[AT&T Samsung Galaxy Note I717] welchertc:
I see beats branding as a status symbol, just like the iPhone. For most people, beats are great headphones. Most audiophiles would disagree, and will ant and rave about how there are comparable headphones for much less money, and for the same money, you can get some amazing stuff.

I see it much like android vs. iOS. For a wide variety of people, beats have great sound quality to them, and they have a high aesthetic appeal, which matters to a lot of people. Much like iOS is very simple and great for a wide variety of people that don't need or want to do absolutely everything imaginable on their phone. Android is like all of the other great companies, providing a wide range of options, and a lot more bang for your buck in my opinion. I would buy a Captivate for a penny long before I would buy a 4s for 200 bucks. On the other end, I could buy a high end Android for 200 as well, and blow the iPhone out of the water for my needs as a tech nerd.

Although I would probably never buy Beats headphones, I have still succumbed to Beats branding in another way. I recently bought an HP ENVY 14, Beats Edition. I was in the market for a high end laptop with performance that can run all of my engineering programs with ease. I also had other requirements, such as a high aesthetic appeal, and a backlit keyboard. My mom works for HP, so with her discount, going with an HP was a no brainer. There were three laptops with backlit keys at the time, one that was ugly, and then their normal and beats editions of their ENVY series. The normal ENVY line has nice aesthetics, but I did not like the lid of the laptop. The Beats edition on the other hand, is all black, with a red backlit keyboard. Sexy, and the red backlit keyboard is my favorite part, as the keys are easily visible in a pitch black room, but they do not distract your eyes from the screen. For $1100 with my mom's discount, I was able to get a computer with aluminum alloy construction, a red backlit keyboard, a core i7 processor, 8 gigs of RAM, an 80 gig SSD for the operating system, a 500 gig 7200 RPM HDD for mass storage, HDMI output, 2 USB 2.0 slots, 1 USB 3.0 slot (linked directly to the SSD), a multitouch trackpad, two headphone jacks, a slot loading dual layer 8x DVDR/W, mini displayport, and a sweet power brick that has another USB slot to charge my phone with. Similarily configured computers cost about the same through most manufacturers, and I think the $50 cost over the original ENVY was worth it for the aesthetic appeal. I love my evil macbook killer.

Also, the beats audio processing makes a noticeable difference on the sound quality played through the audio jack or HDMI, and it is not all just super deep bass. The mids are warm, and the highs are crisp. Turning off the Beats processing makes my computer sound like garbage compared to having it on, but even that sound quality is on par with most laptop outputs.

All in all, beats are not terrible, and if you're somebody who takes aesthetic appeal into account, they can be a good choice for some pretty good sound quality. The sound processing can also make a good bit of difference, though I'm not sure how much an app like this would change it.