Earlier this week, Apple unveiled the AirPods Max 2. The forthcoming over-ear headphones build on their predecessor with an H2 chip that powers a range of new features; however, they still don’t offer the sort of cross-OS compatibility you’ll get with a modern pair of Beats headphones — including the Beats Studio Pro, which are on sale at Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy for an all-time low of around $169.95 ($180 off) in the run-up to Amazon’s annual Big Spring Sale.
Although they’re undoubtedly getting a little long in the tooth — the Beats design hasn’t fundamentally changed since 2017 — the Beats Studio Pro remain a solid pair of platform-agnostic headphones, particularly at this price. They offer one-touch pairing with both iOS and Android devices, along with support for Apple’s Find My and Google’s Find Hub networks, allowing you to locate them a little easier should you ever misplace them. Apple users get hands-free Siri access and support for head-tracking spatial audio, while Android folks get an AirPods-like audio switching trick that lets you effortlessly jump between different Android devices (phones, Chromebooks, etc.).
As far as sound quality is concerned, the Studio Pro aren’t going to rival that of newer options like Bose’s latest QuietComfort Ultra or Sony’s WH-1000XM6 (or even the last-gen XM5, for that matter). Their custom 40mm drivers don’t deliver anything exceptional, but their signature is balanced and decent enough, even if it sheds some of the low-end oomph for which Beats was once known. Plus, they offer an excellent transparency mode for piping outside noise and support lossless playback over USB-C, letting you leverage 24-bit / 48kHz audio from compatible platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music. Now, if only USB-C playback didn’t disable all access to their noise cancellation and transparency modes when active.