Beats Pill Bluetooth speaker review: Back from the dead and improved in a few key ways

A few years ago, Beats was owned by Apple she stopped her Plus pill A Bluetooth speaker that came out in 2015 for $200 and was quite popular until more compact and more competitively priced Bluetooth speakers flooded the market. Honestly, I never thought we’d see another Beats Pill. But here we are in 2024 with a new, improved pill that offers better sound, battery life, durability, USB-C charging and sound, along with a lower price ($150) to match The top-rated SoundLink Flex from Bose.

Which portable wireless speaker is better? Read on to get my thoughts on that and more.

Read more: The best Bluetooth speakers of 2024

Design Beats Pill (2024).

The last time I saw the Beats Pill Plus was when I was loading it into a moving box in March 2020, when CNET closed its offices in New York as the COVID-19 pandemic began. That box was eventually moved to a new office and sat unopened for several years.

When I got word that a new pill was coming (Beats teased it in April, thanks to a Lebron James post on social media), I went looking for the box and found the Pill Plus downstairs. It was the white version and would only charge to 50% but it worked which allowed me to compare it to the new pill.

The two speakers are shaped similarly, but the new Pill is even more cylindrical. It also has a speaker grill on only one side, while the Pill Plus had grills on both sides. Available in red, champagne and black, the new Pill weighs 24 ounces (680 grams), or about 2 ounces less than the Pill Plus (26.4 ounces or 748 grams). The new pill seems a little bigger than the old pill, but not by much.

The Pill Plus had a Lightning port, while the new Pill features USB-C like all of Apple’s latest products. The new pill also comes with a detachable lanyard so you can more easily carry the speaker and possibly hang it from something. Along with the power button and universal control button, there are volume controls, and the speaker itself – at least the back two-thirds of it – has a nice-to-the-touch rubber finish. Overall, the design is a clear improvement over the design of the Pill Plus, which you’d expect considering we got the Pill Plus almost 10 years ago.

Another key difference is the water and dust resistance rating. The previous pill didn’t have an IP rating, while the new pill has an IP67 rating, making it fully waterproof and dustproof. The Pill Plus had a rubber seal that covered its lighting, USB-out and auxiliary input ports. This model has only one USB-C port that can be charged and discharged and has no cover. The Beats “b” logo is smaller and has moved from the top of the speaker (it was the “b” button on the Pill Plus) to a more prominent spot on the grille. Seems like a good choice of brand.

Note that you can hang the speaker vertically with a string, but the speaker is designed to lie horizontally and has small rubber feet on the bottom. I didn’t drop it, but the speaker should survive short drops fairly well, as long as you don’t drop it directly on its grille, which is located on the front third of the speaker (the edges of the speaker are rubberized and likely offer some shock resistance).

Features Beats Pill (2024).

The speaker is equipped with Bluetooth 5.3 and is compatible with Apple and Android/Chrome devices as well as other devices that have Bluetooth audio connectivity. Features are very similar for Apple and Android users, including one-touch pairing, though Android users must use the Beats Android app for firmware updates and access to limited settings.

As with Beats Studio Pro and Solo 4 headphones, there is multi-point Bluetooth pairing for Android users with automatic switching between devices linked to your Google account. If you’re an Apple user, the speaker will connect to your iCloud account, but you’ll have to manually switch between devices, which some people prefer as automatic switching can be a bit clunky and annoying.

You can link multiple pills together in gain mode or create a stereo pair with two pills (you have to link them in gain mode and then press the universal control button and the volume up button on one of the speakers to designate that speaker as the left “reference” speaker). Needless to say, you get true stereo separation when you have them in a stereo pair.

Both Apple and Android users will get Find My (Google calls it Find My Device). It shows the last place the device was used, but you don’t have the Precision Find My feature that the AirPods Pro 2 have, which is much more advanced.

As mentioned, there’s no auxiliary input, but you can connect your USB-C-equipped smartphone or computer to the USB-C port to get a wired digital connection (when connecting the USB-C cable to switch to wired mode). Beats says the Pill is capable of lossless audio over USB-C with a maximum sample rate of 48kHz/24-bit. I noticed a very slight difference when connected in wired mode – there’s a bit more detail and clarity – but it’s not a night and day increase in sound quality.

Finally, the pill can be used as a speakerphone, and it works well in that capacity. Callers said they could hear me clearly even though there was some background noise in my house. Speakerphone functionality is not something that is available on the Bose SoundLink Flex.

Beats Pill (2024) sound quality.

Beats says the Pill features a newly designed woofer system that “drives its improved bass response and audio performance.” The Pill has a single racing neodymium woofer that Beats notes has 53% more “piston area” than the dual circular woofers on the Pill Plus. Also, the increased magnet quality (N50H) “allows for 28% stronger motor power and is capable of 90% more air volume compared to the dual woofer system in the Pill Plus.”

All of this translates into a clearly better sounding speaker than the Pill Plus. The new Pill sounds louder and also has better bass definition and overall clarity. It is a big difference.

I compared the pill to the Bose SoundLink Flex ($150) and Sonos Roam 2 ($180). The Pill is a slightly more dynamic sounding speaker than the SoundLink Flex and seems to be a bit brighter, with a bit more forward mids (where the vocals live). I wouldn’t say it sounds better than the Bose, but it does play a bit louder and has a bit more cut sound.

While all three of these speakers are essentially mono speakers, both the Pill and the SoundLink Flex have a reasonably wide soundstage—the sound seems to extend out the sides of them, a bit more than what you get with the Sonos Roam 2. I listened on the Pill and Roam 2 with CNET’s in-house audio editor, Ty Pendelbury, and we both agreed that the Roam 2, which is slightly smaller and also sounds very good for its size, is a bit more even and balanced with its sound, though both the Pill and the SoundLink Flex produce a bit more bass.

It’s always a bit hard to compare these speakers in terms of sound, as there are some differences between tracks due to the tonal balance of the speakers. On certain tracks I thought the Pill sounded better than the Bose – but sometimes the opposite was true. I should also note that while the bass response is more impressive than you’d think from such compact speakers, there is a limit to how much bass these speakers can produce, especially when you’re playing more complicated tracks with lots of instruments playing at the same time. time.

All three of these speakers sound better than yours JBL Flip 5, which costs about $100. And I’d go with the Pill and the SoundLink Flex Nice Charge 5 speaker from JBL simply because you get comparable sound quality in a more compact speaker.

When it comes to stereo pairing the two pills, as I said, you get true stereo separation and a significant jump in sound quality. You won’t get the same sound quality you get with a compact set of bookshelf speakers that cost around $300, but you’ll get decent sound that will fill a small to medium-sized room with sound.

Beats Pill Battery Life (2024).

The Pill Plus battery lasted 12 hours. Beats says the new Pill can get up to 24 hours of battery life at 50% volume level, or twice what the Pill Plus offers. In my tests, I listened at different volume levels (I have the volume around 70% and sometimes I turn it all the way up to see how well the sound holds without distortion), so I didn’t fully evaluate the battery life. That said, I didn’t need to recharge the speaker during the four days of testing, and I left the speaker on for several hours a day playing background music at low to medium volume. It’s also worth noting that a 10-minute charge will give you 2 hours of battery life.

Final Thoughts Beats Pill (2024).

The Beats Pill has improved on its predecessor in some key ways, especially in terms of sound quality, durability, battery life and price. I like the form factor and lighter weight of the Bose SoundLink Flex (and you can get decent Flex knockoffs like Tribit Stormbox Flow and Soundcore by Anker Motion 300 for $80 or even less when on sale). But the pill has a few extras like USB-C wired audio mode and speakerphone features that are appealing.

You’ll have to decide how important these extras are when weighing the pill against the Bose SoundLink Flex. But any way you look at it, the Pill is a very good compact Bluetooth speaker. Like the Bose, it’s an easy wireless speaker to recommend, especially if the price drops $20 to $30, as the SoundLink Flex sometimes does during flash sales.