Studio Buds Plus

Noise-cancelling earbuds usually treat your ear as a fixed shape. Beats treats it as a variable, which is why the Studio Buds+ spec sheet talks about fit and cancellation in the same breath rather than quoting one figure and hoping.

The Studio Buds+ cancel up to 1.6 times more noise than the earbuds they replace, and they do it by adapting the cancellation to the seal each ear actually forms instead of running one fixed profile. Three acoustic vents cut into the earbud body relieve the pressure that ANC normally builds against the eardrum, the thing that makes some noise-cancelling earbuds tiring after an hour, and a custom acoustic platform sits behind them to handle the sound itself. Transparency mode lets the outside back in on demand, and Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos support adds a sense of placement to mixes recorded for it.

The other unusual decision is that these work natively with both phones from the same box: Apple one-touch pairing and Find My on one side, Google Fast Pair and Find My Device on the other, with no app-store detour to make the second platform behave.

Controls are a single multi-function button on each earbud, handling music, calls and the voice assistant with no touch surface to misfire. The earbuds alone hold nine of the 36 hours, so the case does most of the work, and a five-minute charge covers the gap when it does not.