Headphone News

	Julius tries the Beats with an open mind and an open heart.

Yes, long after Youtube was inundated with unboxings and tech blogs were flooded with positive reviews, our copy of the Beats has finally arrived. It just goes to prove that old internet adage: if you can't get your review unit through PR channels, you'd better have $350 in your bank account. Given the lack of timeliness with our procurement, we can't offer you anything new in the way of breaking news. What we can offer is an unbiased opinion and also a few pictures of Julius, the official office dog, who is remarkably old.

First of all, you really can't appreciate how ridiculous the packaging is until you've unboxed a pair of these things. Nothing says 'totally effing gangsta' like an over-designed red box and black ribbon.

Once we took these things out of the box we were very unimpressed. It's hard to express just how cheap these things look and feel in your hand. Also, the glossy plastic ensure your Beats will be covered in finger prints 15 seconds after you remove them from their fanciful packaging. Once we put them on we still weren't impressed. While they seem comfortable enough, we noticed they suffer from Bose disease: without fresh batteries and the noise cancellation switched on, you're not getting any music out of the Beats. Also, we heard a pretty good deal of high-mid white noise when the cancellation is turned on. We understand noise cancellation will inevitable create a bit of noise for all the noise it cancels, but the Beats have more than the Bose headphones, the Sony NC500D, or the Creative Aurvana X-Fi.

Julius remains skeptical.

Once we started putting music through them, however, we were a little more impressed. Yes, it seems like the media's endorsement isn't entirely based on branding. First of all, while the bass does seem strong, it isn't overpower. It's also very well-rounded: it isn't overly loud towards the low end or anywhere else for that matter. We'd expect our frequency response graph to show a flat line in the bass area, scraping the ceiling on our limits. The sound was really detailed, articulate enough to let us close our eyes and picture where each instrument was in relation to ourselves. The highs seem to be slightly quieter than they should be, but not by much.

Of course, we're all people, and our ears are but oddly-shaped pieces of meat. We'll let HATS decide if the Beats are really as good as they sound. Check back for our full, in-depth reivew, which should be up by the end of the week.