Beats Fit Pro Review

Beats Fit Pro: Release Date And Price

The Beats Fit Pro were available in the US before the UK, but eventually crossed the Atlantic to go on sale in the UK on 28th January. They cost £199.99 and come in four colours – black, white, grey and purple.

Buy from Beats By Dre | £199.99

Design

The Fit Pro earbuds add a new design to Beats’s range of other truly wireless buds. While the small Studio Pro just have an in-ear tip and the Powerbeats Pro have an ear hook, the Fit Pro have an in-ear tip combined with a flexible wing tip. That means they offer a more secure fit than the Studio Pro while being smaller than the Powerbeats Pro.

Each bud has a multifunction button on the side and these perform the same operations on both sides, allowing you to play/pause, skip tracks and switch between sound modes. There is no volume control though.

Like Beats’s (and Apple’s) other headphones the Fit Pro buds have an IPX4 rating, meaning they are water- and sweat-resistant but not waterproof. I have never had a problem using IPX4 buds for sports myself, but generally it’s comforting to have the waterproof design you can get with running headphones from the likes of Jaybird and Jabra.

The Fit Pro’s case is fairly small and shaped to easily slip into a pocket. A little too easily in fact – it’s pretty slippery and can slide out of running belts if not positioned carefully. Jaybird and Jabra have buds with smaller cases, and the cases for the AirPods and AirPods Pro are also a little more pocket-friendly.

Fit

There are three sizes of silicone in-ear tips in the box, but the Fit Pro’s wing tip comes in only one size. To insert the buds you twist them back and then tuck the tip in to press against your inner ear to hold the headphones in place.

This method works. The headphones have stayed in place for me during a variety of workouts, including indoor and outdoor runs, cycles, strength sessions and yoga. I did sometimes have to tuck the wing tip in again on the run when it came loose, but overall I’d rate the fit of the Fit Pro as reliable for sports use.

However, the wing tip fails my comfort test. If I wear the Fit Pro for a couple of hours at a time my ear gets sore where the tip presses in. It’s not extremely painful, but it is noticeable, and it counts against the buds as an option to wear for long stretches at work as well as for exercise.

The trade-off between comfort and security is tricky to balance for all buds with wing tips, but others are more comfortable than the Fit Pro while still staying in place, such as the Bose Sport Earbuds and Jaybird Vista 2.

Sound Quality

Beats is known for its bass-forward sound profiles, and that is still the case with the Fit Pro, but it’s not as excessive as on past headphones. The bass is certainly powerful and is the most noticeable element in the mix, but it doesn’t overwhelm everything and there is still enough clarity in the instruments and vocals.

I prefer a little less bass myself, but overall I rate the sound quality on the Fit Pro highly and comparable to other top sports headphones like the Jaybird Vista 2, Jabra Elite 7 Active and Bose Sport Earbuds.

The Beats Fit Pro offer spatial audio on Apple Music (and Apple TV and FaceTime), although this only works on iOS devices. This creates a more immersive feel for music and films by tracking your head movement and adjusting the sound based on your head position. I was surprised how much I enjoyed spatial audio on the Fit Pro and the Airpods 3 when testing those, but having also used the Fit Pro with Spotify extensively the buds still sound great without it.

One omission from the Beats Fit Pro experience is the ability to change the EQ to suit your preferences, something you can do with many other headphones from the likes of Jabra, Jaybird and JBL.

Active Noise Cancellation And Transparency Mode

You can switch between ANC and transparency modes with a long hold on either button, and also turn both modes off. When travelling, the ANC was particularly good, blocking out a fair bit of extra noise over the passive noise cancellation already provided by the ear tip.

When running, however, I got a fair bit of wind noise with the ANC turned on, and generally preferred to turn it off or have the transparency mode on. The transparency mode is good though, allowing in noise like traffic without too much wind, and it’s handy to have available when exercising on or by busy roads.

Battery

When using ANC the Beats Fit Pro will last six hours on a charge, with another 18 hours in the case. A fast charge feature will net you an hour of playback from five minutes of charging too. If you turn the ANC off you’ll eke a little more juice out of the buds, but overall they are about par for the course for truly wireless headphones. Among its rivals, though, the Jabra Elite 7 Active offer more at eight hours with ANC, the Powerbeats Pro take advantage of their larger design to give nine and the JBL Reflect Flow Pro buds trump the lot with 10.

Controls

While it’s a shame that there are no volume controls on the Fit Pro, the multifunction button generally works well, and you can activate Apple’s voice assistant just by saying “Hey Siri” – another feature that’s not available on Android. You can then change the volume via Siri, but I’d still like the button option too.

The button is also a tad oversensitive, and if you move the headphones around in your ear to adjust the fit you can expect to pause your music, because I think I did it every single time I tweaked their position. That’s quite annoying, and not something I experience with other truly wireless buds – even very small ones.

Are The Beats Fit Pro Worth It?

There’s a lot to like about the Beats Fit Pro, but there are also some cons to consider. The main one is the discomfort caused by the wing tip when you wear the buds for hours at a time, and this would be enough to make me look elsewhere.

The competition is so fierce that it’s also hard to recommend the Fit Pro at £199.99 when you can get the Jabra Elite 7 Active, Jaybird Vista 2 or JBL Reflect Flow Pro for less. All those buds match the Beats Fit Pro’s strong points for me, while offering more comfort, longer battery life and better controls, plus the ability to adjust the EQ of the buds to suit your preferences. If comfort is your priority, the Bose Sport Earbuds also merit consideration – most companies could learn a thing or two from Bose about how to make a wing tip you can wear for hours without noticing it.

Within the Beats and Apple range, the Powerbeats Pro are probably still the best sports headphones thanks to the reliable fit provided by the earhook; though they are more expensive than the Fit Pro at £219.99, they have often been available in sales for around £150. The AirPods Pro are more comfortable, but substantially more expensive and I did find they came loose at times when exercising.