Beats Solo 4 - Wireless On-Ear Bluetooth Headphones, Up to 50-Hour Battery Life, Ultra-Lightweight Comfort, Powerful and Balanced Sound, Apple & Android Compatible - Matte Black

Why it's worth it

The Beats Solo 4 has no ANC at all. What it does have is instant Apple pairing, spatial audio with head tracking, 50-hour battery, and lossless 24-bit/48kHz playback over USB-C — the only headphone here that does that.

Read the award carefully: these don't cancel noise. The Solo 4 is an on-ear headphone that seals passively and nothing more. We're including it because a lot of people shopping this category actually want good-sounding, comfortable headphones that work flawlessly with an iPhone, and for that specific person the Solo 4 is the better buy.

The wired story is genuinely unique here. 9to5Mac confirmed the Solo 4 delivers lossless 24-bit/48kHz audio over USB-C — no other headphone in this guide does true lossless wired playback. Plug into a laptop or phone and you're getting the file as recorded, not a Bluetooth-compressed version of it.

From our review of 8 budget noise canceling headphones, by Ben Carter, Tech Editor

What we like

• +Read the award carefully: these don't cancel noise
• +The wired story is genuinely unique here
• +Apple ecosystem behavior is the other draw
• +At 50 hours of battery with a 10-minute charge returning five hours, you're not managing power

What to know

• –No active noise canceling, no transparency mode, no app-controlled ANC
• –On-ear pads press against your ear rather than surrounding it, and that gets sore faster than over-ear designs for a lot of…
• –At about 1.2 pounds these are the heaviest headphone in the lineup despite the on-ear design