Summary
- Beats PowerBeats Pro 2 retail for $249 and compete on price with the AirPods Pro 2, but lack advanced codecs.
- Earbuds have a comfortable design, secure fit, physical controls for active use, and IPX4 sweat resistance.
- Heart rate monitoring has potential but limited app support; ANC and transparency mode are solid.
If the PowerBeats name seems like an older one, it’s because the last release was six years ago. The new Beats PowerBeats Pro 2 fitness-focused earbuds are packed with new features like a heart rate monitor, but they promise more than they deliver.
Beats PowerBeats Pro 2
The Beats PowerBeats Pro 2 are a sequel years in the making, and not only do these new sport earbuds feature ANC for the first time, but built-in heart rate tracking to track your workouts as music powers them.
- Fun sounding audio signature
- Easy to find a good fit
- Heart rate monitoring is accurate
- Available in a unique range of colors
- Not as seamless an experience for Android users
- App integration for health features could be better
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Price and Availability
The Beats PowerBeats Pro 2 retails for $249 and comes in a range of fun colors. I’m looking at the PowerBeats Pro 2 in the Hyper Purple color option, but they also come in Jet Black, Electric Orange, and Quick Sand, which is the closest you’ll find to an AirPods-style plain white.
Speaking of the AirPods Pro 2, the PowerBeats Pro 2 are the same price, but that does make them slightly cheaper than other high-end options from Bose and Sony, for example. If you’re looking for premium sport-focused earbuds, the Beats may prove to be the better deal.
A Great Design, But Make Room for the Case
Despite this being the first refresh to the lineup in six years, the Beats PowerBeats Pro 2 has a familiar yet modern look. It’s undeniably a Beats product, and that’s a good thing. On the other hand, the case feels like it could have stood to change with the times.
The case is huge, at least compared to other earbuds you’re likely to see released anytime soon. This is necessitated by the over-ear hooks that are part and parcel of the design. I’m not sure how they could have made the case smaller, but I wish they would have tried, since it’s not particularly easy getting the earbuds in and out of the case as is.
The good news is once they’re out of the case, everything gets much better. Finding a fit was easy for me using the default ear tips that came on the earbuds, but Beats includes five different size options for the silicon tips to help you find the best fit. The earbuds stayed comfortable for hours at a time.
One feature that comes in especially handy for cyclists, gym enthusiasts, or most other active people is physical controls. Even just testing the earbuds, I appreciated the physical volume rocker located on each earbud, which made it easy to adjust the volume without doing so accidentally, which is often the case on most other modern earbuds.
The PowerBeats Pro 2 are also ready for the gym when it comes to sweat resistance, as they’re IPX4 certified against water ingress. This only applies to the actual earbuds, however, so be especially careful when they’re in the case.
Smart Software, But Limited Health Features
Beats may be a subsidiary of Apple, but in general the companies try to maintain separate identities. That didn’t stop Beats from using Apple’s H2 chip—the same that powers the AirPods Pro 2.
As soon as I popped the PowerBeats Pro 2 into my ears for the first time, I got a notification on my iPhone that they’d automatically been paired. Before I was even sure what was happening, the music that had been playing through my other headphones just a few minutes prior was now coming out of the perfectly paired earbuds.
Pairing isn’t quite as simple on Android, but it’s close and still very easy. Of course, you’ll need to download the Beats App for Android on the Google Play Store to access the settings that are simply built into iOS. Even though Android users get a bespoke app, there are no bonus features like adjustable EQ.
Of course, there is one major new feature, and I’m not talking about the new noise-canceling. Heart rate tracking is one of the coolest new features of the PowerBeats 2 Pro and one of the best Apple Watch features, but unfortunately it seems to have a way to go before it’s fully ready for prime time.
It was winter as I tested the PowerBeats Pro 2, so I couldn’t exactly take them on a bike ride. That said, I have a bicycle set up on an indoor trainer, so I fitted the earbuds, got on the bike, and pedaled for a few minutes. After a while, I checked my Apple Health data and saw, well, nothing.
In my case, the heart rate tracking only started once I was actively monitoring it. While it was very accurate, this didn’t seem like the typical behavior you’d expect.
The app support is also less-than-stellar, at least at the time of this writing. While some popular apps like Peloton are supported, my personal app of choice, Strava, was nowhere to be found, with no indication it’s on the way.
Solid Sound and New Noise Canceling
As is often the case with Beats and Apple products, there aren’t pages of detailed specs covering driver size or other aspects of the PowerBeats Pro 2’s audio tech. That said, in terms of overall features, this is as bare bones an offering as you could expect.
While we’ve already covered how Android users can expect their time with the PowerBeats Pro 2 to go, it’s worth pointing out that you don’t get advanced codecs like aptX or LDAC. It’s clear that Apple users are the main audience here, as the codec support is basic, with just AAC and the standard SBC codec supported.
Listening to the opening suite from Rush’s 2112, I was surprised by how balanced the sound is overall. The guitar sounds a bit strident in the upper midrange in certain parts of the song’s 20-minute-plus runtime, but this is true on other headphones as well. On the other hand, there is a solid feel to the low end of the bass and the drums that never becomes overpowering.
The acoustic guitar that opens Maylene and the Sons of Disaster’s “Thrush” sounds detailed without being overbearing, and when the distorted guitars kick in for the verse, the biting midrange stops just short of going too far. Similarly to the previous song, the low-end feels like just enough, but it never gets close to overly bass-heavy.
Just to make sure that the headphones were indeed capable of laying the bass on thick when necessary, I turned to Thundercat’s “Uh Uh,” and I wasn’t disappointed. The bass brought plenty of low-end thump, but it didn’t do so at the expense of the other instrumentation in the song. Overall, these are much better balanced than older Beats headphones, though still with a bit more of a V-shape to the sound than the AirPods Pro 2.
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The headphones are comfortable to wear and have spectacular battery life.
While this is the first time the PowerBeats Pro has featured Active Noise Cancelation (ANC), don’t expect miracles. I could certainly tell whether the feature was enabled, off, or toggled to Transparency mode, but aside from blocking out the rumble of my furnace in the background, it wasn’t nearly as effective as you could expect from any ANC-enabled AirPods.
Fortunately, that Transparency mode more than makes up for it. If you use the PowerBeats 2 anywhere near traffic, whether you’re on a run or a bike ride, this mode is a literal life-saver. It may not sound as wonderfully unaltered as the AirPods’ Transparency, but I never had an issue hearing my surroundings, even over louder music.
Call quality was also very good. As you’ll hear in the sample recordings included with this review, there wasn’t much difference in my voice whether I was indoors in a quiet room or outdoors on a breezy day.
Plenty of Battery Life For Any Workout
Beats claims that the PowerBeats Pro 2 features up to eight hours of playtime with ANC enabled, or up to 10 hours with it disabled. The additional features built into the earbuds make this slightly more difficult to test than usual, but I found that my own experiences matched the estimates fairly well.
A five-minute charge will get you 1.5 hours playtime, so running out of battery power isn’t much of a concern. The charging case adds another 28 to 35 hours of playback time between full charges, again depending on whether ANC is enabled.
The case features wireless Qi charging—a first for this series of earbuds—but no MagSafe as this is indeed Beats and not Apple we’re talking about. Still, wireless charging is a nice feature to have alongside the standard USB-C charging.
Should You Buy the Beats Powerbeats Pro 2?
There’s a lot about the Beats PowerBeats Pro 2 that makes them easy to recommend, especially if you’re a big believer in over-the-ear hooks. They’re comfortable and easy to find a good fit for, plus the physical controls are easy to find by touch. This isn’t a huge deal for runners, but if you use earbuds on a bike or at the gym, this is a great feature.
I was initially excited to try out the heart rate monitoring, especially since I’ve never been an Apple Watch user. That said, the somewhat flaky monitoring and lack of integration with apps I actually use turned this into more of a letdown than an actual useful set of features. The addition of ANC is nice, but it’s not quite as good as the AirPods’ implementation.
Even with those caveats, these are still great headphones. The transparency mode is fantastic—essential for sports headphones—and this is by far one of the most balanced-sounding products I’ve heard from Beats. If you’re happy with the features available right now, there’s no reason to hold off buying the PowerBeats Pro 2.
Beats PowerBeats Pro 2
The Beats PowerBeats Pro 2 are a sequel years in the making, and not only do these new sport earbuds feature ANC for the first time, but built-in heart rate tracking to track your workouts as music powers them.
