Beats Flex review: wireless earbud basics done right - The Verge

The Beats Flex are a well thought-out product with easy controls, enough battery life to last your entire workday, and solid audio quality for the price. And the transition to USB-C is significant. In a year where it made all the sense in the world to stick with Lightning to appeal to iPhone 12 buyers, Beats is extending a branch beyond the Apple ecosystem as AirPods and AirPods Pro continue to saturate that market.

I like to listen to music quietly as I go to sleep. My wife does not. Therefore, for the last few years i’ve been using BeatsX headphones when I go to sleep most nights to listen to what I want as I drift off to sleep.

We all fall asleep differently and this works for me, so no judgement please 😊

I loved BeatsX because while they weren’t technically sleep headphones, they work great for me. They can rest lightly in my ear (I only do one ear) and they fall out of my ear the first time I shift in my sleep, making sure I don’t roll over onto them and jam them into my head as I sleep. I also loved that they had the W1 chip and paired effortlessly with my iPhone.

Frankly, they were the only headphones I could find that worked close to this well, so I was ready to pounce on literally as many pairs as I could if they ever got discontinued. That finally happened last week, but I have not bought any BeatsX since then because they were replaced by the Beats Flex: headphones in the vein of my precious BeatsX, but cheaper. The reviews have been decent for them, which is totally fine by me for my use case.

Oh, and not to beat a dead horse, but switching to USB-C makes my bedside charging situation easier than before as I can eliminate the Lightning cable that existed exclusively to charge these headphones.