Product1 publisher2 min readPublished
Beats splits its over-ear line into a $299.99 tier and a $349.99 one
Beats is keeping the Studio Pro on the price list at a reduced $299.99 while the new 360 takes the top slot at $349.99. The part an owner can swap is a cushion. A replacement kit costs $49.99.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- Beats announced the Beats 360 over-ear headphone at $349.99, pitching it as a rethinking of its over-ear design with an emphasis on sound quality, comfort and customizability.
- Beats says the 360 does not replace the Studio Pro, which stays in the lineup at a reduced $299.99, down from the $349.99 it previously sold for.
- Beats says the 360 is the first of its over-ear headphones to carry an IPX4 sweat and water resistance rating, meaning it is protected against liquid ingress.
- Sensors in the headphone identify whether Performance Knit or UltraPlush cushions are fitted and adjust the acoustic tuning and noise cancellation filtering to match.
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Why it matters
- cost Owning both cushion textures is a $99.98 add-on at list, which takes a $349.99 headphone to $449.97 for the buyer who wants the workout pad and the leather one.
- decision Someone choosing inside the Beats line now has two headphones $50 apart. The two figures Beats published to separate them, 1.75x ANC and 12dB, are both measured against the Studio Pro.
- constraint Because the tuning follows whichever cushion the headphone detects, the sound a shopper hears on a store demo unit depends on which kit somebody last fitted to it.
- precedent Putting a wear part on the price list at $49.99, then discounting it to $9.99 at launch, trains buyers to treat cushions as a repeat purchase and sets the reference price for the next Beats over-ear.
An owner can twist each ear cushion off the Beats 360, and the headband pad snaps off with a small amount of effort [12]. Those are the parts Beats describes as removable. A fresh kit costs $49.99 [11].
Against the $349.99 the headphone costs, one kit is 14.3 percent of the purchase price [19]. Beats sells two materials: breathable Performance Knit memory foam, included in the box in the headphone's color, and UltraPlush kits in Black and Ivory with memory foam wrapped in engineered leather [8][9]. The launch promo cuts a kit to $9.99 in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, France, China and South Korea, which is $40 off list, for a limited time [11][21].
The Studio Pro stays on sale at $299.99, fifty dollars below the $349.99 it used to cost and fifty dollars below the 360 [2][18][22]. For that $50, Beats claims up to 1.75 times more active noise cancellation than the Studio Pro and a 12dB increase in output from a completely new acoustic architecture [3]. Eight microphones feed the noise cancellation, reading the environment inside and outside the headphone [4].
Inside, the 360 is two independent wireless earphones, each with its own battery, antenna and processing circuitry [15]. Beats says that lets the headband house a single power cable, with both batteries charging at once from one USB-C port [16]. Nothing in the MacRumors launch account covers replacing those batteries [17].
"And with our new interchangeable cushions, our customers can express themselves in a way no other over-ear headphone can," said Oliver Schusser, Apple's vice president of Music, Sports, and Beats [7]. The cushion is also the part that absorbs sweat. Beats' cleaning instructions call for one teaspoon (5ml) of laundry detergent in one cup (250ml) of water, rubbed onto each cushion with a lint-free cloth for one minute, wiped with a second cloth dampened in fresh water, then dried with a third [14].
Whether the cushions will actually come off more than once in the life of the headphone is worth settling inside the promo window, because the spare that costs $9.99 now costs $49.99 later [11]. The other job is to sort every part that touches skin or sweat by what Beats has put a price on. On what Beats has published, the cushions come in at $49.99 and the batteries have no figure [11][17].
What to watch
- Whether cushion kits settle at $49.99 when the $9.99 launch promo ends, and how long the promo runs in each of the seven listed markets.
- Whether Beats publishes a service or replacement path for the two internal batteries, which the launch account skipped.
- Whether third-party cushions appear, and whether the fitted-cushion sensors recognise anything other than Performance Knit and UltraPlush.