Beats 360 swaps cushions to change its fit and its look

Beats has announced the 360, a new flagship over-ear headphone that is the first the brand has made with cushions you can take off and swap. The headphones went on sale today for $349.99 in the United States and more than 100 other countries and regions, with shop shelves following on 24 September.

What is actually different this time

The cushion system is the story. Beats 360 ships with Performance Knit earcup and headband cushions in the same colour as the headphones, and sells replacement kits that let owners change both the colour and the material without buying a second pair. Performance Knit kits come in six colours - Black, Cloud, Pink, Sky, Navy and Volt - while UltraPlush kits, made from the engineered leather used on the Studio Pro, come in Black and Cloud only.

The headphones themselves come in four core colours - Black, Cloud, Pink and Sky - at $349.99, and the cushion kits are $49.99 at standard pricing. For a limited period Beats is selling the kits at an introductory $9.99 in what its release calls select markets, naming the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, South Korea and China, with local pricing applying elsewhere.

The specification, in plain terms

Beats says the 360 uses custom drivers with three-layer diaphragms and dual neodymium magnets in each earcup, and carries its most capable active noise cancellation so far - the claim in the release is up to 1.75 times more total cancellation than the Studio Pro. Transparency mode, Adaptive EQ and personalised spatial audio with dynamic head tracking are all present, alongside Dolby Atmos support and a nine-microphone array, eight for noise cancellation and three for voice pickup.

Battery life is quoted at up to 32 hours with noise cancellation and personalised spatial audio running, and 24 hours in Transparency mode. A five-minute charge over USB-C is said to give an hour of playback. The headphones use Bluetooth 5.3 with Class 1 range, pair with Android as well as Apple devices, and are the first over-ear Beats model with an IPX4 sweat and water resistance rating. Beats also says the 360 uses 80 per cent recycled plastic across a number of components, its highest figure yet, and recycled rare earth elements in every magnet.

What Beats says about it

“Beats didn’t just participate in the rise of over-ear headphones — we helped define the category,” said Oliver Schusser, Apple’s vice president of Music, Sports and Beats. “Beats 360 is the next chapter of that story.”

Alongside the launch, Beats has cut the price of the Studio Pro to $299.99, which leaves the older flagship sitting $50 below the new one rather than being retired.

Our opinion

Swappable cushions are a genuinely useful idea dressed up as a gimmick, which is the right way round. Earcup foam and headband padding are the parts of a headphone that fail first, and on most premium models they are glued in, so a $350 purchase quietly becomes landfill the moment the padding flattens. Selling the wearable parts separately is the single most effective thing a headphone brand can do for longevity, and it is odd that a company best known for fashion collaborations is the one doing it.

The pricing is where the idea gets tested. A $9.99 introductory kit is a free sample with extra steps; the $49.99 standard price is 14 per cent of the headphone, and anyone who wants a second colour and a second material is looking at another $100. Beats has also left the whole customisation story without a UK price, which for a launch that names the UK among its introductory markets is a gap buyers will notice long before they notice the acoustics.