The Water Cooler

I own the beats. They are loud and truly a clean crisp theatre like experience. They are more for really rocking out to music as the sound quality is amazing AND loud. Really clean highs, nice deep base, and vocals come through well.

The Bose sound good but are not the musical experience you're going to get with the beats. Where the Bose excel would be for travel or high traffic areas that you would want either a high level noise blocker (which beats advertises and fails miserably to produce unless you're listening to your music to block out sound) or if you wanted something that wouldn't leak sound. The Bose offer superior sound block technology and you can listen to loud* (relatively speaking when compared to beats) music and it won't leak out to the person beside you nearly as badly.

For my purposes the Beats were the best but if your main purpose is travel I would say go with the Bose. Each offers a unique experience so it's hard to really compare then against one another. For their purposes they are each the best of the best without professional grade.

so with the beats it doesn't block out the jet sound on a plane? I am buying them for travel mainly

As I said before the beats leak sound much much much worse than the Bose and are a great deal more loud so your neighbors probably wouldn't be pleased with you.

I bought my based on a pure listening experience and for that they function a 10/10. Gotta match the form to the function when going between the 2.

I have sold high end audio for the better part of 10 years and I'm sorry but NOTHING about Bose is audiophile, but neither is Beats Audio...if the OP wants a good pair of headphones for the same price range as the two brands mentioned then you need to look at Bowers & Wilkins P5 or P3