Beats brings noise-canceling to its on-ear Solo headphones

Beats this morning announced that it will be bringing its excellent noise-cancellation technology to its Solo line of on-ear headphones. The Solo Pro are the official followup to the Solo 3, a branding shift that's in line with its other technologies.

The noise canceling is the same introduced with the Studio over-ear line, way back in 2017. It's adaptive technology, meaning that rather being tuned to a specific sound like, say, an airplane drone, an array of microphones listen for ambient sound and adjust accordingly.

I was pretty impressed in the case of the Studio line and expect much of the same here. There's also an on-board button for Transparency, which lets in ambient noise for those times when you need to hear what's around you. Beats being an Apple company, the microphones are also optimized for Siri use, while the W1 and H1 chips mean quick syncing to iOS products, along with the new audio sharing.

Beats says the headphones should last "up to 22 hours" with either active noise canceling or Transparency on and "up to 40 hours" with them shut off. I might have to test them out on my upcoming trip to Asia. They're charged up via Lightning - kind of a bummer, but Apple. A 10-minute charge should get you up to three hours of playback.

They arrive October 30, priced at $300.