Review: Beats Solo 4
Like many of you, I wear earbuds a lot during the day. During the week, this is mostly at my desk or during a walk. Nights and weekends find me wearing them while doing house and yard work. I’ve honestly never been a headphones guy. Years ago, I just used Apple’s white wired earbuds. Later, I moved to AirPods, then AirPods Pro, then AirPods Pro 2. (With a couple of other earbud types along the way.) But I find earbuds to be uncomfortable for long listening sessions. I just don’t enjoy that feeling that I have something in my ears.
I had been thinking for a while that it might be time to invest in a pair of headphones, if only for use during desk time. Recently, the Beats Solo 4 have been on sale at Amazon for half off — $99 instead of the MSRP of $199. So I pulled the trigger. As blue is my favorite color, I opted for the Slate Blue edition, and I really like the look.
From a comfort standpoint, these have mostly achieved the primary goal I had for this purchase. The faux leather material on the ear cups is quite comfortable against the ears, and the similar material along the inside of the headband is equally comfortable. Because these are on-ear (not over-ear), the only real source of discomfort is the clamping force, which keeps these snugly against your ears. In my experience, it’s not much of an issue except that after long listening sessions, the force of the ear cups pressing against my ears causes some discomfort when pushing into my glasses stems. If I weren’t a glasses wearer, I might have no discomfort issues at all.
Sound quality is tough to write about because everyone’s tastes are different. I’m not an audiophile, though as a musician my ears may be more sensitive than the average listener. Because I was so used to my AirPods Pro 2, which has beefier bass and midrange, but weaker highs, I noticed the highs instantly when listening to the Beats Solo 4. Initially my impression was that it was weighted a little too much toward the highs. That’s quite the inversion of the reputation Beats had before Apple acquired it. As I’ve spent more time with the Solo 4 though, I’ve grown to appreciate the clarity of sound that these provide across the entire range. (To the point that the AirPods Pro 2 sound a bit muddy to me.) Vocals are prominent and clear in the mix, and snare hits really pop. Bass is clear and defined, but I would actually appreciate a bit more of it. (But I am a bass player, so that may be a me thing.) Recordings that previously sounded muddy to me actually sound much more distinct with the Solo 4. The only downside is that because the highs are so clear, music with a lot of cymbals can be a bit difficult to listen to for long sessions. I find it also means that the stereo mix often sounds better to me than the spatial audio mix when listening to the Solo 4. Since spatial audio tends to, well, space everything out more, it can be a little too spaced out with these headphones.
Because these sit on your ears and have quite a bit of padding on the ear cups, they provide quite a bit of natural sound isolation. Vacuuming while listening to a podcast won’t send you reaching for the volume-up button. But they don’t have active noise cancellation. That doesn’t really bother me so much, but what I really wish these had is a transparency mode. If you’re not listening to anything, you can hear someone speaking to you, but you’re going to want to remove them to have a conversation. Another item for the cons column: the ear cups aren’t removable, so when they go bad, you’ll have to buy new headphones. They also don’t have ear detection, so lifting one ear cup off of your ear, or resting the headphones on your neck won’t pause your music.
These also don’t have the Apple H2 chip, so you don’t get automatic device switching. That’s not a big deal for me though because I find that doesn’t work well enough with my AirPods anyway, and I frequently find it’s connected to the wrong device. So I kind of like having to manually switch between devices. But these do use Bluetooth 5.3, along with fast-pairing on both iOS and Android. Apple users will also find that iCloud syncs the pairing across your devices. These also get 50 hours of battery life, so I find myself charging these way less than AirPods.
Beats Solo 4 has a 3.5mm port, and it also supports lossless audio over USB-C. Both cables are included in the box.
These are not premium headphones, but they are very good ones. I wouldn’t spend the full MSRP on these, but they feel more than worth the $99 I paid for them. Would I rather have Apple’s AirPods Max headphones? Yes. Am I willing to spend $500 on a pair of headphones? No. So if you have similar needs in headphones to what I’ve described above, I think you’ll like the Beats Solo 4.