Beats 360 Review: The Best Gym Headphones?

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The Beats 360 are a genuinely clever rethink of the over-ear headphone formula, with swappable cushions, excellent sound, and great ANC that make them the most compelling gym-ready headphones on the market. A few minor niggles - pricey cushion kits and no USB-C audio - can't diminish what is an impressive and well-executed product.

The Good

1. Swappable cushions are a genuinely useful, well-executed feature
2. Excellent sound quality for the price and audience
3. ANC nearly matches AirPods Max 2
4. IPX4 water resistance makes them truly gym and weather ready
5. Up to 256 colour combinations for serious personalisation

The Not So Good

1. Cushion kits are expensive at full retail price
2. No USB-C audio
3. Storing multiple cushion sets isn't well catered for

• User Ratings (1 Votes)
  8.6

Beats has made a new pair of headphones. And they look rather different to most of what has come from Beats previously.

In fact, the Beats 360 are the most significant design rethink for the Californian company’s over-ear headphones in over a decade.

It was needed, too. I’m a big fan of what has happened to Beats since Apple bought Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine’s company for around $3 billion in 2014. The audio has matured, and the overall packaging has become very… well, Apple. Obviously.

We just needed something… different, this time around.

The Beats 360 still look like a pair of Beats headphones thanks to the iconic logo that sits proudly on both ear cups. But that’s where any similarities with their forefathers end, and it’s for some very smart reasons.

The big question is: are they for you?

Specs and pricing

The Beats 360 feature custom drivers and run on the Gen 4 Beats platform (the Beats Studio Pro use the Gen 2 platform).

The battery delivers 32 hours of use with ANC (active noise cancelling) on, and a five-minute charge provides one hour of playback.

There are nine mics for ANC and voice pickup, Bluetooth 5.3 for connectivity (there’s no USB-C audio on offer), and IPX4 water resistance for peace of mind. More on that later.

The Beats 360 also feature swappable ear and head cushions. They come in two forms – Performance Knit and UltraPlush; the former is for working out, the latter for everything else. And there are 32 colour combinations. Because, of course there are – this is Beats.

Apple connectivity is as comprehensive and all-encompassing as it is on AirPods, but there’s great Android support, too. That’s where Beats headphones differ slightly from the rest of Apple’s personal audio gear – it’s happy(ish) to play nicely with both sides.

Price-wise, the Beats 360 are £299.95/$349.99, with the cushion kits priced at £49.99/$49.99. If the latter produced an involuntary gasp of breath, you can at least pick those extra cushions up for an introductory price of £9.99/$9.99 for a limited time in certain markets.

Design and comfort

Remove the cushioning from the Beats 360, and you’ll see just how little there is to these headphones. There’s a separate chip and battery per ear cup, and a single charging wire crossing the headband. Despite this, with the cushioning reattached, they’re a little heavier than the Studio Pro. Although that isn’t really noticeable.

They’re also made from 80% recycled plastic – the most of any Beats product. That’ll make you feel a little better about dropping your hard-earned money on yet another pair of headphones.

About those cushions. It’s a super cool idea, and well executed. The ear cushions are removed easily with a gentle twist. Reattach them, and a little chime sounds to indicate they’ve been recognised by the headphones (the 360 retune themselves to best match the type of ear cushion you’ve attached).

The head cushion is a little fiddlier to remove due to being held in place via clips, but becomes easier with practice.

Beats’ reasoning for offering this functionality is pretty simple. If you regularly work out while wearing headphones, they get all sweaty and horrible after a while; therefore, the ability to swap the element (the cushioning) that soaks up all that moisture is extremely useful. Plus, you can tailor them to match your own ‘vibe’. Plus, colours really matter in tech these days.

Those aren’t Beats’ words, but it’s pretty obvious that’s why the Beats 360 exist.

There is one question: will the novelty wear off? I’ve been testing them for a couple of weeks now, and I’m already in the habit of automatically swapping back to the UltraPlush after hammering the Performance Knit in the gym. The only challenge I’ve found is storing multiple cushion replacements, because the included headphone bag doesn’t really account for that (and I don’t want the minging, sweaty ones to fester in there).

Sorry if there’s way too much detail in this review. It’s unavoidable.

The aforementioned headphone bag is spot on for a product like the 360. It’s well made and breathable, but also highly chuckable for anyone who doesn’t carry their headphones around naked. Which I gather isn’t very many people these days.

They are a supremely comfortable pair of headphones whether you’re working out or chilling out. No complaints there. I just wish they didn’t stick out from my head quite so much (less likely to be an issue for the non-folically-challenged out there).

Last note on design: there are no touch controls. Thank you, Apple.

If you’re weighing up over-ear options, we’ve also compared the AirPods Max 2 vs Sony WH-1000XM6 to help you decide.

Sound

Those custom drivers are 40mm and dual-magnet. They also feature a three-layer sandwich diaphragm with different stiffnesses per layer. I have absolutely no idea what that means, but it should, apparently, ensure great sound reproduction in the lower end of the frequency spectrum with barely any distortion.

The Beats 360 also feature Adaptive EQ, Spatial Audio with head tracking, and Dolby Atmos.

But what do they sound like?

Great. Really good, for the price, the audience, and the intended use.

As noted earlier, I love how the Beats sound has evolved from extremely bass-heavy to far more balanced. The 360 don’t sound like a pair of Bowers & Wilkins headphones because they’re not a pair of Bowers & Wilkins headphones. But to my ears, they reproduce most genres in an exciting, energetic, and fairly faithful fashion.

However, precisely no one who buys the Beats 360 will be thinking about the intricacies involved here. They’ll just be happy that they sound great. Because they do.

I’m tired of being ‘called out’ in the comments section of my headphone reviews on YouTube for daring to suggest that headphones made by brands like Beats are worthy of attention from people who care about audio. Alongside smartphone photographic performance, audio is the most subjective, personal thing I deliver my opinion on.

The audio engineers behind Beats headphones know that. They also know that they simply need to make a pair of headphones that are EQ’d to please. They’re one of the best at doing so.

Noise cancelling

Of the nine mics on the Beats 360, eight of them are dedicated to ANC. The other two are shared between ANC and voice pickup.

Once again, exactly zero percent of the people who buy the Beats 360 will be thinking about that stuff. They’ll just pop them on their head in a coffee shop, hit the ANC button and be happy that the world is drowned out in a wash of entirely natural-feeling noise isolation.

It’s really good and is almost up there with AirPods Max 2. Similarly, the transparency mode works beautifully when you want to let the outside world in and hear your voice. No complaints.

As for the mic quality, I recommend heading over to my video review of the 360 to hear them in action. Without wishing to offer a spoiler, I found them to be really good in relatively tricky, windy conditions.

Want to see how another bold headphone design pays off? Check out our Nothing Headphone (a) review for a different take on affordable audio.

Conclusion

Beats will sell the 360 by the bucketload thanks to the extremely smart and highly marketable customisation (there are, in fact, up to 256 colour combinations if you mix colours).

That doesn’t automatically make them the best pair of gym headphones on the market, but I’m struggling to think of a worthy competitor.

I’m asked constantly in YouTube comments about whether <insert brand here> headphones are suitable for the gym, and my answer is always: “no”. I’ve just never understood why you’d want to wear over-ears in the gym. Until now. And boy, has Beats jumped on that market with something that is free of compromises.

Likewise, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen people walking in the rain while wearing AirPods Max. It frightens me to death. At least the Beats 360 are actually made for that kind of situation. Few headphones are.

The swappable cushions may, over time, prove to be more of a hassle for some, but for anyone who embraces that kind of headphone lifestyle, they’ll be a blessing.

Beats, you’ve done it again.

Shop the Beats 360 below!