Beats 360 Review

Design

• Detachable earcups and headband
• Cushion Kits
• IPX4 rating

The design of the Beats 360 is rather novel in the sense that the earpads and the headband cushion can be detached and swapped out for another pair.

It reminds me of the rumoured AirPods Max. It brings some personality in that you can swap out colours and create your own look, as well as some practicality with the choice of two Cushion Kits: Performance Knit and Ultra Plush.

The former is more for the gym and workouts. The earpads feature a ‘breathable’ fabric that’s slightly abrasive and should survive the rough and tumble of sweaty workouts. They’re available in Black, Cloud (white), Pink, Sky Blue, Volt, and Navy.

Ultra Plush is your commuter-friendly pair of earpads, offering a softer contact surface. They come in just the Black and White options, and for a limited time the Cushion Kits were available at a reduced amount. Now they’re back up to £49.95 for each colour.

The headphones come in Black, Cloud, Pink, and Sky Blue, so when combined with the Cushion Kits, there’s a decent number of colour combos to play with. The earcups have an almost-translucent finish, so depending on how you hold them, you can see light filtering through, which looks cool.

Comfort-wise, they’re good. The clamping force is slightly tight, keeping the headphones fixed to your noggin without feeling like they’re squeezing your head. It’s a surprise to see they tip the scales at nearly 300g. They certainly don’t feel that heavy when I’m wearing them.

I found the clamping force gets less over time, and wearing the headphones at the gym, they stayed put during stomach crunches and didn’t slip and slide when I took them for several runs.

In a rarity for an over-ear pair, the Beats 360 are rated to IPX4. That doesn’t mean they’re waterproof, but they are protected from splashes of water and sweat. I wore them on a cold, wet October evening, and the headphones came through that experience unscathed.

The Beats 360 rely on physical controls, but I do find it slightly difficult to locate them. I have to trace my finger over the earcup to find them, but the controls themselves aren’t too fussy to deal with. There’s power/Bluetooth pairing, noise cancellation, playback and volume control, and the buttons, once found, are all responsive to pushes.

I like the case the headphones come in, though it isn’t a hard carry case. Beats describes it as a woven ripstop fabric case. It feels quite plush and reminds me of a purse.

The opening is held together by magnets, so pull it aside to open, and to close it just seal it up. There’s a loop handle to carry it and the case feels slight enough to fit into a bag without taking up too much space. It’s a better bag than the one the Beats Studio Pro came in, which had a zip that always got stuck.

Disappointingly, Beats doesn’t provide a USB-C cable so you’ll need to fetch one of your own. There’s no charger included either. The headphones are only compatible with a 2.5W – 7.5W charger. Anything else (I’ve tried) and the headphones won’t charge properly.

Sound Quality

• Adaptive EQ
• Smooth midrange
• Balanced presentation

Beats calls the 360 its best-sounding over-ears to date. I’ll get to whether they are a little later, but first, how do they sound?

Beats has taken them in a different direction from the Studio Pro. They’re not sharp or as defined, with the sound taking on a smoother texture. The presentation errs more towards neutral, so while there’s a sense of dynamism, these headphones don’t boast the most energetic of sounds.

The soundstage is wide and within it there are solid levels of detail and clarity. The tone of the headphones is not unlike that of Apple Music masters. I wouldn’t describe these headphones as the most natural-sounding, but they do sound balanced.

With MEUTE’s You & Me, there’s an appreciable sense of punch and weight to the low frequencies, but the bass is characterised by a sense of control. There’s power that underpins the bass, but it’s always kept in check.

The midrange sounds very smooth, as do vocals (both male and female), and the smoothness gives me the impression that they’re not the most detailed-sounding pair. They’re not too dissimilar to the Bose QuietComfort Headphones 2^nd Gen in their approach, but the Bose boast a warmer tone. A pair like the Sennheiser Momentum 5 Wireless pack less bass punch than the Beats, but the midrange has more character and expression.

Treble is solid without necessarily standing out. The highs are presented with clarity and decent levels of detail, the headphones solidly describing the varying tones of the piano in GoGo Penguin’s Erased by Sunlight, but my overall feeling about the Beats 360 is that they’re not the most insightful.

It’s further confirmed after digging out a pair of the Beats Studio Pro. The Pro are clearer, more detailed, and have a naturalness with vocals and treble that the 360 don’t. They’re not as punchy with bass, but they offer more insight, and a little more energy and verve. The Beats 360, by comparison, feel like they’ve been sanded off in terms of detail.

Personalised Spatial Audio apparently needs an iPhone to set up, so if you don’t have one, you get standard Spatial Audio. Spatial Audio comes with head-tracking, and watching The Martian on an iPad, the effect is subtle. But with video content I find it’s better with Spatial Audio on.

Noise Cancellation

• Excellent call quality
• Detailed Transparency mode
• Strong ANC performance

The Beats 360’s noise cancellation is pretty good. But if you’re after the best at this price, it’s not quite up there with the best ANC models.

I’ve worn these on planes, on the Underground, on public transport, at the gym, and walking around London, and the ANC is reliable enough in a variety of environments.

At the gym, I only realised at the end of each session that I didn’t pick up on anything that happened when I was there. On a plane they keep cabin noise at bay, but compared to the (more expensive) Technics EAH-A1000, they’re not as powerful. On the Underground, they’re good at keeping the howl of the Tube to lower levels, though when it gets very loud some noise evades the reach of the microphones.

Compared to the Bose QuietComfort Headphones 2^nd Gen (available for the same price), both perform similarly in suppressing noise, but the Bose edge this battle by being more consistent. And comparing the Beats to the Sennheiser Momentum 5 Wireless, the Sennheiser are also (slightly) better at reducing noise.

I’ve also noticed there’s a slight hiss with ANC on. It’s audible when no music is playing, and when there’s audio, it meshes with the overall sound.

The transparency mode on the Beats 360 is very good. It’s not the most natural-sounding, and rather than just letting sounds in, it amplifies them too. It’s so clear and detailed I could hear the rustle of another person’s jacket as I was walking by.

Call quality is excellent. No background noise seeps through, and the person on the other end couldn’t even hear the voices of other people when I was outside. The only slight issue they noted was that voice pick-up was less good when outside. Otherwise, this is a very good call performance.

One other thing to mention is that ANC is disabled when the earcups are not properly connected. Both earcups need to be twisted and locked into place, otherwise a red light pops up suggesting something is wrong.

Features

• Similar features list across iOS and Android
• Bluetooth multi-point
• Beats app for Android users

While Beats talks about the features being consistent across iOS and Android, the list of features is neither massive, nor has it grown in number since the Beats rebrand.

The headphones connect over Bluetooth 5.3, with Bluetooth multi-point support and Google Fast Pair for Android devices. Apple users get One-Touch Pairing, and there’s iCloud sharing too.

I haven’t experienced many issues with the wireless performance aside from a few static moments at a train station (which I think was more the phone than the headphones) – so let’s call the wireless performance reassuringly solid. Multi-point didn’t work properly for me between an iPad and Android smartphone. I could connect to one but not both.

Otherwise, there’s Automatic Switching (on both iOS and Android), Find Hub/Find My if you lose the device. For iOS users, settings are baked into the UI itself, while for Android users there’s the Beats app.

There’s not much to do in the app aside from select ANC modes, check battery life, adjust tone volume, fiddle with call controls and update the firmware. It’s pretty bog-standard, without much in the way of customising performance or sound.

Battery Life

• No cables or charger included
• Up to 32 hours
• Fast Fuel support

Beats thinks the 360 offers up to 32 hours of battery life when ANC and Personalised Spatial Audio are enabled. I reckon it can do more than that.

I didn’t enable Personalised Spatial Audio, so my figures are sans that. But over the course of four hours, the headphones lost about 8% charge, which suggests a much higher figure.

I think 30+ hours is around the right mark as it did take about two weeks and several adventures with the headphones for them to fall to 20%. As I mentioned in the Design section, these headphones lack a cable or charger, and need a specific power supply to charge properly.

Once you’ve got those, Beats says its Fast Fuel (quick charging) provides an hour’s playback from a five-minute charge. That’s a little on the low-side considering there are headphones that provide 8 hours from just five minutes.

Should you buy it?