Beats 360 review: swap the cushions, keep the bass

The Beats name has always meant style, gym bags and bass, and the Beats 360 doubles down on that in a new way. These are the brand’s newest over-ear headphones, priced at Rs 42,900, and the big talking point is how much you can swap and customise the ear cushions, headband cushion, and colour. I’ve been using them alongside the Sennheiser Momentum 5 Wireless (Rs 39,999), and the two couldn’t be more different. While the Momentum 5 focuses on sound, battery life and longevity, the Beats 360 is about fit, style and durability. You can read my Momentum 5 review here, while this review focuses on who the Beats 360 is best suited for.

Table of Contents

What’s in the box

You get the headphones with colour-matched knit cushions, a soft woven ripstop carrying case, a quick start guide and some documentation. That’s it. There’s no charging cable and no power adapter, so you’ll need to supply your own, which feels like a miss at Rs 42,900. I received the headphones in Black, and they look absolutely stunning. But the unboxing experience was fairly minimal compared with the Momentum 5, which included a hard case and cables; it feels like you get a lot less for the money.

I also received the Cushion Kit in Performance Knit texture and Cloud colourway. This is sold separately and costs Rs 6,900.

Design and comfort

The Beats 360 look really nice, especially the Black unit we received. Even though the outer body is 80% recycled plastic, its matte finish gives it a metal-like look from a distance, and it doesn’t have the same plasticky feel as the Momentum 5. The inner arms and sliders are stainless steel, and feel sturdy and smooth, and provide a solid clamp force.

Customisation is the heartbeat of the Beats 360. You can buy the headphones and standalone cushion kits in Black, Pink, Cloud, and Sky colours. You can also choose Volt (bright neon yellow) and Navy as additional cushion kit colours. The idea is that you can mix and match colours if you don’t want the headphones to be entirely one colour, so you don’t get bored. Each ear cushion twists off and on easily, and you can swap the headband cushion too.

The Cloud colour cushion kit I received gives a nice black and white contrast look, but I was terrified of dirtying them when placing them on a dusty surface or from the sweat from my skin. I quickly switched back to the default Black cushions after taking some photos for this review!

You have the option to choose between Performance Knit and UltraPlush when you buy either the headphones or standalone cushions. The former is more breathable, with an airy knit material made of 36 micro-threads, designed for active use and workouts, while the latter is classic, with a soft faux-leather feel designed for extended comfort and casual or travel use.

The clever part is that sensors inside the cushions detect which ones you’ve fitted and adjust the sound and noise cancellation accordingly. Both the headphones and the extra cushions I received were Performance Knit, and they feel breathable, especially for someone whose ears tend to warm up when wearing over-ear headphones for long sessions. I didn’t get to try the UltraPlush material, but I assume, given the design, it would seal better around the ears, allowing for better passive noise cancellation and more immersive sound. However, they might also feel less comfortable for longer periods.

The headphones weigh 294.5g, but Beats says it has shifted the weight to the cushions to keep the frame light. Instead of running wires across the headband, each ear cup has its own battery, antenna and processor, which allowed Beats to slim down the headband. In my opinion, the Beats 360 fit larger ears better than the Momentum 5, and the clamp force is firmer, which you want if you’re taking them to the gym or out for a run. They’re also the first Beats headphones with sweat and water resistance, rated IPX4, which is something the Momentum 5 lacks. And when the cushions get sweaty after a workout, you can simply swap them for a fresh pair.

Connectivity and controls

The Beats 360 supports Bluetooth 5.3 and works with both iPhones and Android phones, though it’s clearly built with Apple users in mind. On an iPhone, you get one-touch pairing, iCloud pairing, automatic switching between your Apple devices, audio sharing, Find My and hands-free “Hey Siri”. On Android, you get Fast Pair, audio switching, Find Hub and a Beats app that handles battery status, customisation and firmware updates. It lacks wired audio support, and the USB-C port is strictly for charging, unlike the Momentum 5, which also offers a 2.5mm to 3.5mm cable in the box.

Controls are where the Beats 360 beat (pun intended) the Momentum 5 for me. I personally prefer physical, clicky buttons over touch-based gestures, and the Beats 360 has four physical ones on the back of the ear cups, which you operate with your thumbs. The left cup has the power and listening mode buttons, and the right has a volume rocker and a play/pause button: one press plays or pauses, two skips forward, and three skips back. You can customise the controls in iOS Settings or the Beats app on Android. They’re simple and reliable, with none of the oversensitivity of the Momentum 5’s touch controls.
That said, I wish some buttons had a textured finish to make them easier to tell apart.

I also wish the Beats 360 had wear detection to automatically stop or resume music when you take the headphones off or put them back on. It’s a small but convenient feature that rivals like Sennheiser, Bose, and Sony offer. This would have been easy to ignore if the Beats 360 had had Conversation Awareness, which could automatically lower media volume and enhance voices when you start talking. Unfortunately, you don’t get this Apple-specific feature as the Beats 360 uses a custom-designed chip rather than Apple’s H2 chip.

Sound quality

The Beats 360 uses a custom 40mm dual-magnet driver, and Beats says the output is 12dB higher than the Beats Studio Pro’s. It offers personalised spatial audio with head tracking and Dolby Atmos when connected to Apple devices, plus Adaptive EQ that tunes the sound to your fit, but it only works when you disable ANC and Transparency. You don’t get EQ presets as you do with rival headphones.

I tested the same songs on both the Beats 360 and Sennheiser Momentum 5 to get a sense of how they are tuned out of the box.
In practice, the Beats 360’s tuning with ANC on leans toward a sharper, bassier, more energetic sound. If you want punchy bass with plenty of bite, the Beats 360 delivers. The catch is that it’s less balanced than the Momentum 5, and tracks like Tame Impala’s “Loser” and “Let It Happen” miss the wide soundstage they get on the Momentum 5, or the Bose QuietComfort Ultra and Sony WH-1000XM6 headphones, for that matter. The sharper profile can also get tiring during long listening sessions. Mids and highs can sound grating, thin, flat, and tinny, causing ear discomfort on certain high-frequency songs, such as Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” or poorly mastered tracks.

In my opinion, the Beats 360’s punchy bass response is best suited for pop, hip-hop, and EDM, delivering a bright sound signature with thumping bass to get your blood pumping for high-energy activities.

To see how that sharper tuning plays out with rock songs, I tested the Beats 360 with Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android”, a song that swings between quiet acoustic passages and a chaotic wall of electric guitars. With ANC on, the bass was more pronounced, which is great if you want to enjoy the melodic bassline, but the frenzied guitar sections felt too sharp for my ears. Things improved a little with ANC off and Adaptive EQ, which tunes the sound to how the headphones fit your head, doing its job. The Momentum 5 handled the same song better, partly because you can switch to its Rock preset, which gives the instruments more room to breathe.

ANC and call quality

Beats says the Beats 360 delivers 1.75x more noise cancellation than the Beats Studio Pro, a claim I couldn’t test because I’ve never used the Studio Pro. It uses 9 microphones in total, 8 of which handle ANC, and the system adapts to how the headphones fit your head each time. Transparency mode is meant to sound more natural too.

In reality, I found the ANC performance quite strong, almost on par with flagship headphones from Sony and Bose. Even with the Performance Knit cushions, which by design don’t create the kind of seal the UltraPlush cushions would, the headphones did a solid job in blocking out environmental noise. I tried the Beats 360 at my gym with loud music blaring through the speakers and could comfortably listen to my own music. I even took them on the train during my metro commute, and they suppressed the train screeching through the tracks and the announcer calling out upcoming stations well enough. I reckon the UltraPlush cushions would do an even better job by combining ANC with passive noise cancellation.

The Beats 360 uses 3 dedicated voice-pickup microphones out of its 9 total mics to deliver clear voice calls. Again, the UltraPlush cushions are the ones to pick if you want a better seal and clearer voice calls. I typically don’t like taking calls on headphones, so the Performance Knit cushions worked just fine for my limited calling use.

Battery life

Beats claims up to 32 hours of playback with ANC and spatial audio on, and its Fast Fuel feature gives you up to an hour of playback from a 5-minute charge. That’s a long way short of the Momentum 5’s 55-plus hours, though still comfortable for most people and on par with rival headphones from Bose and Sony.

If you use the Beats 360 for a couple of hours at the gym or outdoors, it should comfortably last a few weeks before needing a full charge, as long as you remember to turn them off after every use. The headphones also don’t have auto power-off, so you need to manually turn them off after listening to prevent idle battery drain. I also noticed some Beats 360 users on Reddit complaining about the battery draining even when the headphones are switched off, linking it to Apple’s Find My running in the background.

Verdict

The Beats 360 is for people who want a stylish, customisable pair of over-ear headphones for the gym or outdoor runs that can withstand sweat and dust. The selling point is the IP rating and interchangeable cushions. They aren’t the best-sounding headphones at around Rs 40,000, but they are among the better-looking options. They look sleek, yet they don’t fold. They have a plastic outer shell, yet a sturdy, durable hinge and strong clamping force. They are very Apple-coded, yet they work well with Android phones, too.

All in all, the Beats 360 are worth buying if you’re into fitness and want the creativity and freedom to customise the headphones. They’ll never feel dull, as long as you can spend money on buying different-coloured Performance Knit or UltraPlush cushions. But know that this will be an expensive affair: the headphones cost Rs 42,900 and additional cushions are priced at Rs 6,900. But if sound, battery life, and having that wired option to satisfy the audiophile in you matter more, then you’re better off buying the Sennheiser Momentum 5, Bose QuietComfort Ultra, or Sony WH-1000XM6 instead.

Editor’s rating: 8.4 / 10

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