There was a time when Beats earphones were mocked for the aggressiveness of the sound: all mushy bass that was good for inspiration but meant the sound was always a little too much. These days, however, it is just enough. The sound of the Powerbeats Pro 2 is fantastic: hefty enough to power you through a workout, but not so robust that you will miss the details of what you are listening to. The bass is chunky when it is needed, but there is plenty of separation, and the earphones sound great even on the kind of things that are unlikely to be soundtracking workouts, such as the most airy of classical recordings.
There is plenty of volume – especially when used alongside noise cancelling – so you get the energy you need during a workout. They seem to be a little louder than the AirPods Pro 2, so they sound largely similar to – but slightly less refined than. Occasionally, at higher volumes, the Powerbeats Pro 2 did seem to be straining a little and the sound would become slightly washed out, but you probably shouldn’t be listening that loudly anyway.
Design. The first version of the Powerbeats Pro were already the perfect workout earphones in many ways. They sit snugly and reliably in the ear. Their built-in hooks give a good sense that they’re safely on, and they sit flush with the head so that they’re unlikely to get stuck on anything else. The use of real, physical buttons to play and pause and adjust the volume – rather than the sometimes too delicate brushes and squeezes that you use to control the AirPods, for instance – is very helpful in the sometimes confused panic of a workout. Their basic shape and design have stayed much the same.
But there were some obvious problems with the hardware design of the older earphones: the case was large, especially for something that might be carried around in a shorts pocket at the gym, and the earphones themselves were a little chunky too. Thankfully those and other small pain points about the design are gone. The new earphones sit in the ear even better than before – they are so well-positioned and light that it is easy to forget they are on at all.
The case itself is still fairly chunky – bigger, for instance than its AirPods siblings. But with a 33 per cent reduction in weight, it’s now light and small enough to slip into a pocket and not worry about it. Like some other earlier Beats products, the Powerbeats Pro sometimes felt like they were in danger of breaking; we used one pair that eventually stopped charging in their case because the contacts were damaged. The new earphones click reliably into their case and the general feel is much more robust, however, and it feels as if they are much more likely to last.
Heart rate tracking. One of the surprising and unusual features of the Powerbeats Pro is that they have built-in heart rate tracking. Using sensors built into the earphone, they are able to monitor your heart and thereby understand your exercise and more. It is the first time that Apple has done that outside of the Apple Watch. The tracking is impressively accurate: it found our heart rate impressively quickly, kept it, and that measuring lined up perfectly with other sensors, such as heart rate straps and watches. It responded quickly to changes of effort, such as intervals.
But actually using it is slightly odd. Unlike the Apple Watch, for instance, you need to start a workout in a supported third-party app such as Nike Run Club or Peloton, and the earphones will then share your heart rate so that it can be saved away; Apple doesn’t make its own app, so there is no way, for instance, to feed your pulse and heart rate straight into the Fitness app, like with the Watch. As such, you’ll have to be using one of the already supported apps, though there is no reason that list could not expand in the future.
This is a rare situation where Android actually gets a better experience. The heart rate will appear like any other Bluetooth sensor, so you can use it with any app that has integrated that into its recording, and most should already. Read more: Best wireless earbuds, tested by our tech expert. The way that the Powerbeats Pro integrate their pulse tracking also means that you don’t get the advantage of the constant tracking that is offered by something like the Apple Watch. That wearable can spot trends in your resting heart rate, for instance, or try and work out whether you are getting fitter by monitoring your effort as you walk. But the PowerBeats Pro 2 only measure and store your heart rate while you’re working out.
This gets us to perhaps the more lasting question about heart rate tracking. Are there many people who are willing to spend this amount of money on high-end earphones for working out with, that don’t have a devoted way of tracking their heart rate already? If that’s you, then these earphones are a beautiful solution; but for many people that problem might not really exist. Smart features. The heart rate tracking is the most obvious smart feature on these earphones – but it’s far from the only one, and probably not the most useful. The Powerbeats Pro 2 have borrowed the latest features from Apple and Beats’ other earphones, so you get the best of the whole line here.
