While we're still waiting on Apple's rumored noise-canceling AirPods, we now know the company is adding noice cancellation to another of its most popular headphones.
Today Beats unveiled the Solo Pro headphones, the $299.95 successor to the wireless Solo3, which come with 22 hours of battery life and active noise cancellation — a first for the Solo line.
With Solo Pro, Beats has upgraded virtually every aspect of the headphones. The new design, which is available in three new "more matte" colors, looks sleeker. The ear cushions and frame have been redesigned to make the headphones more comfortable and improve the sound quality. And there's no longer a dedicated power switch on the headphones themselves. Instead, the power switch is embedded in the actual frame so that folding or unfolding them powers them off and on.
Under the hood, Solo Pro use the same type of active noise cancellation as Beats' Studio line. Two external mics continuously sample noise from your surroundings in order to adjust noice cancellation levels on the fly. There's also a new "Transparency" mode, which allows ambient noise to filter in for moments when you don't want total noise cancellation, similar to "ambient mode" on Samsung's Galaxy Buds.
The Solo Pro headphones are powered by the same H1 chip that's in Apple's latest AirPods and Powerbeats Pro, so pairing to an iPhone should be just as effortless (Beats also has a dedicated Android app to ease the process for Android users), and if you're using iOS 13, you can take advantage of Apple's new audio sharing feature. And the battery life is a solid 22 hours (up to 40 if you don't use noise cancellation).
Speaking of battery life, the Solo Pro headphones won't come with an audio cable in the box, but Beats will sell a separate audio cable for those who want a wired connection (though you'll still need one of those dreaded lightning to 3.5mm dongles if you want to plug them into a newer iPhone).
With the release, Beats' Solo headphones are the latest in its lineup to get the "Pro" moniker (the first were the Powerbeats Pro, which were introduced earlier this year). It's not yet clear if the company plans to bring the "Pro" label to its pricier Studio headphones, but considering Apple's most premium iPhones are also now called "Pro," it seems more and more likely. (I also wouldn't be surprised if the rumored noise-canceling AirPods also got the "Pro" branding.)
Beats Solo Pro are available now for pre-order on Apple's website and will ship October 30.
