Sennheiser and other reputable brands do perform better than Beats at most every comparable price level, in the opinion of many or even most "audiophiles" or people who have spent time listening and comparing.  In my experience Beats sound real good for 5 minutes, taking into account that they have an intentionally exaggerated bass.  Then I start realizing the problems and weirdness in their sound, compared to high quality competition.  A real good starting point for recommendations is the "Wall of Fame" section of the stereophile associated website, innerfidelity.com (link is also at bottom of this page).

but consider this review:  http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/monster-beats-dr-dre-solo 

Not gonna fall for that

I hang out on a number of headphone forums, some of which were heavily spammed this past year with 'Beats' posts. The spamming became so heavy on some forums that it effectively was a denial of service (DOS) attack. Once the dust settled, admins started requiring personal approval of new members. Then the second wave started, with a whole new approach. New members would make a few random posts about nothing in particular, then gradually get to the Beats posts. One of the giveaways of course is that rarely did these spammers specify a model - an actual headphone they liked or were interested in - they just pushed "Beats", which of course is nonsense. I'd guess that in addition to being spam, most of the Beats posts that gave a link to an actual sales site were probably selling fakes.

Monster has not been distributing Beats for a long time, and anyone selling or suggesting "Monster Beats" is probably selling fakes.