It looks like Apple is working on a new contender for the title of best wireless headphones: code spotted in a new beta of macOS Ventura reveals the existence of a brand new set of Beats' best headphones, which appear to be the rumoured Beats Studio Pro.
As MacRumors reports, the headphones have the model number A2924, which means they're not the same product as the forthcoming Beats Studio Buds+ earbuds.
What to expect from the Beats Studio Pro
The Beats Studio Pro are likely to be the next generation of the Beats Studio 3, which are effectively Beats' alternative to Apple's own AirPods Max. The Studio 3 are getting on a bit – they were launched in 2017 – so a new version is long overdue.
The current Beats use Apple's W1 wireless chip and that's likely to go in favour of a custom Beats chip. According to sources speaking to 9to5Mac, they'll have Personalised Spatial Audio, significantly improved active noise cancellation and "hey, Siri" support. USB-C charging is likely too.
The official price of the Studio 3 is $349, so you can expect a similar price for these – so they're coming in well under the price of the ageing AirPods Max, which have been around since 2020 and which are also due for replacement. If the Studio Pro are as good as these reports suggest, they could be a serious rival to their Apple-branded siblings.
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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).
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