New Beats Headphones Leaked: Cheaper, With One Big Catch

There is a specific kind of buyer's remorse coming for anyone who spends £499 on AirPods Max 2 this week. The new Beats headphones have leaked in enough detail that we know roughly what they cost, what they do and, more usefully, what they leave out.

They are called the Beats 360, and they have now turned up in three regulatory databases in four months plus a set of retail listings that were pulled within hours. Everything below is leak material rather than anything Apple has announced. Here is what it actually says, and the one omission that decides whether these are the right over-ears for you.

What the new Beats headphones actually are

The Beats 360 is an over-ear with telescoping headband arms, rounded cups and a fold-flat hinge. The shape borrows more from AirPods Max than from the squared-off Beats Studio Pro, which tells you something about where Beats thinks the money is.

The specifics from the leaked listings:

• Model number A3577, filed with the FCC back in May
• IPX4 water and sweat resistance, which would be a first for an over-ear from Apple or Beats
• Interchangeable ear cushions and headband pads in two materials, Performance Knit and an UltraPlush-style padding
• Black, Cloud, Sky and Pink as headline colours, with Volt and Navy showing up as cushion options
• Personalised spatial audio with dynamic head tracking, and beamforming mics with an AI-trained call algorithm
• All-day battery with noise cancelling on, USB-C charging, woven ripstop case, no power adapter in the box
• Physical controls: a volume rocker, a power button, a listening mode button and a multifunction button

The regulatory trail is the part I would pay attention to. Brazil's ANATEL logged the product on 20 August and the UAE database followed on 21 August. Companies file in multiple territories when they are lining up a simultaneous launch, not when a product is a year out.

There have also been sightings on wrists and heads rather than in databases. Footballers including Lamine Yamal and Antonee Robinson have been photographed in them around the 2026 World Cup, which is Beats doing what Beats has always done.

The Beats 360 price, and what it probably means in pounds

The leaked listings put the Beats 360 at $299.99. Treat that as soft: retail pages that go up early often carry placeholder pricing, and this one was taken down fast enough that nobody got to check it against a second retailer.

My arithmetic on the UK price

TechRadar converted the dollar figure straight across and landed at roughly £330. I think that is too high. Beats and Apple rarely convert; they pick a round pound number, and historically Beats over-ears have swapped the dollar sign for a pound sign more or less unchanged. On that pattern, £299.99 is the likelier UK price.

To be clear, that £299.99 is my own estimate rather than anything that has leaked. Nobody has seen a UK price yet. But if it holds, the gap to AirPods Max 2 is around £200, and £200 is a lot of money to justify with a headband.

Worth keeping in perspective: the outgoing Beats Studio Pro has spent most of the past year in UK sales between £149 and £180. So the 360 would not be the cheap Beats over-ear. It would be the middle one.

The catch: nobody has mentioned an H2 chip

Every leaked listing runs through spatial audio, microphones, battery and water resistance. None of them mentions Apple silicon. For a product launching in 2026 alongside an AirPods line built on H2, that silence is loud.

It matters more than the spec sheet makes it look. The H2 chip in AirPods Max 2 is what gives you the one-tap pairing card, automatic handover between your iPhone, iPad and Mac, Find My built into the headphones themselves, Audio Sharing and hands-free Siri. Those are the features you use twenty times a day without noticing.

Before writing this off as a cut corner, though: the Beats Studio Pro did not have an Apple chip either. Beats used a custom one deliberately, so the headphones pair and update just as happily on Android as on iPhone. Beats sells to a wider audience than AirPods does, and the chip choice is part of how it does that.

So the practical read is this. If everything you own has an Apple logo on it, the missing H2 is the thing you would actually notice, every single day. If you carry an iPhone and a work Android, it is a feature rather than a fault.

And the honest caveat: no leak saying "H2" is not the same as a leak saying "no H2". Retail copy leaves things out. This one could still surprise us.

That "1.75x more noise cancellation" claim needs a footnote

The headline number in the listing is 1.75 times more noise cancellation than the Beats Studio Pro. Read that carefully, because the comparison is against Beats' own 2023 model, not against AirPods Max 2 and not against Sony or Bose.

The Studio Pro's noise cancelling was the weakest part of an otherwise likeable pair of headphones. Nearly doubling a middling figure gets you to competent, not to class-leading. There is also no standard unit behind "1.75x", so it is a marketing measurement rather than an engineering one.

That said, IPX4 is a real, specified improvement. If you have ever peeled a pair of over-ears off your head after a wet walk home and wondered what the damp was doing to them, that rating is worth more to you than an ANC multiplier.

AirPods Max 2 or Beats 360: who each pair is for

• AirPods Max 2 at £499: you are all-in on Apple, you want instant switching between devices and Find My baked in, and the build quality matters to you.
• Beats 360 at roughly £300: you want decent noise cancelling and a pair you can take to the gym or out in the rain without wincing, and you can live without seamless Apple handover.
• Beats Studio Pro at £150 to £180 in a sale: you want over-ears today and you are not precious about having the newest thing. This is still the best value in the range, and stock usually gets cheaper still once a successor is announced.

There is a fourth option, which is to hold your money entirely. Apple's audio roadmap has been sliding about lately - the camera AirPods have slipped to 2027 - so if you are waiting for one specific thing, check it is actually coming this year before you wait for it.

When the new Beats headphones are likely to land

No date has been announced. What we have is a pattern: an FCC filing in May, ANATEL and UAE filings within two days of each other in August, live retail pages that got pulled, teaser photography and athletes already wearing the things in public.

Apple's September event is a few weeks away, but I would not assume the Beats 360 waits for it. Beats products almost always arrive by press release on an ordinary Tuesday, because they would be a footnote in an iPhone keynote. A launch before or shortly after the event both look plausible.

New Beats headphones FAQ

How much will the new Beats headphones cost in the UK?

Leaked retail listings put the Beats 360 at $299.99 in the US, and no UK price has been announced. A straight conversion lands near £330, but Beats tends to swap the dollar sign for a pound sign rather than convert, which would put it around £299.99. That last figure is my own estimate, not a leak.

Do the Beats 360 have Apple's H2 chip?

No leak so far mentions one. The listings cover personalised spatial audio with head tracking, beamforming microphones and all-day battery, but no Apple silicon. That is an absence of evidence rather than confirmation, and Beats over-ears have historically used a custom chip so they work as well on Android as on iPhone.

Should I buy AirPods Max 2 now or wait for the Beats 360?

If you want the H2 conveniences - instant pairing, automatic switching across your Apple devices, Find My built in, hands-free Siri - buy the AirPods Max 2, because the Beats will probably not give you those. If you mostly want good noise cancelling on a commute, wait a couple of weeks. Three regulatory filings in four months suggests the Beats are close.

My take

I would give it a fortnight. Products that show up in three regulatory databases with retail pages already built are weeks away, not months, and there is no version of this where waiting two weeks costs you anything.

If you need over-ears this week, the Studio Pro at £150-odd is the sensible buy and always has been. If you are hovering over the £499 AirPods Max 2 button, do one thing first: write down the H2 features you would actually use. Instant pairing, device switching, Find My, hands-free Siri. If none of them is on your list, you are about to pay a £200 premium for a nicer headband and a better metal finish.

And if you are buying for someone who runs, cycles or lives somewhere it rains, that IPX4 rating is the single most useful thing in this entire leak.

Source: Apple's New Beats 360 Headphones Keep Leaking, MacRumors