Beats Flex Review: Apples Budget-Friendly Bluetooth Earbuds

The Flex are based on the Beats X, which cost £130 when they were released three years ago, featuring an early iteration of Apple’s W1 chip. The W1 is still here, but battery life sees a leap from eight to 12 hours, and that’s just one of the many upgrades found on the Flex for a massive £70 saving on its predecessors. The W1 combines numerous powerful technologies into a single chip to deliver a whole new level of integration for quick performance and power efficiency.

It felt joyous and liberating to stream music around the house while my phone was charging in the bedroom. I didn’t experience any dropout during calls, nor was there any stuttering when streaming Spotify. I haven’t worn a pair of corded Bluetooth earbuds in a minute, so I was curious to see whether beats solo pro wireless the neckband design of Beats Flex feels like a downgrade. The buds themselves, which come with four sizes of silicone ear tips to choose from, are incredibly lightweight. The neckband is well-balanced with a power button on the right and volume controls and a multi-function button on the left.

This had the effect of making the BeatsX look unnecessarily pricey given their bulkier behind-the-neck design. The Beats Flex are a well thought-out product with easy controls, enough battery life to last your entire workday, and solid audio quality for the price. The Jaybird Tarah Pro Wireless are better headphones beats studio3 than the Beats Flex Wireless. The Jaybird are better built and have a more neutral sound profile. They also have longer-lasting battery life, and their companion app offers a parametric EQ and presets to help tweak their sound. The good news is they sound better than both the original BeatsX and standard AirPods.

beats flex review

For the benefit of the audiophiles, I’m not implying these are the best earphones on the earth, I’m not suggesting they’re the most tonally accurate things ever produced or that there aren’t better. Actually I’d go as far as to say they’re THE best choice if you want to spend under £50 and not be left with a substandard pair of earphones. Beats has long sold itself as being a premium brand – at least in style if not always in sound profile – but that’s not the market that Apple is targeting with the Beats Flex headphones.

Basically, the app gives you all the features and settings otherwise baked into iOS (on iOS, you don’t have to download any app, all the settings are already in the Bluetooth menu). beats solo pro wireless That might be a problem if you own an iPhone since they use the Lightning port. That’s primarily due to the neckband, which adds to the weight and can start pulling on earbuds.