Get Them Here: Beats Pill: https://amzn.to/4cVRE5U

So this is the Beats Pill, and just like the Bose Soundlink Max that we recently checked out, I really appreciate that this speaker feels super premium, I like that you can use its USB C port to charge your own devices, and this speaker has a very long battery life. But for me it is very hard to justify this speaker due to its price to performance ratio. Nonetheless, if you’re thinking about picking up the Beats Pill, lets see what this speaker is all about.

So first theres price, the Beats Pill has a retail price of $150… pretty up there if you ask me, but this is standard for beats. They overprice their products, and shortly after they put them on sale for deep discounts to make you think that you got a deal. Now im no saying that beats is the only brand that does this, but I feel they do it the worst here. Nonetheless if you want to pick this speaker up it’ll be linked down below or you can always press on the YouTube shopping button.

So first theres the design of this speaker. Now the Beats Pill is a little larger than your Flip 6 and  ULT 1 but is smaller than lets say your Charge 5 or Boom 2. This speaker is vey easy to take on the go with you cause its small and it can easily fit in your back pack or water bottle holder and it also has a built in strap. The only thing is, this strap is not elastic and theres no clasp to it. But in general, the Beats pill is a very premium feeling speaker thanks to its metal grill on the front and the rest of the body is covered in silicon, plus the increase density of this speaker just makes it feel all that much more premium. But this speaker not only feels premium, its also very durable and its also rocking an IP67 rating which means that its both dust and water resistant.

So the Beats Pill is a very well built speaker and I really like that. And when it comes to battery life it has an advertised battery life of 24 hours, very impressive, however, this advertised battery life of 24 hours is with this speaker playing at 50% volume… and this speaker is a little quiet for its size and price in 2024… and it doesn’t have all that much bass. So this is a speaker that you’re going to want to use at a higher volume. And real world use with this speaker playing at 90% volume, its good for about 9 hours of playback time.

Now, in order to charge this speaker is charges via a USB C port as it should… so you can very easily charge this speaker with your phone’s charger… and you’re going to have to cause this speaker does not come included with a wall adaptor, just a USB C to USB C cable. But something that I like about this speaker is that you can use its USB C port to charge your own devices. Which I feel is super useful especially if you plan on taking this speaker to the beach with you. But unfortunately, this is the only port that you’ll find on this speaker cause there is no audio jack. And more and more speakers of this size are starting to remove their audio jacks. However, you can use this USB C port as a wired connection as well.

But when it comes to wireless connectivity, the Beats Pill is using bluetooth 5.3 and it can connect to either iOS or Android devices. There are no custom apple chips here, however, if you pair this speaker up to an iPhone, you’re going to be able to easily switch to any of your other apple devices. But more importantly latency is not an issue for this speaker so you can use it to watch videos with on your phone, and when it comes to audio codecs it has support for SBC and AAC which is standard for beats products.

But now lets talk about sound, the Beats Pill has a single frontward firing woofer and it has a single frontward firing tweeter. Now a woofer and tweeter set up like this is good cause it helps give this speaker better instrument separation cause the tweeter handles the highs and the woofer handles the mids, like this.

So like you may have just seen, the tweeter handles the highs and the woofer handles the mids. However, something that is really missing on this speaker are passive radiators, so the bass on this speaker is lacking. Now beats says that the Woofer should be able to handle the bass… but this speaker sounds pretty bright. But so that you can hear for yourself we’re going to jump into the sound test. All of these speakers are playing at 92% volume and they are all playing with their stock EQ.

Sound test

So in this sound test I decided to use last gen speakers like the JBL Flip 5 and Sony XB23. The Flip 5 has a single frontward firing woofer and dual passive radiators that shoot out the sides and the Sony XB23 has dual frontward firing woofers and dual passive radiators that shoot out the sides. So hands down, the beats Pill has better instrument separation than these last gen speakers cause they both lack a tweeter for the highs. However, these two last gen speakers have more physicality in their bass than the beats pill cause the beats pill lacks passive radiators. And then theres the max volume performance on this speaker, the Beats Pill gets decently loud, dont get me wrong, however the Beats pill doesn’t get as loud as it should for a speaker of this size and price in 2024… and with this speaker, if you use it while its plugged in your are not going to get a performance boost out of it. So overall, I really appreciate how open this speaker sounds, however, it does sound bright cause it doesn’t have a whole lot of bass cause its missing is passive radiators.

And finally lets talk about pairing this speaker up with other speakers. Now with the beats pill, if you have another beats pill you can either wirelessly pair them together and get them to play in sync, or you can get them to play in left and right stereo mode. And this type of feature is great cause if you plan on taking your speakers to the beach, you can cover a larger area with music without having to use your speakers at a higher volume and draining your battery life faster.

But for right now, if you plan on growing your collection of speakers, I dont recommend the beats pill cause you only have one option. So well have to wait and see if Apple slash beats releases more speakers.

But finally, the beats pill has a built in microphone so if you want you can take phone calls with this speaker. Now a lot of speakers have removed their microphone cause not a lot of people use them… and I never take phone calls with my speakers… but its there if you want it.

But with all of that being said, like I mentioned at the top of this video, I really appreciate than the Beats Pill has amazing build quality, I like its long battery life and I like that you can charge your own devices with its USB C port. However for me it is hard to justify this speaker cause of its price to performance ratio. This speaker sound very open, which is great, but it lacks bass. And for its size, the Beats pill doesn’t get as loud as you’d expect. I can only recommend the beats pill if it is heavily discounted.