Apple’s PowerBeats Pro 2 offer a landmark feature—heart rate monitoring. Unfortunately, early reviews show that this feature is flawed in ways that may not be resolved through firmware updates.
In a detailed video review, DC Rainmaker laments that the PowerBeats Pro 2 cannot maintain more than one Bluetooth connection at a time. So, if you connect the earbuds to gym equipment, Garmin hardware, or Strava software for real-time heart rate readouts—a feature that is advertised by Apple—music playback stops completely. It’s a bizarre limitation that you would not expect from a pair of earbuds.
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There’s also some weirdness with iOS and Android compatibility. Heart rate monitoring is enabled automatically for iOS users, but DC Rainmaker and other reviewers struggled to connect the PowerBeats Pro 2 with third-party health apps on iPhone (yes, this is a core feature of the earbuds). Android users need to manually enable heart rate monitoring (through a series of gestures) every time they use the PowerBeats Pro 2, yet Android doesn’t suffer from the weird third-party-app pairing bug that people are running into on iOS. So, neither platform can provide a perfect experience at launch.
And, worryingly, DC Rainmaker found that the PowerBeats Pro 2’s heart rate sensors are inaccurate when compared to the Apple Watch or a traditional chest monitor. I would normally call this a non-problem. Casual athletes don’t really need a 100% accurate heart rate readout, they just need to be able to see trends that can reliably inform future workouts.
But this isn’t a situation of “you get slightly different results with the PowerBeats Pro 2.” No, the earbuds frequently dip into pure inaccuracy, and they stop reporting data when they detect a potentially wonky readout. Apple knows that the PowerBeats Pro 2 will frequently make mistakes during workouts, so it suppresses mistakes by categorizing them as dropouts.
Furthermore, if you wear an Apple Watch and the PowerBeats Pro 2 at the same time, iOS will not aggregate the devices’ heart rate data. It’ll simply use the data from the smartwatch.
“You cannot listen to music with your iPhone while also paired with the gym equipment for heart rate.” – Apple
This isn’t to say that the PowerBeats Pro 2 are a bad purchase. If you’re a fan of the original PowerBeats Pro, you’ll probably enjoy this upgraded model, especially if you’re an iPhone owner who can take advantage of automatic heart rate tracking (to reiterate, you need to manually enable the heart rate monitor every time you want to use it on Android).
However, if you consider heart rate monitoring a priority, or if you want to keep an eye on real-time heart rate data at the gym, you should probably just buy a smart watch, a fitness tracker, or an inexpensive chest strap. Heart rate monitoring is a perk of the PowerBeats Pro 2, but it should not be considered a selling point, at least not at launch.
I hope that Apple fixes some of the PowerBeats Pro 2’s flaws. Pairing and accuracy problems could be resolved by a future software update, at least in theory. That said, I doubt that the gym equipment problem will be fixed until the third-generation PowerBeats Pro launch five or six years from now (that’s how long it took for Apple to release this second-gen model).
Apple Watch SE
The Apple Watch SE provides a good mix of affordability and functionality. It isn’t the cheapest smartwatch in Apple’s lineup, but it’s better than buying an outdated model that’s soon to reach end of life.
Source: DC Rainmaker via MacRumors
