Beats Solo Pro review: beat the noise

Beats has sold over 30 million units of its mainstream on-ear Solo headphones over the years, and now there’s a brand-new pair with a long-awaited feature: noise cancellation. The Powerbeats Pro were the first earbuds designed in collaboration with Apple from the very beginning, and the Solo Pros are the first headphones built from the ground up in concert by Beats and engineers at Apple. Beats headphones contain Apple silicon (the H1 chip is inside the Solo Pros, just like the latest AirPods). Beats will always have its critics, but the Solo Pros offer good noise cancellation, better-than-expected durability, lengthy battery life, and a balanced sound profile that won’t rattle your skull with amped-up bass. I get that, but some people will find these headphones fatiguing or run into discomfort wearing the Solo Pros for extended periods like, say, on a long flight. But we started counting exactly how many times you have to hit “agree” to use devices when we review them since these are agreements most people don’t read and definitely can’t negotiate.You can use the Beats Solo Pros out of the box without agreeing to anything by pairing them over Bluetooth as usual. If you need to hear ambient noise for safety reasons or to pay for your coffee or something, you can press the button on the underside of the left ear cup to enter “transparency mode.” The Solo Pros have one of the most natural-sounding passthrough modes I’ve heard yet. The mids aren’t lost or recessed, despite a tuning that goes for excitement over faithful reproduction, and the high end is well represented without turning shrill.Do the Solo Pros sound as good as Sennheiser’s $400 also-noise-canceling Momentum 3 headphones? But even as they are, the Solo Pros are perhaps the best headphones Beats has produced.