Beats Studio Buds + Review

The Beats Studio Buds + fit a niche in the market for affordable noise-cancelling earbuds, but unless you're a Beats loyalist, it might be worth saving up a little for other options that do it all better.


Performance Comparison

Sound Quality

We ran the Beats Studio Buds + through two separate types of sound quality testing to get the most comprehensive, accurate results. We had a panel of audio experts listen to them under a variety of performance conditions. The experts found that while the sound profile follows our curve pretty well, the listening experience suffers from a lack of clarity. There's no particular volume sweet spot where song mixes sound full and clear.


At all volumes, the midrange feels particularly underemphasized, while the bass is quite heavy and demanding. With vocal-heavy songs like “Shine” by Leon Bridges, there is strong sibilance (hissing sound) that is quite distracting from the rest of the mix.

However, when you remove the glaringly sub-par midrange from the track, modern instrumental music offers an interesting and immersive listening experience, with the heavy bass emphasis creating a punchy energy.

Soundstage

The soundstage of an earbud influences how you perceive music spatially, creating the impression of where the band, or even specific instruments, are located around you. When we go to see a band or attend a party, we're used to hearing sound originating in front of us, with some sound bouncing off nearby surfaces like walls or stadium seating.

Due to their compact, in-ear design, earbuds offer a more confined listening experience, but some engineers work to create a more expansive soundstage. Achieving truly expansive soundscapes is uncommon among earbuds. Unless you're a gamer or an audiophile, you may not notice much of a difference. If immersive audio is a priority for you, these particular earbuds are about average in this metric.

While you can locate individual instruments around you with the Beats Studio Buds +, they don't create a big, expansive soundstage. That means that simple arrangements work much better than big stadium bangers. Sparse songs like “I Want You” by The Hunter Express work beautifully, allowing listeners a closeness to the guitar and lone voice that would get lost in a bigger space or showier production.

It sounds more accurate and authentic because you can hear small details without losing clarity. This is particularly noticeable at 1:16 when the vocalist sings the word “you” with a pronounced “ch” sound and at 1:33, 1:40, or 1:43 when fingers are sliding over the frets. These little imperfections come through cleanly and establish the intimate, unpolished mood the lyrics are trying to evoke.

To flesh out our sound quality scoring, we established a frequency response baseline using our testing rig and compared it against our GearLab House Curve. Then, taking a look at our frequency response chart, we can see that the Studio Buds + follow our House Curve quite closely until we hit some deviation in the midrange. This affirms our expert's experience of vocals struggling to be heard clearly in the mix. If you only listen to bass-heavy instrumental music (not EDM, but actual instruments), you can remove the midrange distractions. However, it's hard to recommend these buds for any other music genre.


User Experience

The Beats Studio Buds + were not standout performers in any of our tested UX metrics.

Comfort


Overall, these earbuds are comfortable enough in medium-to-large ears; however, being on the heftier side, they can feel a bit insecure for smaller ears. As such, if you have smaller ears, you might find longer listening sessions uncomfortable.

Stability

The Studio Buds + do not have any supplementary stabilization wings, which means that during high activity, if your ears don't fit these buds just right they tend to fall out. Because of this, these are not great earbuds for doing anything beyond sitting or slow walking. It's also worth mentioning that the case is quite round and smooth, making it awkward and slippery when trying to handle it.

Customization

The app is decent, albeit simple, and has no EQ customizability or ear fit seal test. There is an Android app for these, allowing non-Apple users to toggle through active noise cancellation (ANC) modes, but it, too, lacks any customizability.

Connectivity

Ease and consistency of connectivity contributed to a good listening experience. During our in-house testing, the Beats Studio Buds + did not give us any problems with pairing or maintaining a connection. We also collected and analyzed reported issues from a survey of 1-star Amazon User Reviews and calculated a frequency percentage of connectivity issues. The Buds + did alright here; at 1.03%, they come close to average in terms of how often users had problems with earbud connection.

Noise Cancellation

We tested the Beats Studio Buds+ noise-cancelling abilities by finding the best passive seal we could for our testing rig and then playing various background noises to measure noise pollution. Then we turned ANC on and performed the same tests, allowing us to differentiate between passive and active noise-cancelling ability.


The ANC on these earbuds left much to be desired across all ranges. Though they do manage to block out some noise, it isn't much better than a pair of earplugs.

As you can see in the chart above, they struggle to block out mid to treble-range noise (think cafe or office chatter). Compared to the other earbuds in our lineup, they also don't block out bass very well either. However, when you consider the price point, they do beat some of their more expensive competitors. That is the key takeaway here: these earbuds, while not the strongest performers, provide ANC at a much lower price point than you tend to see in the current market.

Battery Life

To measure the Beats Studio Buds + battery life, we set the volume to a set decibel level with ANC off and let them play continuously until they died. This is the one metric where these earbuds really shined, demonstrating some of the longest playback times we recorded among all of the earbuds we tested.


The manufacturer claims that the Studio Buds + can play around 8 hours at a time, but we measured 9 hours and 40 minutes. During all of our earbud testing, we didn't often see such impressive performance that exceeded manufacturer claims by that much. You can get another two charges or nearly 20 more hours of playback from the charging case, and a 5-minute quick charge nets you another hour. Despite the stellar battery performance, it's worth noting that there is no wireless charging ability for the charging case.

Call Quality

The Beats Studio Buds + have outstanding call quality. We measured this by setting our earbuds up in the testing rig and having it play different phrases into the microphone. Then, we played different background noises to stress test the mic's ability.

During the subway stress test, we were still able to make out voices clearly, with lower voices sounding louder than higher-pitched voices. Below, you can listen to how these earbuds sound in office and transit settings.

The Beats Studio Buds + had excellent, clear mic quality with light background chatter, outperforming some of the most premium earbuds in our lineup. With background office noise, voices remained quite clear despite also being able to hear some of that background.

For good measure, we recorded how these sound in a hushed room. As expected, the call was very clear.

All told, these earbuds excelled at call quality compared to the rest of the lineup and performed as well or better than many of their more premium competitors.

Should You Buy the Beats Studio Buds +?

The Beats Studio Buds + are a good option if you want premium features but don't want to spend over $200. That said, they don't go above and beyond when it comes to sound quality, ANC, and user experience. While they do have stellar battery life and call quality, most people aren't buying earbuds just to talk on the phone.

What Other Earbuds Should You Consider?

For only a little bit more, we'd recommend the Samsung Galaxy Buds2 Pro. While they don't integrate into the Apple ecosystem quite as seamlessly, they have better sound quality, UX, and ANC than the Studio Buds + for about the same price. Likewise, the Jabra Elite 8 Active are similarly priced and perform quite a bit better in every metric we tested. If you want buds around this price point that you can use during physical activity, the Jabra Elite 8 Active earbuds are a must-consider.