The Beats Studio Buds Plus is the company’s latest refresh for its consumer earbuds. Packed with features like transparency, spatial audio, and noise cancellation, are they worth buying over other earbuds?
Beats is in a strange spot. After being acquired by Apple, the Cupertino company launched the wildly popular AirPods line of earbuds. Beats now have the tall task of still producing earbuds competitive with its parent company’s offering, while retaining its unique branding and legacy.
The Beats Studio Buds + doesn’t really reinvent the wheel when compared to its previous offerings. However, the company does manage to deliver an exceptional number of features for a modest asking price. We’ve tested the new buds for weeks, to give you the lowdown on how good they are compared to the AirPods Pro 2, and other earbuds, too.
Key specs
- Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.3
- Driver diameter: 8.2mm
- Weight: 4.9g per earbud, 49g case
- Compatibility: iOS, Android, and Bluetooth devices
- Features: Spatial audio, one-touch pairing, 36-hour battery life, ANC, IPX4-rated, Dolby atmos support
- Price: $169.99
Design
The Beats Studio Buds + arrives in several colorways, including a striking transparent. We reviewed the black variant of the earbuds, and the pebble-shaped charging case is near perfection. Perfectly rounded, with a single USB-C port located at the bottom, which supports fast charging for an hour of listening after just five minutes. Like many other wireless earbuds, the case is magnetically secured and flips open with heft to them that you just do not get out of lesser wireless earbuds, like the Logitech G Fits, or the Asus Cetra. Aesthetically, the case does not look too different from its previous iteration.
One thing to note is that the case does not support wireless charging. This seems like an obviously disappointing omission to retain the tooling of the previous iteration of the device. We can only hope that this is addressed in the next product revision.
Housed inside are the two fantastic-looking earbuds. Unlike Airpods or other earphones, there is no noticeable stem coming from teh earbuds themselves, the buds also house a depressable button that allows you to control the buds without having to take your phone out. With several settings for ANC or transparency modes, the buttons are a much better way to control your earbuds on the go than a finicky capacitive option.
Also present within the box is a short USB-C cable for charging, in addition to four different eartips, which is a welcome addition, given the added “extra small” options now available.
Setup & features
Setting up the Beats Studio Buds + is devilishly simple on iOS and Android. The one-touch paring available on the buds gets you all set up instantly. There’s no messing around in menus, and you are literally set up in seconds. This user experience is second-to-none in this product space, and it’s something that we wished that others in the industry took some notes on.
There is also some light integration into the Apple ecosystem, you can add the earphones to your Find My app, in addition to being able to customize the audio modes straight from iOS natively. There’s some spatial audio integration too, but that’s solely limited to Apple Music, and there is also no support for high-res codecs.
Active Noise Cancellation is nothing too special here, either. The earphones create a good seal around your ears, and while it’s not quite as impressive as other options that we’ve tried, there’s zero hiss when using the feature. As soon as you put some music on, sounds get drowned out, and you hear nothing but the audio coming from the buds themselves. Equally, transparency mode works just as you’d expect, and is a handy feature when walking out and about in public, or while crossing roads.
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Sound quality
The Beats Studio Buds + has fantastic sound, which is almost perfectly balanced if it were not for the fairly punchy bass. Even in some of the more demanding grindcore tracks we’ve listened to from Nails, the earphones do not skip a beat, nor do they muddy the original mix of the headphones. With some lighter listening from Metro Boomin’s Hummingbird, the earbuds really come into their own. Vocals and highs sound incredible, with a defined midrange that sounds fantastic when in use.
Subtle details are retained, and we think that despite the lack of EQ, we wouldn’t want to make any major adjustments to the earbuds anyway.
When listening outdoors, the ANC implementation also retains the mix of the sound very well, with no real distortions to speak of as a result of the feature. They just sound great, which is one of the best aspects of the buds.
Microphone quality
The microphone quality on the Beats Studio Buds + isn’t anything mind-blowing. They don’t sound fantastic, but considering the size of the buds, they still perform well if you need to take a call, or hop into a work meeting in a pinch. We wouldn’t be going out of our way to recommend them for other use cases, though.
Should you buy it?
In real-world usage, the Beats Studio Buds + isn’t leading the pack for wireless earbuds. But, their stellar battery life and sound quality make it easily an everyday workhorse for anyone who finds themselves on the go, and does not want to splash out more than $200 for the privilege. You do miss out on some features like high-resolution codecs, and wireless charging.
The Verdict: 4/5
For most people, these earbuds are fantastic, and a great alternative to AirPods if you find yourself on Android, or if you dislike the look of Apple’s (other) earbuds. With a fantastic degree of comfort, the Beats Studio Buds + is a relatively safe and well-built pair of earbuds that simply outshine most of the competition at this price point.
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