At either end of the U are elongated plastic housings that contain the battery and electronics (including the Apple-designed W1 Bluetooth chip), as well as the USB-C charging port and the power/pairing button. These plastic beats solo pro wireless housings are where Apple has focused most of its redesign (cost-cutting?) efforts. Instead of placing the microphone and controls in an inline pod on the left earbud’s wire, these are now contained in the left housing.
Magnetic earbuds automatically play music when they’re in your ears and pause when they’re attached around your neck. Executive Editor David Carnoy has been a leading member of CNET’s Reviews team since 2000. He covers the gamut of gadgets and is a notable reviewer of mobile accessories and portable audio products, beats solo pro wireless including headphones and speakers. He’s also an e-reader and e-publishing expert as well as the author of the novels Knife Music, The Big Exit and Lucidity. All the titles are available as Kindle, iBooks, Nook e-books and audiobooks. If you tried the BeatsX before, then you know what to expect here.
I think I prefer the simpler Beats Flex layout, which helps reduce weight (they’re 8% lighter than BeatsX) without compromising usability. The left-side housing also includes a black patch where the microphone lives, as well as the USB-C port. The launch of Beats Flex comes at the perfect time, given that Apple has stopped including wired EarPods in the box with new purchases of iPhones, even older models that used to include them.
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 beats flex review 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.
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.
Without the H1 chip, you also won’t get hands-free “Hey Siri” support, so you’ll have to press the voice assistant button on the left-side neckband housing in order to access Siri. With nearly identical neckband housings on each side, it takes a little bit of practice to remember which functions are located where, but once you learn that it’s easy to control things by feel. Unlike AirPods Pro, Beats Flex don’t have active noise cancellation, but I still found they did a pretty good job shutting out background noise and letting me focus on what I was listening to. There’s some added thump to the drum loop, and the sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the beat are delivered with power and depth—these earphones will not disappoint lovers of boosted bass. The vocals are delivered cleanly and clearly, though some sibilance is added to the mix.
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.