The Beats family of personal and home audio devices are one of the best unsung shopping hacks. They’re (quietly) part of the Apple family, yet products like their flagship Beats Studio Pro premium wireless over-ear headphones carry a far smaller price tag than the AirPods Max while delivering a comparable performance. That far-smaller price tag is even smaller still during this limited-time Amazon deal — the Beats Studio Pro are 35% off, taking their price down from $248 to just $160.
Beats has spent the better part of a decade repositioning itself as a serious audio brand rather than just a style play, and the Studio Pro is the culmination of that effort. The custom acoustic platform is tuned for what Beats calls rich, immersive sound, and the headphones include three built-in sound profiles that let you shift the character of playback without opening an app. And, unlike their Apple cousins, Beats play as well with Android and other non-Apple devices as they do with iPhones and iPads.
Adjust on the Fly
The Active Noise Cancellation of the Beats Studio Pro is fully adaptive, meaning it adjusts to your environment rather than applying a fixed level of cancellation regardless of what’s around you. Transparency mode runs alongside it for situations where you need to hear what’s happening — a flight announcement, a car running a red light while you’re crossing, the conversational avalanche coworker showing up at your desk. Personalized Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking puts you in the center of a 360-degree soundstage that adjusts as you move, which lands somewhere between genuinely impressive and a feature you forget is on depending on what you’re listening to.
Another premium perk you would be hard-pressed to find in any other $160 headphones: Lossless audio via USB-C. Wireless Bluetooth compresses audio by definition, so the wired USB-C connection is how you get uncompressed playback when fidelity matters more than convenience. That’s a feature set that’s almost always the domain of more expensive cans.
Durable and Versatile
The Beats Studio Pro battery life is rated at 40 hours total, with a 10-minute Fast Fuel charge adding up to 4 hours of playback when you’re running low. Voice-targeting mics filter background noise on calls, and the on-ear controls handle music, calls, and Siri without pulling out your phone. Of the six available colors, the $160 price applies to the Sand Gray and Matte White models, and the deal includes a woven carrying case, a 3.5mm cable, and a USB-C charging cable.
At $160, the Beats Studio Pro undercuts the Bose QuietComfort and Sony WH-1000XM5 on price while matching or beating them on battery life. If you’re cross-shopping in the premium wireless headphone space and want something that works well across both Apple and Android without paying north of $200, this Amazon limited-time deal is well worth a look.
