So this is the Beats Pill, now I really appreciate the great build quality of this speaker, I love that you can use its USB C port to charge your own devices and it has a long battery life. However, for me it is hard to justify this speaker due to its price to performance ratio. So today we’re going to see how the Beats Pill stacks up to the JBL Charge 5, its an older speaker now, but it still a solid pick up if you’re looking for a mid sized speaker to either use at home or to take it on the go with you.
Regarding pricing, the Beats Pill has a retail price of $150, pretty up there if you ask me relative to its size and performance. Where as the charge 5 has a retail price of $180, but it likes to go on sale for $150 on a regular basis. Nonetheless, if you want to pick either of these two speakers up they’ll be linked down below or you can always press on the YouTube shopping button.
So first theres the design of these speakers. Now both of these speakers are small enough to place into your back pack and they’re easy enough to take on the go with you. However, the Beats Pill is a little smaller and you’re going to have an easier time storing it in your water bottle holder. But definitely, the Beats Pill feels more premium than the charge 5 cause this speaker is denser, and the silicon body and metal face plate feels more premium than the fabric wrapped body on the Charge 5. Now dont get me wrong, both of these speakers feel premium, but the beats feels more premium. But something that I do have to point out with the Charge 5 is the base… after awhile, these rubbed feet are going to wear out pretty bad, where as with the Beats, I dont think that’s going to be such a big issue. But nonetheless, both of these speakers are super durable and they’re both water and dust resistant.
Now when it comes to battery life, the Beats Pill has an advertised battery life of 24 hours… which is a lot. However, this advertised battery life of 24 hours is with this speaker playing at 50% volume… and this speaker is a little quite for its size and price… so this is a speaker that you’re going to want to use at a higher volume on a regular basis. So real world use with this speaker playing at 90% volume, its going to be good for 9 hours of playback time.
Where as with the charge 5, this speaker has an advertised battery life of 20 hours and thats with this speaker playing at 50%. And in general, this speaker gets much louder and has a lot more bass than the Beats pill… so you’re not going to have to blast this speaker as much as the Beats. So real world use with this speaker playing at 80% volume its good for about 10 hours of playback time. And 80% volume on the charge 5 is way louder than 90% volume on the beats.
Now both of these speakers charge via a USB C port as they should, so you can use your phone’s charger to charge them up, which is great. However, with the Beats you can also 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. And you can also use this USB C port as a wired connection. Where as with the charge 5, you have to use the USB A port to charge your won devices which I don't feel is a useful.
But when it comes to connectivity, both of these speaker can be connected to multiple devices at the same time so you and a friend can both be DJ, latency is not an issue for either of these speakers so you can use them to watch videos on your phone, but when it comes to audio codecs, the Charge 5 has support for SBC, where as the Beats Pill has support for SBC and AAC.
But with all of that out of the way lets talk about sound. Regarding speaker set up, both of these speakers have a single frontward firing woofer and a single frontward firing tweeter. Now a woofer and tweeter set up like this is great cause this is going to help your speaker have better instrument separation and they are going to sound more open cause the woofer is going to handles the mids and the tweeter is going to handle the highs, like this.
Tweeter test
So like you may have just seen, the Woofer handles the mids and the tweeter handles the highs. But something that is sorely missing on the Beats are passive radiators, and as a result this speaker sounds very bright and the bass is lacking on this speaker. And unlike the Charge 5, you cant directly adjust its EQ to your liking. But now we’re going to jump into the sound test, both of these speakers are playing with their stock EQ’s but the beats is playing at 92% volume where as the charge 5 is playing at 62% volume.
Soundtest
So the reason why the volume on the Charge 5 is so off on the Beats Pill is cause the charge 5 just gets a lot louder than the Beats Pill and it also has a lot more bass. And basically, when the beat would drop, the bass on the Charge 5 would just blow out the mics, where as that wasn’t an issue for the Beats Pill even at this higher volume cause this speaker just doesn’t have all that much bass. Now Beats claims that the woofer in this speaker should be enough to handle the bass… but the lie detector determined that was a lie. Now dont get me wrong, I think the Beats Pill sounds a little more open than the Charge 5 here, but it also leans towards a brighter sound signature where as the Charge 5 sounds more balanced and more importantly, the bass hits a lot hard so you can actually feel your music. And when it comes to max volume performance, its not even close. The Charge 5 simply gets a lot louder than the Beats pill, I personally feel the Beats Pill just doesn’t get as loud as you’d expect for its size and price. So sound quality wise, its a no brainer here, the charge 5 easily wins.
But finally lets talk about pairing these speakers with other speakers. Now with both of these speakers, if you have two of the exact same speakers than you can 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 is a great feature especially if you plan on taking these speakers to the beach with you cause this way you can cover a large area with music without having to blast your speaker and drain its battery life faster.
But the Charge 5 is also using party boost and you can pair it up to other party boost speakers like either a Boombox 3, a boombox 2, Xtreme 3, charge 5, pulse 5, pulse 4, or to a flip 5 or to a flip 6 and you can pair up to 100 speakers together and get them to play in sync. But also, you can connect your Charge 5 to JBL’s newer speakers that are using aura cast like either an Xtreme 4, Clip 5, or go 4 cause aura cast is backwards compatible with party boost. Just, in order to pair your speakers together you have to do so through JBL’s app. So if you’re planing on growing your collection of speakers, then you do want to go with JBL here.
But with all of that being said, I really appreciate the Beats Pill impressive build quality, and I really like that you can use its USB C port to charge your own devices. However, for me it is very hard to justify this speaker cause of its price to performance ratio. That speaker lacks in physicality in its bass and it doesn’t get as loud as you’d expect. Personally I feel you are much better off going with the Charge 5 simply cause it sounds a lot better. It gets a lot louder and it has a lot more bass, plus you can adjust its EQ. The only drawback here is that you cant use its USB C port to charge your own devices.