If you’re not using your expensive smartwatch for anything more than to track your heart rate, why not ditch the wearable and measure your BPM through your outer ear? Beats (acquired by Apple in 2014) is back with a sequel to its running earbuds from 2019 with the Powerbeats Pro 2. The revised buds have ANC and adaptive EQ you expect from a pair of $250 over-ear buds, but the real selling point is its BPM tracking. We’re just as curious whether it’s more or less accurate than the latest Apple Watches.
See Powerbeats Pro 2 at Amazon
See Powerbeats Pro 2 at Best Buy
As somebody who regularly needs to fiddle with their AirPods Pro 2 to keep them from shifting or falling out, over-ear earbuds have always been appealing, even when I’m not at the gym. Still, the Powerbuds Pro 2 is explicitly aimed at athletes who want to tune out the world as they put their feet to the pavement. The Apple-owned Beats brand says buds include an LED optical sensor pulsing 100 times per second to measure blood flow, similar to how practically every smartwatch does it.
Don’t worry; it won’t force you to use Apple Health. The heart monitoring should be compatible with several health apps, including Open, Peloton, Ladder, Slopes, and Runna. Still, the buds will work with iPhones and Macs for FaceTime calls and Siri activation. There’s also the one-touch pairing for Apple users. Android users will instead need to use the Beats App to customize controls. The new, smaller case design also includes Qi wireless charging capabilities.
As expected, the Powerbeats Pro 2 are using Apple’s H2 chip. Over the last few years, Beats’ buds and headphones have been a way to get the hardware and drivers of the stick-shaped Apple AirPods Pro 2 or USB-C-enabled AirPods Max without paying the Apple price. Apple unleashed the cheaper AirPods 4 with ANC and hearing aid capabilities to the AirPods Pro last year. Beats seem to take a similar tack as Apple by offering extra hardware capabilities beyond the fun of listening to your music or podcasts.
For $250, the Powerbeats Pro 2 are a more-premium option for personalized spatial audio with head tracking for better immersive sound. The ANC is another piece of tech ripped from Apple’s vaults, so if you’re coming from AirPods you should have a good idea what you’re getting. The adaptive EQ should use the inward-facing microphone monitors to fine-tune the low- and mid-range tones depending on your environment. That could be more important when the buds are juddering in your ear during an intense workout.
Beats said its new running buds should be 20% lighter than its original pair, and it should be able to handle your sweaty lobes with an IPX4 rating for protection against splashes of water or light rain. These are not the type of earbuds you can take swimming. Beats claim these buds should get 45 hours of battery life from the charging case or 10 hours of playback per bud with transparency and ANC turned off. You’ll get closer to 36 with the case and eight hours per bud with ANC on.
It’s been close to six years since the last Powerbeats Pro hit store shelves, and there’s been a lot of innovation in buds since then. The H2 chip is now getting close to three years old. Even though I use the AirPods Pro 2 daily, that’s mostly because of fit. The audio quality is solid across the board, but I wish I had other options. The benefit of Beats is that you can get Apple’s tech for less, such as with last year’s revised Beats Pill or 2023’s Beats Studio Buds +.
The Powerbeats Pro 2 will arrive on Thursday, Feb. 13, on Apple’s website. You can get it in black, beige, purple, or “electric orange” if you want your ears to have a traffic cone flavor.
See Powerbeats Pro 2 at Amazon
See Powerbeats Pro 2 at Best Buy
