The Flex are very much designed for day-to-day casual listening so that’s just fine. They don’t isolate you from outside noise all that well compared with some competitors, however. They cost just $50, far less than most Beats headphones, and are a pair of wireless earphones with a neckband.
The Flex are Beats most affordable earphones to date, and they’re ever so close to being considered a bonafide bargain. The magnetic buds that debuted on the X make a welcome return, and the cable is a little longer than you might expect as Beats’ style is for it to curl round and sit on either shoulder. Sounds fiddly, but in practice the Flex do this naturally, and that’s down to what they’re made from.
There’s a volume rocker on one side, a play/pause/multi-function on the inside of the same side, and a power/pair button on the other side. The design is comfortable enough and easy to wear, but I found the neckband to be less convenient and get in the way. My preference would just be a cable that hangs under my neck or around the back of my neck. The neckband got in the way during activities with a lot of movement (especially crunches!). The linguini cord goes where it wants to and ends up rubbing against our chin. If you own an Apple phone or tablet, you’ll be able to make the most of everything these wireless earbuds have to offer because they use the Apple W1 chip.
Athletic listeners may want to invest in the Beats Fit Pro instead. This pair of noise cancelling earbuds houses the H1 chip and has a 6-hour battery life. You get premium features like Apple spatial audio with head tracking, an IPX4 build, and comfortable, secure fit. This is currently the priciest set of Beats earbuds but may just be worth it for the right listener. The original Beats X sold for around £120-£130 in the UK, and over the last few years they’ve slowly slipped down to £60-£90 depending on where you looked.
Comfort is great, and you can wear them all day long without experiencing fatigue. However, the fit isn’t ideal, as earbuds quickly pop out during light sports activities. Speaking of chips, despite having one, a companion app for Android gives you the ability to check battery status percentages and lets you customize features, just like on an iOS device.
As long as you have more than an hour’s worth of power, it will glow white. There are two thicker portions of the strap that help weigh the rigid wires down, and give somewhere for the innards and battery to live. This is beats flex review where you’ll find the USB-C port for charging, a mic for taking calls and chatting to Siri/Google Assistant and a couple of buttons. All these buttons are easy and reliable to press, with firm feedback and a nice click.
Everything just sounds the same and while that’s nothing new at this price, it’s still a disappointment as Beats once had a distinctive sound. It is therefore necessary to carefully choose the size of the end caps to obtain good comfort, but above all good passive insulation. You shouldn’t have a problem, because Beats delivers four pairs of eartips in different sizes. The headphones fit well in the ears and deliver a satisfactory sound, but lacks a bit of depth. The measurement of the bandwidth reveals that the Beats Flex give pride of place to the mediums, but cannot correctly reproduce the highs from 4000 Hz, nor the bass below 200 Hz.
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.