Beats today announced the upcoming launch of a new collaboration with fragment design founder Hiroshi Fujiwara for a minimalist limited-edition version of the Beats Flex earbuds. The new black-on-black beats studio3 Beats Flex will be available starting Thursday, November 18 from Apple and SSENSE and will be priced at $69.99. Beats Flex is the current entry-level Beats earbud product, featuring two…
Well, you have to pair it first before you start listening to your music. You can stream audio such as songs, podcasts, or movies with Beats Flex and another set of Beats or Apple headphones. These are wireless Bluetooth earphones, yet I haven’t explained its Bluetooth till now. People around you cannot hear any sound even if you are listening at a high volume. There is a good amount of focus in the mids around 1000 Hz.
It’s probably one of the most affordable Beats audio earphones/headphones too. For $50, I wasn’t expecting all that much, but the Beats Flex are a pleasant surprise. You get an Apple experience for much less than most Apple products cost, and you don’t have to give up any important features.
Although the clarity isn’t great, which is probably due to the fact that the integrated microphone is facing into a shirt and not towards your mouth. 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). That might be a problem if you own an iPhone since they use the Lightning port.
The Beats Flex doesn’t disappoint, rated at 12 hours on a full charge. Based on my testing, it’s really about 11 hours, which is still highly sufficient for those who want a week’s worth of playback before charging. I used the earbuds for about 1.5 hours daily over the course of 5 days and still had 30% power left in the tank. That was enough to jump on two very long Skype calls before charging.
They don’t isolate you from outside noise all that well compared with some competitors, however. Now, if you’re using the Beats Flex with an iOS device, you’ll get prompts to sync them to your Apple ID and iCloud – which, in total, takes under a minute. This works on the Android side as well, though on Android, I’ve noticed it’s possible to hit in your music app and audio will continue playing through the earbuds when they’re hanging on your chest.
You can certainly flex while using these, but you might have to get your pump on with a sweat-resistant pair. Back in October, Apple introduced Beats Flex wireless earphones, which offer improvements over the previous BeatsX earphones yet come with a much lower $49.99 price tag. The wireless Bluetooth earphones have a cord between the two earpieces that drapes around the neck and provides access to some physical controls. They were initially only available in Beats Black and Yuzu Yellow color… That is to say, they are wired to each other, not to your iPhone.