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The Beats have a slightly better-balanced default sound than the Plantronics. They’re also more comfortable, portable, and have a sleeker design that’s stable enough for the gym and sports. The Plantronics, on the other hand, have a better wireless range and battery life than the Beats.
I’m usually a little more lenient with Beats products because I know they’re going to sell anyway, but the Studio3 Wireless isn’t worth the original $350 USD. On promotion, for less than $200 USD is a different story. This headset becomes a fairly priced option at that point but the “studio” moniker doesn’t make this a real set of studio headphones. The Apple W1 headphone chip brings seamless setup and switching for your Apple devices§, so you can easily move about, keep the music going, and stay productive all day.
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Their ANC feature is also one of the best on the market and blocks noticeably more background noise than the Beats. On the other hand, the Beats will be slightly better-suited for bass-heavy genres, and they leak beats flex review less than the Bose. They also have an in-line microphone for calls, which the Bose are lacking. The battery life of the Beats is about three hours longer than the Bose, but they don’t have a power-saving feature.
If you have $350 USD to spare on a pair of headphones, I definitely recommend you get the Sony WH-1000XM4 over the Beats Studio3. Its active noise cancelling performance is one of the very best available, this offers Bluetooth multipoint among other features, and its sound signature is much more accurate than the Studio3. If you want to save a bit of cash, go for the older Sony WH-1000XM3. Beats claims a battery life of 22 hours with active noise cancelling turned on and 40 hours without. For reference, Bose claims about 20 hours of constant playback on their QC35 headphones. In our testing here we got 10 hours, 12 minutes on 100% volume with ANC turned on, so it isn’t hard to see how you could push these well beyond the 22 hours unless you want to blow out your eardrums.