While they’re stable enough for light exercise, they don’t have ear tips or stability fins to help keep them in place, unlike the Jaybird Tarah Pro Wirelessor the Beats Powerbeats 4 Wireless. Their companion app also doesn’t offer a lot of extra features either. Apple rates the Beats Flex as being capable of up to 12 hours of battery life, and if you’re using them with an iOS device – or via the Android Beats App – you can track that usage and power draw over time. One of the advantages that a neckband style set has over true wireless buds is that there’s logically a lot more space to put batteries into the Beats Flex, and Apple has clearly taken advantage of this.
With that said, Beats hasn’t really had a product that you could call budget. The wired Powerbeats from early in 2020 was more affordable, but those in-ears weren’t at the low-end of the market. Available from a number of retailers, you can pick up a pair of Beats Flex wireless earbuds for as little as $39 in the US, £50 in the UK and AU$69 in Australia. Take a look at the widgets beats studio3 for the best deals on them across the web right now. That also means you can automatically switch between devices, depending on what you’re doing on any one of them. For example, I can listen to music on my iPhone and hit the pause button on the iPhone, open up a Google Meet on my Mac, and Beats Flex will automatically pair to my Mac so I can use them for my work meeting.
It’s like listening to music on cassette tape compared to a vinyl record. Budget buds do make sense, however, considering that Apple no longer bundles in a free pair of headphones inside the box with its new iPhones. These are very much for the casual listener on the hunt for a cheap – and decent – EarPods replacement. Range was solid in my testing, as is to be expected thanks to the W1 chip.
Losing that touch of convenience is the tradeoff you make for the $50 price. If you’re looking for a cheap pair of wireless earbuds specifically for working out, then the Sennheiser CX Sport are a great choice. They’ll stay in place as you move, and offer fantastic audio quality. One of our favorite pair of budget wireless headphones, the E11BT from SoundMagic are super cheap with a great design.
Rather surprisingly, they charge via USB-C, not Lightning, as has been the norm with recent Beats products and battery life is impressive. When fully charged, Beats claims the Flex will deliver up to 12 hours of playback and you can also get 90 minutes of usage from a mere 10-minute beats flex review charge when the battery gets low. Beats Flex is better than AirPods as they have 7 hours longer battery life and 3.5 hours shorter charge time. Passive noise reduction and an inline control panel can also be found in Beats. You can buy the Beats Flex in black, blue, yellow and grey.
A volume rocker is on the top edge of an oversized Tic Tac that houses some of the Flex’s components. Inside near the front edge is a single circular multi-function button. That control handles play/pause , skipping tracks forward , returning to the previous song and summoning your virtual assistant . Because these are all physical buttons, they’re reliable and easy to use. Even when you have to double- or triple-press, the Flex receives each command without issue.
As you’d expect for earphones from an Apple-owned brand, the Beats Flex support the AAC codec but not apt-X. And, thanks to their built-in microphone, they also double up as a Bluetooth headset, so you can take calls and speak to your phone’s virtual assistant. The Beats Flex are a good option for casual music and podcast listeners. You can find a great connection with solid battery life and USB-C charging at such an affordable price.
The cable is flat, almost like a strand of tagliatelle, and though it’s more than long enough to suit most wearers, we find it kinks and tangles a little during the course of our listening. There is some minor noise from the cable as it pulls, too. Every smart device now requires you to agree to a series of terms and conditions before you can use it — contracts that no one actually reads. It’s impossible for us to read and analyze every single one of these agreements. But we started counting exactly how many times you have to hit “agree” to use devices when we review them since these are agreements most people don’t read and definitely can’t negotiate. Nick Pino is Managing Editor, TV and AV for TechRadar’s sister site, Tom’s Guide.
You can hook them up to the Beats app where you can switch features on or off. That’s limited to automatic pausing and playing of the music as well as automatic call answering which will pick up your calls when you detach the buds from one another and put them in your ears. The earbuds are magnetic so when you aren’t using them and they’re hanging around your neck, they’ll automatically snap together which also pauses the music so you don’t miss a beat.