The Beats By Dre Studio3 uses microphones to listen to your ambient environment and then matches the frequency to cancel out the unwanted noise, leaving you and your favourite music alone.

The right outer ear cup has a small bottom-mounted multifunction button that is used to power the headphones on or off as well as enable/disable the ANC circuit via two quick simultaneous taps. There’s also no quick way of using the Studio 3’s external microphones to patch in the outside world as you can with the Sony MDR1000X. I wore the Studio3s over the course of two weeks for between 3-4 hours at a time in relative comfort due to the plushy ear cups and the adjustable headband.Leaks caused by movement, hair, hats or spectacles will also be detected and this is very effective indeed.

When it comes to headphones that I’m going to be using for hours at a time on plane rides and commutes, I want three things: comfort (which I already spoke about), battery life (which is pretty good), and sound quality. The only thing that bothers me is that there is no good microphone, so you can't talk on the phone very well with the headphones. Once powered on, pressing this button two times in rapid succession toggles the active noise cancellation (ANC), indicated with an ascending or descending pair of "bonks. Funny enough, connecting to the previous Samsung S5 and S3 models I had in my old phone drawer and newer Google Pixel 2 was relatively painless.

With these headphones, that secondary melody is more or less equal in output to the main melody which, by definition of being a secondary melody, shouldn’t be the case. Otherwise, they’re regular noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones, albeit with a rather impressive battery life.

Luckily, they come with a hardshell carrying case that I recommend using if you decide to pick them up. There are quite a few alternatives to the Beats Studio3 Wireless on the market, some more expensive than others. But known pairing issues with certain phones and lack of audible notifications when switching between modes prevent the Studio3 from earning a higher score. Some active noise cancellation headphones sound like digital tinnitus, but the Beats Studio 3 Wireless are more like a record player in terms of this background noise. Meanwhile, the internal microphone demos highlight that voices sound slightly muffled and background noise causes distortions, making this headset less than ideal for anything but a quiet environment.It’s not boomy bass but a tire of blubber sitting between the bass and mids makes the Beats Studio 3 Wireless less articulate and open-sounding than most alternatives. Testing consisted of full Beats Studio Pro battery discharge while playing audio until Beats Studio Pro stopped playback. Last year’s Beats Solo3 were great headphones – despite the on-ear design – they were comfortable, sounded pretty good and, thanks to the presence of Apple’s clever W1 Bluetooth chip, paired with iPhone and iPad completely seamlessly.