While you will get similarly priced earbuds with better sound quality, Beats Flex are still worth considering if you like natural tuning. Beats Flex are the cheapest Beats headphones, with a balanced sound and a W1 chip for seamless pairing with Apple devices. They are significantly cheaper than their predecessors and Apple’s AirPods, but little has been sacrificed in sound or function. beats flex review The headphones have simple pairing, seamless switching and a strong Bluetooth connection. They work just as well with Android devices, thanks to the Beats app, as they do Apple ones. The Beats app on Android offers many of the same features as available on an iPhone, including assistance with pairing and battery status popups, as well as handling updates and various settings.
Beats says this “Flex-Form” cable is made of nitinol, or nickel titanium. It’s more rigid than a regular earbud wire, but it’s super lightweight, and thanks to that design choice you don’t have a piece of plastic sitting behind your neck. It’s also coated in the same matte, soft-touch material as the rest of the Flex so it has a nice overall feel to it. With only eight hours of battery life, the BeatsX were not only getting crushed by other wire-connected wireless earbuds, but also by some of the new true wireless earbuds.
You’ll really need to experiment with the included tips to see which one fits best for your earholes before giving these a whirl. One of iOS 16’s most praised features comes at the cost of draining battery life, according to recently published Apple support documents. The feature, known as “keyboard haptics,” is optional in iOS 16 and allows users to get physical feedback via slight vibrations upon the touch of each key, confirming that it was pressed much like keyboard sounds. I don’t mind the change to USB-C, as I’ve got plenty of USB-C cables just sitting around the house for charging my iPad Pro and Mac notebooks, but for some, the change might be a bit of an inconvenience. The switch to USB-C does make it much easier for Android users, as they generally have plenty of USB-C cables and may not already own any devices that charge over Lightning. This setup is a bit different from BeatsX, which actually had a third housing located closer to the ear on the left side that was where all of the physical controls were located.
The Beats Flex have very good peaks and dips performance. There aren’t too many peaks and dips overall, but a peak in the high-mid adds harshness to vocals and lead instruments, and a bigger dip in the low-treble veils the upper harmonics of beats flex review these sounds. It’s underemphasized across the range, so vocals and lead instruments are veiled while sibilants like S and T sounds are dull and lispy. The range is fairly flat, which keeps vocals and lead instruments present in your mixes.
These are minor foibles when you consider what an otherwise excellent product the Beats Flex are. With excellent sound quality and battery life, plus a very reasonable asking price, they emphatically deliver in all the areas that matter the most. If you’re an iPhone user, in particular, they offer an experience you simply won’t find anywhere else at this price. Besides their great sound quality, I also found it quick and easy to achieve a secure fit with the Beats Flex thanks to the relatively small driver housing surrounding the silicone tips. If you’ve struggled to achieve a good seal with other models of earphones that have larger housings, these are well worth a try.
I would say the comfort level is moderate, as I noticed the inner casing was adding slight pressure to the concha. This will only cause issues if you have a low pain threshold or use the earbuds for longer than two hours. The Beats Flex headphones easily better Apple’s 2012 wired EarPods for sound – in direct comparison, the once-bundled EarPods sound overly bassy. We stream The Waterboys’ The Whole Of The Moon on Tidal, and the Beats Flexes offer a far more cohesive mix across the frequencies and a better sense of timing throughout.
However, once you get a strong seal, they won’t move too much. You can also improve its stability by choosing the best-fitted earbuds from four different sizes options. They are mostly made of silicone and rubber, which makes them very bendable. Robust build quality and eye-catching design influence a person to get any earphones.
The real star of the show is that impressive battery life, and if you need a new pair of headphones now that the EarPods are no longer included in the box, then the Beats Flex are a solid choice. Regular Powerbeats offer up to 15 hours of battery life but are less convenient to take in and out of your ears. The Flex’s sound profile also favors vocals and spoken content. This is great if you’re watching a movie or TV, or listening to a podcast. It’s not the best when you want to blast the bombastic hip-hop of Run The Jewels. The lack of appropriately boomy bass at times also impacts kick drums from metal bands like Gojira, sucking a ton of energy out of the songs.