Beats Studio Pro Headphones Haven’t Been This Cheap Since Black Friday

The Beats Studio Pro has been on sale several times this year, but none of them have been for more than half off, as it is now. This isn’t some outdated pair of headphones they’re trying to offload, either.

Granted, it’s able to celebrate their two-year anniversary of entering the market in July, but it’s still Beats’ flagship headphones. And instead of its $350 retail price, you can pick up a pair for $170.

save the tunes, kill the noise

The major draw of stepping up to the Studio Pro within Beats’ lineup is its active noise cancellation (ANC). In layman’s terms, ANC uses software to detect and then cancel out incoming sound waves, making them far better at blocking out ambient noise and distractions than headphones that rely purely on sealing around your ears to block out sounds.

The Beats Studio Pros will last up to 40 hours of listening on a single charge. Battery life depends on whether you activate ANC or not, with ANC sucking up more juice than leaving the headphones in passive mode. Because they fit over the ears, they’ll block some noise in this way, just not nearly as much.

There’s also transparency mode, which slightly amplifies surrounding sounds. This mode is ideal if you want to listen to your tunes, podcast, or audiobook, but you also don’t want to make somebody have to tap you on the shoulder if you want to get your attention.

This mode works well when you’re listening in relatively quiet to mildly noisy surroundings, such as at home. When you’re on the deafeningly loud airplane or subway, then you can switch on the ANC to save your hearing.

Then there’s “Personalized Spatial Audio,” which Beats calls “surround sound you can take anywhere.” It uses dynamic head tracking and sensors to create a somewhat “3D sound,” not unlike Sonos’ home theater sound systems, to make it sound more like you’re in a concert hall, where the sound seems to come from several directions in a more natural-sounding way than simply being piped into your ears flatly.

Don’t need ANC or transparency mode, or you just simply can’t justify spending $170 on a pair of headphones right now? Got you covered. The Beats Solo 4 are also on sale right now, half off for $100, and they also have Personalized Spatial Audio to boot.