Why You Can Trust CNET Beats Pro High-Performance (White) review: Beats Pro High-Performance (White)
Beats Pro High-Performance (White)
It's been three years since the world was first introduced to the Beats by Dr. Dre headphone line, and it's definitely grown to become a Monster of a business (pun intended). From earbuds to portable speakers to iPod docks to laptops, Dr. Dre and Monster have hit every market imaginable.
Beats Pro High-Performance (White)
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
This time around their sights are set on the DJs and producers of the world, with a bigger and badder (and pricier) pair of headphones--the Beats Pro by Dr. Dre from Monster Headphones. At $450 (you can find it for a bit less at retailers), you're not paying solely for the performance of the headphones but more for the combination of durability, build, style, and name.
The first impression is of the sheer size and heft of the headphones. They feel quite heavy on the head, and may not be ideal for the casual user. The oversize look will certainly turn a few heads, and note that indulging in too much head-bopping will give the Pros enough momentum to slide off your ears.
The build quality is solid--these will stand up to a few knocks and tosses on the couch, or on the floor, and they feel extremely durable. The large padded headband attaches to adjustable brushed aluminum sides, ending with full-size earcups that rotate upward for storage. Each earcup is rounded and padded in a leatherlike material that is exceptionally cushy, and each includes an input/output port. The ear cushions can be removed for washing.
The Beats Pro uses a single red audio-cord cable with a secured connector that locks into place on the bottom of each earcup and can be swapped to either side of the earcups. The unused port then becomes a second output for hooking up another set of headphones and "daisy-chaining" the sound from the Pros to the second set of headphones for communal listening. We found daisy-chaining other headphones to the Beats Pro decreased the sound level quite a bit on the Pros themselves, but not to the point of dramatically hindering performance. Two sound sources besides headphones can also be plugged into the Pros--one into each earcup--if, for whatever reason, the need to listen to two songs simultaneously comes up. The possibility for amateur mixing may fit somewhere in there, but most DJs use mixers with cue channels for this.
The cable cord is thick and rubberized with a coiled section, giving some extra extension if you need to be an extra foot, or two, away from your music source for a moment. It does take some conditioning to get the headphones to stretch further out, without stopping short, when you first get them out of the box, as the cable is initially coiled very tightly.
Even with an adjustable headband, the Beats Pro are a tight fit on the ears and can cause some discomfort after an hour or so of continuous use. It may not be the same for everyone, but it was a problem for us at the time.
There has been concern that some MP3 players cannot power these headphones. Unlike the original Beats, the Pros are not battery-powered, which means the power consumption involved in powering the large speakers is pretty high. While the Pros will work just fine with the majority of the players we've used--iPod Touch, iPod Classic, Nano, Zune HD, and Creative Zen: Vision M--the Shuffle wasn't as successful, as it didn't output enough power for the headphones and hampered the audibility.
In use, the bass is booming; no disappointments there. As we'd expect, the genres that really shine are electronic (dub, drum and bass), dance, hard rock, and hip-hop. Strong kick drums and wandering bass lines were always prominent and delivered a proper thump. The lows are great, the mids are clear, and the highs are crisp without being tinny.
Other genres were also very good for the most part, but neither as stellar, nor inspiring. Percussion and strings, or subgenres consisting of intricate and layered sound, weren't as well defined as we would like. It takes some tweaking on the user's part (via EQ settings on your player) to get the best sound for some subtle music types.
We had the best results when turning the volume on our player up halfway. Anything higher and the bass tend to overpower the highs and mids, making the overall sound muddled and messy. There is a reasonable amount of sound isolation in heavily trafficked environments (the subway, for example). In a quiet office setting, however, the Pros do leak a bit of sound--a common complaint about earlier Beats headphones, but there's a definite improvement since the Studios were introduced.
Each earcup swivels up inside the headband, which cuts down their size in length, but they do not fold flat, so the travel pouch included was a bit of a disappointment. We would've preferred something similar to the hard-shell case included with the Beats Studio and Beats Solo.
In addition to being sold in both black and white versions, the Beats Pro come with a cleaning cloth (although the headphones are basically smudge-proof) and a threaded 1/4-inch gold-plated adapter--tethered to the 1.8-meter cable to avoid being lost.
Although the price is relatively high for the casual consumer, it is consistent with how much professional DJs spend for headphones. At the same time, these headphones probably won't satisfy the hard-core audiophiles who demand uncolored, accurate sound. For faithful, accurate, natural tone in your headphones, these cans don't offer that kind of precise audio reproduction. What they do offer, however, is a massive amount of swagger. We see these headphones satisfying aspiring DJs or anyone with a good deal of spare cash who really enjoys blasting the wax out of their ears.