There have been very positive reviews about the headphone brand Beats by Dre, but the question that has yet to be answered is…are Beats really worth the price tag? Is the sound quality worth paying anywhere from $199 for their cheapest model to $1,195 for their Pro models? Do cheaper options provide similar or better sound quality?

The fact is that major studios don’t even use beats. One studio worker who bought and tried beats promptly returned them because the bass was overpowered causing pressure on his eardrums “even at low volumes.”

A graph shown in this Digital Music News article shows the aspects needed to have a good quality headphone: Frequency Response, Harmonic Distortion, Isolation, the Impedance and the Square Wave Response. Compared to cheaper models, Beats struggle to achieve better levels in all of these areas. 

Subjectively, Beats by Dre are worse than any of the other cheaper and more high quality headphones listed here, so please don’t waste your money on something that looks good but doesn’t work as well. Yes, Beats may be the best looking on the market, but when it comes to quality, fashion has got nothing on the other headphones that are currently selling on the market and have amazing sound quality.

Some of the headphones that are selling that have amazing sound quality don’t look too shabby either. For instance, the Grado SR225e sells for $200, saving you $150 and getting you better sound quality than Beats. There is also the Beyerdynamic DT770 that sells for as low as  $186 on Amazon.

There is also the Audio- technica ATH-M50 that you can buy for $199 on its official website and for $134 on Amazon and they are professional headphones.

The Shure SRH940 sells for $300 but is also sold on Amazon for $229 and again these are professional headphones,you know, the ones that are actually used by studios.

The AKG K702 is another good pair of headphones that sells for $349 on the official page but on Amazon you can get one for $230, oh and these again are professional headphones.

So you have to decide for yourself people: Do you want to buy headphones that you can get the exact same quality of a cheap Chinese knockoff for $20 because it looks  nice or do you want to buy headphones that don’t look to shabby but work 10x better? The choice is yours.