
and instantly show up in your iCloud
so they're available
across any of the devices in your account.
That's still great.
It's on your phone, your iPad, your Mac,
all that right away.
But they cannot do the instant switching back and forth
because they don't have multi-point connectivity.
So that, like, magic moment
where like you're listening to music on your computer
and then you get a phone call on your iPhone
and you accept it and instantly you're now listening
to the phone call on the same headphones.
This won't do that.
You'll have to take a few taps
and go through Bluetooth settings
and switch which one it's paired to.
It's not quite as seamless.
And then there's some also smaller things
like there's no wake and instant pair.
Actually, they're just kind of always on
until you turn them off,
which can be a bummer if you forget to turn them off
and then they're just sitting around draining the battery.
And then the Transparency mode,
which is new to these,
isn't quite as good as AirPods.
And I know that's like the highest bar possible,
and I don't know exactly how much of that
is the chip and the processing on the H chips
versus the actual microphones,
but what I do know is the AirPods
have a superior amazing Transparency mode
and these are just a notch behind.
Still fine, it's still fine,
it's just a little more dull,
a little more processed and muted sounding.
These headphones also do have spatial audio.
They can do the head-tracking spatial audio
if you're into that.
And they also show up in Find My on the iPhone,
but, huge but,
they don't stay always
like sort of pinging in the background
on the Find My network
because they don't have that H chip.
So when they show up in Find My,
they just show up in the last place
that they were on and connected.
So if I were to go on a trip somewhere
and like fold these up
and turn 'em off and put 'em on my backpack,
and go travel and then I lose my bag
and I'm like, "Ah, I gotta find my headphones,"
it's just gonna show me on the map
the last place that I had them on and turn them off,
which is not really that helpful.
Now, in the grand scheme of things,
maybe these are more luxury features
than absolute necessities, you could certainly argue.
But again, you're paying in the realm of luxury headphones.
Like being able to separate these
with ecosystem plug features,
like, that's exactly what I'd expect Apple to do,
which is why it's almost funny that they didn't.
All that being said,
I'm happy to say this is a pair of Beats
that I would be totally happy living with.
Like for my Android people out there,
they have Fast Pair with Android as well,
and they actually do automatically add it
to all of your Chrome devices.
So if you have a Chromebook, that works great.
Same deal for Find My.
It works when they're on,
but it just shows the point of last connection,
and it will let you mess with
all of the same settings as the iPhone.
If you just grab the Beats app,
then you just get that same UI.
So, as far as sound quality,
look, yes, they are a V-shaped equalizer with strong bass
and not that great mids, but it's fine.
It's not dramatic, it's not terrible.
It's actually fun.
I think for a lot of different genres of music
and watching movies and videos
and even podcasts and phone calls and things like that,
it is completely fine.
I mean, I'd never edit videos with these or anything,
but hey, not bad for fun headphones.
Just know that if you're after a more neutral, flat EQ,
like you were probably never
considering these to begin with,
and that's also totally fine.
But then here's the last quirk.
Here's the last kind of a interesting feature
with these headphones.
There is technically an EQ,
but only when you are plugged into the source
via USB Type C.
So you've got this C to C cable.
I can plug into a Pixel, plug into whatever,
and then you're getting your lossless audio,
and then, and then only then, can you switch between,
there are three built-in EQ profiles.
So to change them, you plug everything in
and press the power button twice.
That switches you between the Signature profile,
which is the default,
Entertainment profile,
which is a little more dramatic and even steeper V-shaped
with bright highs and a huge boomy bass,
and then a Conversation profile,
which really boosts the frequencies of human voices.
That's basically just for phone calls
or listening to podcasts.
There's like no bass at all.
And they have these little light codes too
that indicate which mode you are in.
So you can get the most out of
these new 40-millimeter drivers in these Apple headphones
by plugging in via USB Type C
and then going with lossless audio
and swapping between three,
baked-in, firmware-coded EQ settings.
Wild.
Do I wish there was more?
Do I wish I could actually just, like, pull up a graph
and toggle and make my own custom EQ myself?
Yeah.
Do I also realize that most Beats customers
would never dig in that far to begin with?
Also yes.
But the microphone quality is also solid.
The Bluetooth latency is fairly minimal,
very easy to watch videos and play games with them.
And there is technically no IP rating.
It doesn't say it's water-resistant anywhere,
but I would wager, if I was betting,
that these are probably gonna be okay as gym headphones.
You can probably sweat in these
and they'd be similar to previous Beats.
That's not an official IP rating.
That's just me going,
eh, the way it's built feels like they'd be okay.
So well played, Apple/Beats.
These aren't complete enough
to completely cannibalize AirPods Max,
but for people in the know,
they are very, very good and almost complete enough
and much cheaper enough
to be basically a really good alternative.
And I fully expect to start seeing these on flights a lot,
'cause these are gonna be really solid,
fun, entertaining headphones.
It also seems like Beats and Apple just don't talk.
I wonder what's up with that.
Either way, that's been it.
Thanks for watching.
Catch you guys in the next one.
Peace.