Our expert industry analysis and practical solutions help you make better buying decisions and get more from technology. Beats estimates battery life to be roughly 12 hours, but your results will vary with your volume levels. See the guide to get the best earbuds under $50 that you can get today. Similarly warm sounding but with a slightly recessed mids and overall clearer and more transparent audio quality. However, paying more isn’t worth it, especially if you mostly care about sound quality.
It’s the most seamless setup possible and you can also use AudioSharing. If your friend has another pair of Flex, Beats headphones, or AirPods, you can share the audio with them. It’s more flexible and convenient, plus the Flex-Form cable is extremely lightweight and made of durable Nitinol material. You get four tip sizes in the box and I found them quite uncomfortable after a few hours of use.
However, there are benefits to this classic style and the Beats Flex are a great budget buy for runners. And for general listening if you’re not going to sit down and critique every last element of their sound quality. As with all Apple wireless headphones that use the company’s W1 or H1 wireless chips, pairing the Flex to an iOS device is a snap. Simply turn them on and wait for your iPhone to show you the one-tap pairing animation. If you own more than one Apple device, switching the Flex from one to the other is also a breeze.
Apple is slowly and grindingly moving away from its proprietary Lightning cable standard, and surprisingly, that shift towards USB-C continues with the low-cost Beats Flex. You get a USB-C cable in the box, but no charger, with a socket on the right control module for actual charging. Apple’s claim is that a 10-minute USB-C charge can give you up to 1.5 hours of playback beats solo pro wireless time, although naturally, a full charge takes a tad longer than that. One solution to this would be to drop the entire loop down my back, which does work, but then leaves you scrambling to grab them when you need to make a volume or track change. They’re pretty clearly not designed as fitness-friendly headphones in any case, given the lack of IP-rated water resistance.
Between a combination of making sure to adjust how the cord sat on my neck and simply time spent using Beats Flex, the sounds became much less annoying. With the cable wrapping around behind the neck, it’s super easy to pop one or both earphones out of your ear without worrying about losing them. And when you’re taking a break from listening, the two earphones click together magnetically to keep the whole thing secure around your neck. On tracks with intense sub-bass content, like The Knife’s “Silent Shout,” the earphones deliver some serious low-frequency thump. At top, unwise listening levels, this track doesn’t distort, and at more moderate volumes, the bass is still powerful.
Consider that the iPhone giant has stopped bundling free headphones with its new devices and things become clearer. You can still buy a set of budget Lightning wired buds from Apple, but for anyone concerned with their smartphone sound, one rung up now brings you neatly towards the Beats Flex. But the other reason why the Flex buds are an important product is, well, Android. Instead of using Apple’s proprietary Lightning connector for charging, as many Beats headphones have since the acquisition, the Flex have a USB-C port. Beats’ Android app has already been updated to support them.
The Flex are tuned in such a way that vocals aren’t quite as pronounced as I’d like, which I think some small EQ tweaks could fix, but that’s simply not an option. Not only do they compare very closely to the BeatsX, with an even more bass-forward sound signature, but they also sound very close to the AirPods Pro, which beats solo pro wireless are nearly four times more expensive. The BeatsX missed out on being a Class 1 Bluetooth device, but the Flex has this feature, too, which means a much longer wireless range — up to 300 feet. The BeatsX were already one of the most responsibly packaged headphones I’ve come across, and the Flex go even further.
The W1 chip in the Beats Flex is the predecessor to the H1, so the H1 chip brings better stability and battery life, as well as always-on Siri support, among other things. Download theBeats app for Androidfrom the Google Play store. The app will give you access to firmware updates, as well as additional device controls. The Beyerdynamic Blue Byrd might look a bit retro, but it boasts modern performance and features. There is also a good amount of emphasis in the upper-mids that gives a good bump in volume to vocals in songs and podcasts. The vocals in Julia by Retro Stefson are easy to hear in almost any environment.