Last month, we reported that Apple's own code had leaked the existence of Beats Studio Pro, the company's new contender for the best headphones crown in 2023. Now they've turned up again, this time in filings with the US FCC.
Such filings tend to happen a few weeks before new products are announced, so it looks like the Beats Studio Pro launch is imminent.
The Beats Studio Pro are the successor to the Beats Studio3 over-ear headphones. We really liked them when they came out, but they were released a very long time ago – first appearing in 2017. They've also had just minor refreshes since – and the best wireless headphones on the market today are vastly superior. So a replacement is long overdue.
What do we know about the Beats Studio Pro headphones?
We know the model number for the Beats Studio Pro is A2924 and that their internal ID is BeatsStudioPro1, thanks to a previous leak. But that doesn’t exactly shed a lot of light on their specifications. In all honesty, there’s no hard information about these new Beats, but there are a lot of improvements that are not so much likely as pretty much guaranteed.
The biggest such improvement is a new chip. The Beats Studio3 had Apple’s W1 chip, which was also in AirPods of a few years ago. However, Apple’s silicon has improved a lot in recent years, and the AirPods Pro 2 have the H2 chip. That delivers much better performance and noise cancellation; the cheaper AirPods (3rd Gen) have the H1, which isn’t quite as good but is still significantly better than the W1.
The main differences between W-series and H-series chips are that the H-series deliver faster, more stable connections, better battery life, lower latency and Siri support. So a move to the H1 or better still, the H2 would be a big boost for the Beats.
A pair of Beats over-ears with personalised spatial audio, better audio and Siri support is likely to be a hit if the price is right. The RRP of the Studio3 is $349, and I’d expect their successors to be priced similarly. Expect a launch this summer.
