It goes without saying, but at this price the Beats Flex also doesn’t offer noise cancellation, either. The right eartips can help provide some passive noise isolation by sealing off your ear canal, but there’s no fancy noise-cancellation tech inside of them to block out unwanted noise on your next plane flight. Besides hands-free Siri, the more expensive H1 Chip supports Bluetooth 5 versus the W1’s Bluetooth 4.2, which means you’ll get a slightly longer battery life with the H1 Chip, too.
The battery life of 12 hours is on par with the rest of the wireless earbuds, but not among the best ones. Above all, you have to understand the beats studio3 pros and cons of the neckband design. While it’s handier to carry your earbuds around, it also worsens the fit and produces microphonics.
For daily chores and errands, the Beats Flex is perfectly fine, but it doesn’t have an official IP rating to protect against water damage. While these wireless neckbuds work well with Android, you’ll really get the best value if you pair them with an iOS device. This said, it is unlikely you’re playing tracks like this often, and I’ve seen audio systems costing £15,000 struggle so it shouldn’t be taken as too much of a negative. The overall look and design has been tweaked in minor ways in most respects. Instead controls are now integrated into the battery “things” .
Beats Flex come with four sizes of eartips, so most people shouldn’t have much trouble finding a good fit. The soft, pliable eartips are relatively easy to swap out, but you also don’t have to worry about them coming beats solo pro wireless loose unintentionally. Sign up for Lab Report to get the latest reviews and top product advice delivered right to your inbox. Using the Voice Memos app on an iPhone 8, we could understand every word recorded clearly.
The earbuds themselves are magnetic, attaching to each other back to back when not in use. The neckband is also flat and designed to prevent your Beats Flex headphones getting tangled up when they’re in your pocket, and let us just say thank the lord for that. Beats Flex are actually a replacement for the old BeatsX earbuds, which were also rocking the neckband design.
Here’s our thoughts on whether the Beats Flex are worth your money. The Apple W1 headphone chip seamlessly integrates Beats Flex into your world of Apple products. If you have an Android phone or tablet, you can do it in two different ways. First, you can simply turn on your Bluetooth and then press and hold the power button on the Flex for 1 second.
Hopefully, this is a sign that Apple will soon ditch lightning cables altogether so that we can have one USB charging standard to rule them all. Fortunately, there’s an impressive 12-hour battery packed into these headphones, and even more impressive is the Fast Fuel feature that gives you 1.5-hour of battery life from a 10-minute charge. View Gallery 10 imagesBeats Flex are wireless headphones where the buds are tethered to a flexible neckband. The end of each side of the neckband has an end-cap that houses the battery, buttons, and technology. The cable is flat linguini style and the neckband portion is thicker and with some reinforcement to mostly keep it shaped for your neck.
These earbuds come with wingtips that can be attached for a more secure fit. Wingtips come in handy for beats flex review sports and other physical activities. When used correctly, they prevent the earbuds from falling off.
An advanced built-in microphone helps reduce wind noise for elevated voice clarity and call performance. On-device controls allow you to adjust volume as well as manage music, take calls, or activate voice assistant. Yes, these are “budget” headphones, but Apple didn’t skimp on the audio quality. They come with 4 silicone ear tips for an air-tight seal in your ear, so most will find the audio quality much better than Apple’s standard AirPods. We wouldn’t be surprised if some find the audio quality to be as good or better than AirPods too, just because of this tight seal. The more expensive PowerBeats would be the closest comparison, but those have a little extra detail and oomph.
I think the best customer for the Beats Flex is anyone looking to replace a set of wired earbuds with something wireless that won’t break the bank doing it. The target audience here isn’t the person looking at AirPods or other true wireless earbuds that are more than twice the cost of the Flex, and the audio quality/features reflect that. And, although I’m never a big fan of the in-line controls you find on neckband-style earphones, I don’t mind those on the Beats Flex. The multi-purpose button is located on a different face of the left remote to the volume controls, meaning you never inadvertently press one instead of the other. And this multi-purpose button only very subtly protrudes, so it’s unlikely you’ll knock it by accident. As you’d expect, they come with a range of different earbud sizes in the box – four to be precise – to help ensure a snug fit.