Beats Fit Pro review: Ready for the gym and everything else you’ll throw at it

Beats Fit Pro wireless earbuds are loaded up with features and they sound amazing

Beats Fit Pro review
Bottom Line
We love the Beats Studio Buds, and Beats Fit Pro has knocked it out of the park again by offering an extremely comfortable pair of wireless earbuds that are suitable for the gym while offering incredible sonics with warm bass and lows, as well as superb natural sounding ANC and excellent call quality.
Pros
Beautiful and portable
Customizable hard buttons (no touch!)
Ultra-fast pairing and a very strong/reliable Bluetooth connection
"Hey Siri" hands-free voice activation
"Find My" built-in device tracking
Spatial Audio
Amazing sound quality and microphone
Auto play/pause feature
Almost all features are fully compatible with Android
Cheaper than AirPods Pro
Seamless iOS integration
Cons
Needs more fit options; small ear tip is too big and ear wing is not swappable
No wireless charging
Needs more color options other than stone purple
Getting the buds into the case takes some muscle memory
No custom equalizer or tuning settings
4.9

Thank you Apple for doing justice to the Beats lineup. The brand new Beats Fit Pro wireless earbuds are the most Apple-y Beats to date and they’re incredible – they’re gorgeous, they’re loaded up with technology, and they sound amazing. The usability and iOS integration just makes them so wonderful to use and wear. And, they even go above and beyond on Android too. Read on for our in-depth Beats Fit Pro review.

Design, Fit, and Usability

We’re obsessed with the look, feel, and design of Beats Fit Pro. The pastel ultra-matte finish is so clean and beautiful. The charging case is pebble smooth and adorably compact. It’s only a bit larger than the AirPods case and is square rather than rectangle. The portability is an epic improvement over the Powerbeats Pro; this case is very pocketable. The actual bud design is not the most unique, other than the colored matte finish.

The buds feature silicon eartips with a wingtip that’s “digitally modeled” off thousands of ears for the perfect fit. They’re supposed to fit any ear type and even securely during workouts. Unfortunately, this did not apply to us. There are 3 sizes of silicone ear tips included and the wingtip is attached and not swappable. The included “small” eartip included is a medium-sized eartip by most standards. There’s no actual small-sized eartip included, which made it hard for one of us to get a secure tip that would last us through a light jog. We otherwise found the buds quite comfortable and easy to wear for hours, just during times of light movement only.

It’s tough to top Apple usability. There’s so much to love about Beat Fit Pro in this area, especially if you’re an iOS user. Pairing is effortless and happens with a single tap on your iPhone. There’s also no setup or app required, everything is already built into iOS. You can configure and personalize the headphones in iOS Bluetooth settings. You can also toggle different features in Control Center. No apps required!

The Beats feature Apple’s H1 chip and Class 1 Bluetooth. The H1 allows for always-on “Hey Siri”, among other things. Siri is now faster and more responsive than ever. You can say “Hey Siri turn off noise cancellation” without even pausing after the “Hey Siri” and almost immediately it’s done.

The charging case has a built-in tracker so you can use Apple’s “Find My” app to locate it anywhere in the world.

Each bud has a single button, and thankfully there are no touch buttons to deal with. Both buttons play/pause and skip tracks, and you can customize what the press-and-hold does on each ear. Press-and-hold can control volume, noise mode, or activate Siri. It’s a bit unfortunate that there’s no dedicated volume unless you want to give up the other two options, but Apple’s working with limited space on the buds for buttons. A quick “Hey Siri lower the volume” works nicely.

Android

Beats Fit Pro are still normal Bluetooth headphones that can pair with any device. Apple did a nice job of bringing almost all the iOS functionality to Android with the Beats App. It still offers ANC and Transparency settings, Spatial Audio, Auto-Play/Pause, Class 1 Bluetooth Connectivity, Beamforming Microphones, Fast Charge, One-Touch Pairing, Ear Tip Fit Test, Customizable Controls, and the ability for Firmware updates. The only things Android really misses out on is hands free voice activation (“Hey Siri”) and the ability to find lost headphones with “Find My”.

Battery

The charging cable Apple chose for these Beats is USB-C, which we’re personally happy about. Surprisingly, there’s no wireless charging built in. The battery is top-notch: the buds get 6 hours each with ANC on, and the case adds an additional 21 hours for a grand total of 27 hours. With Fast Fuel rapid charging a 5-minute charge gets you 1 hour of battery. Apple includes a short USB-C to USB-C cable, so you’ll need a USB-C charger.

Noise Cancellation

The Active Noise Cancelling (ANC) is superb. It’s plenty strong and incredibly clean. The ANC sounds so natural that you’ll want it on all the time. It dampens and eliminates a noticeable amount of background noise. This is almost as good as ANC gets for in-ear buds, but we think Sony still takes the cake. Apple makes it easy to toggle between ANC, “transparency” (AKA ambient aware), and off. Even “off” sounds great if you have a good in-ear seal. There’s a built-in ear tip fit test that uses the speaker and microphone to confirm a perfect fit.

Audio & Microphone

The audio quality is outstanding. It’s clear, vibrant, and bassy. Music really comes alive and it’s beautifully balanced. They’re a lot of fun to listen to and on-par with more expensive in-ears. Before Apple, Beats were usually overly bassy. More recently, after Apple’s acquisition Beats were a bit light on the bass. Now, Apple has nailed it with a very natural and warm bass that really complements the music. It’s good they sound excellent out-of-the-box because there’s no equilizer to tune or tweak the audio profile. The only option is Apple’s “Spatial Audio”, which happens to be very cool.

Spatial audio is an amazing feat of engineering that Apple showed off a couple years ago with AirPods Pro. It uses the built-in gyroscope (among other tech) to position the audio in front of and around you. Think of it like listening to audio in a surround sound home theater. There’s a “fixed” option where most sound is in front of you, and a “head tracked” option that makes it feel like audio is coming directly from the streaming device. Originally I thought, cool, but gimmicky; but leave it to Apple and Beats to nail such a feature. I used fixed spatial audio to listen to podcasts or interviews and it’s incredible. You sound like you’re right in the room with the person, and in a natural way that you’d want all the time. I found “head tracked” a little less useful, but fun if you’re watching a movie or show and want it to sound like you’re not wearing headphones.

You can always count on Apple to implement a great microphone. There’s a lot of technology making crystal clear voice quality possible — multiple beamforming microphones and the accelerometer are used to perfectly target your voice and eliminate background noise. These buds are great for conference calls.

Beats Fit Pro vs Beats Studio Buds

In comparison to Beats Studio Buds, Beats Fit Pro are more tailored for working out and being active. Beyond their design and ergonomics, Beats Fit Pro offers much stronger bass and lows, while the Beats Studio Buds have more impact when it comes to highs and mids.

Beats Fit Pro review verdict

We’re blown away with Apple’s new Beats Fit Pro. They’re among the most usable headphones we’ve used, and with plenty of tricks up their sleeves. The only real drawback for us is that they don’t include smaller ear tips and alternate ear wings. Nice-to-haves are wireless charging, a tunable equalizer, and more colors. Stone purple is so aesthetically pleasing that it’s a shame the only other color options are black, white, and gray. It’s worth noting most people would call this purple color “pink”, and it’s up for debate in our household. The native iOS integration really enhances the user experience. “Hey Siri” allows you to instantly control your phone and life. Spatial audio turned out to be the only way we listen to podcasts and interviews now. And finally, all other qualities are very much up to snuff — a superior battery, incredible audio quality, all-day comfort, portability, IPX-4 water resistance, and ultra-fast pairing.

We loved Beats Studio Buds, and the Beats Fit Pro has knocked it out of the park again by offering an extremely comfortable pair of wireless earbuds that are suitable for the gym while offering incredible sonics with warm bass and lows, as well as superb natural sounding ANC and excellent call quality.

Beats Fit Pro is now available on Apple.com for $199.99 and starts shipping November 5th. At this price, they’re more affordable than the AirPods Pro, and offer a very similar feature set but the fit and design.