Are Beats still average quality? I don't own any but know people who say their new stuff is quite good.
For some reason, perhaps undiagnosed hearing damage, my husband likes their stuff.
He bought me the Powerbeats 2,earbuds for my 49th birthday. They sound pretty good but they often skip and stutter and have limited range from the device. They hold a charge decently, though and they wedge pretty well into my ears. They do well on phone calls.
I like them but they were expensive. I appreciate the gift but no way would I spend that kind of money for them. Unfortunately I keep misplacing them. I never misplace my wired ones, but these are easy to lose so I'm not digging the wireless trend.
For my 50th birthday he got me the Beats Studio wireless noise cancellation headphones. He had asked for the same for last Christmas, and I got them for him and he loves his. I tried his once on the airplane and liked how they blocked the engine noise of the plane well enough that I could hear the music. At the time, because of the plane noise I couldn't judge the quality of the music, I just appreciated the muffling of the exterior noise and really envied him those headphones. So he got me my own when my birthday rolled around a few weeks ago. His I had purchased from Amazon and they came with the charger.
I think he purchased mine from the Apple Store. We searched the box thoroughly but there was no charger. Fortunately I have a charger on hand for a Bluetooth speaker. So that's a minor ripoff right there if they've decided to drop the charger from the newer package to save a few dollars.
As for the sound...imagine for a moment you're in a nice stereotypical man cave with the big no expenses spared stereo system and a big squashy leather sofa. Make it poofy faux leather from a shady discount furniture store, because the money went into the awesome stereo and the budget had to be cut somewhere.
Turn the stereo on to a comfortable volume, not overly loud and then go over to the sofa. Have a seat and listen. Music sounds great,doesn't it?
Well...now stand up and shove your head in between the poofy faux leather sofa cushions and give the music a listen that way.
That is what it's like to listen to music on Apple Music on my iPhone on my Beats Studio Wireless.
On my Note 7 with a special equalizer and audio booster custom set to compensate for any deficits in my own hearing, it sounds a bit better and more clear but the volume needs to be turned way up. I thought I had gone hearing impaired, but reassuringly found this is not the case with my twenty five year old Sony wired earbduds.
On the plus side they don't skip or stutter too badly and they can go pretty far from the device before they lose the signal.
