Battle Royale with Cheese (Headphones Edition): Beats Studio 3 Vs JLab Studio Pro

Top of the line vs. bargain bin

How much money do you need to spend on headphones?

That’s a question I found myself asking on Black Friday, as I skimmed the deals on Best Buy’s website. After finally, finally settling on which devices I wanted to use on a day-to-day basis, I got back to the original tech “splurge” that had me frequenting Best Buy at the beginning of the year (back in the good ol’ days, when hand sanitizer was not something I had to think about constantly).

Before I got into my indecisive phase with computers that has fueled the majority of my tech stories this year, headphones were the thing I was busy comparing; namely, I was looking for over-the-ear (or perhaps on-ear) headphones that I could use for hours at a time while working without the fatigue (or Tinnitus flare-ups) that I got from in-ear buds. And I looked at a plethora of headphones, from the cheapest JLab headphones to the more expensive options from Beats, JBL, and others.

But a year later, when I finally came back around to wanting some over-ear headphones, only one brand came to mind again: Beats.

This wasn’t because they were the best on the market; I knew that headphones from Bose and Sony would likely…