Beats Pill vs. Bose SoundLink Flex: Compact Speaker Comparison video [CNET]

Beats has made a successor to its Beats Pill Plus. The Beats Pill has been updated with a more modern design and features such as USB device charging. It has competition from the similarly priced Bose SoundLink Flex. CNET’s David Carnoy looks at both speakers to determine which is best for you.

I’ve got two popular Bluetooth speakers here, the B sound Link Flex and the new Beats Pill both cost 150. Which one’s better let’s discuss. So like a lot of people, I was a little surprised when Apple On Beats released a new pill speaker. The Pill Plus, which came out in 2015 for $200 was discontinued a couple of years ago and was pretty popular until the market got saturated with more competitively priced compact Bluetooth speakers. But here we are in 2024 with a new improved pill that features better sound battery life durability, USB C charging and audio along with a lower price tag that matches that of Bose’s top rated sound link Flex speaker. I’m gonna talk about some of their design and feature differences first and then we’ll get into a comparison of their sound quality and for a little bit of added fun, I’m gonna bring in a few of my cnet colleagues to hear their thoughts on the two speakers. So you want to stick around for that. So the new Pill is available in Red champagne and black and weighs in at 24 ounces or 1.5 pounds. The previous pill didn’t have an I pr while the new pill has an IP 67 rating, which makes it fully waterproof and dust proof. By comparison, the bow sound link Flex is a little lighter, weighing 1.3 pounds. It also comes in a few different color options and can be stood up on its side or laid down flat. It has the same IP 67 rating as the pill. So it’s also waterproof and dust proof. Well, you wouldn’t want to drop either of them on their metal grills. Both speakers have RR exteriors that offer some protection from shortfalls. They both have ways they can be hung up with the pill having a detachable lanyard and the Flex having an integrated utility loop. I think Beats did a nice job upgrading the pills design, but I do slightly prefer the Bozos design because it’s a little flatter and the speaker itself is a little lighter making it slightly more travel friendly. But I know other people who prefer the pills design. The pill does have the sound link flex beat on features and battery life. The flex is rated for up to 12 hours at moderate volume levels of the hill is rated for up to 24 hours. While the pill is missing an auxiliary input, you can connect your USB C equipped smartphone or computer to the USB C port to get a wired digital connection Beats says the pill is capable of lossless audio with USB C with a max sample rate of 24 bit 48 kilohertz. It’s also worth noting that its USB C port is both charge in and charge out so you can use it as a power bank to charge your phone and other devices. The pillow is equipped with Bluetooth 5.3. While the sound link flex is equipped with Bluetooth 4.2 Bose speakers have the ability to wirelessly pair with a second speaker, create a stereo pair which does improve the sound quality considerably. Follow the pill can be used as a speaker phone and so can the bows and it does work well in this capacity, caller so they could hear me clearly even with some background noise. Ok. On to sound quality beats says the pill features a newly engineered woofer system and better magnets that help make it a better sound bigger than the pill plus. And you really do notice that the bass response and overall clarity has improved. It’s a big difference compared to the sound like flex. The pill is a little more dynamic sounding and seems brighter with slightly more forward midrange, which is where vocals live. I wouldn’t necessarily say it sounds better than the bows but it plays a little louder particularly at half volume and has a bit more sculpted sound when cranked to higher volumes. The pill has a little more distortion than the Flex has at its highest volume. Both these speakers are essentially mono speakers, but both the Pill and Flex have reasonably wide sound stages. And by that, I mean, the sound appears to extend out from their sides to my ears. The flex was a little warmer and slightly more natural sounding. It’s always hard to compare these speakers for sound because there is some variation from track to track due to the total balance of the speakers with certain music genres, particularly bass, heavier, hip hop and EDM, I thought the pill sounded better than the bows, but with other tracks, I prefer the boss sound. I should also note that while the bass response is more impressive than you think. For such compact speakers, there is a limit to how much bass these speakers will produce, particularly when you play more complicated tracks with a lot of instruments playing at the same time. Certain frequencies can end up getting clipped in those situations. The long and short of it is, I can’t really declare that one speaker sounds demonstrably better than the other. But let’s hear what some of my colleagues think about the two speakers. Oh, this thing got some oomph to it. It kind of caught me off guard. It’s bass, bass is a little flabby. It’s flabby bass when you don’t realize how cute someone is and you’re like, oh, ok, ok. Mommy daddy, you got it. I mean, I would still say the bass feels really punchy vibey. It’s very bass heavy. It’s not really clear when the snares come in. Like, you can hear the snare, but it’s not, like, really crisp, I suppose. It would make a good travel speaker. Um, I don’t know how big or little it is but, um, if it is a small speaker that sounds pretty big. I feel like if you punch it and blow my eardrums it’ll, it’ll do it, it’ll do the job. This one just had that like right from the beginning. And I said, flabby with the first one, the bass on this one’s a little globular. The base is there, but it’s just not defined. I feel like it packs a pretty strong punch for the size of it. So I can imagine it may even be smaller than the other speaker. Yeah, this one instantly sounds bigger like it just sounds like a higher quality speaker altogether. I feel like the base in the other one was stronger or lower for some reason. But like in speaker, I feel like that. It was like way more crispier. It doesn’t sound like a high end speaker. It sounds like maybe mid range or budget speaker. It isn’t too different or too much of an improvement, but it’s the punchy bass. But then the vocals are still a little bit crisper. Like if that makes a little bit more crisp, that makes sense. This would probably be the one I would go for anyway. Um But yeah, it looks nice. It’s just not my color. Personally, I would take this because this feels more versatile in terms of the types of music that will sound great on it. I feel like this is like, as I said, this is like you turn it on and boom right in your face. I’m surprised I would have thought that the beats would have better sounding bass than the bows. But I would definitely go with the bows over the um over the beat speaker. I would keep this at home just because I would value it more. This one I’m taking out because I wouldn’t care for. So there you have it. We didn’t arrive at a real consensus as to which speaker is better from a sound standpoint, at least my colleagues didn’t. So I would call this a tie in terms of sound quality in the final analysis. The Beats Pill has improved in some key ways from its predecessor, particularly when it comes to sound quality, durability, battery life and price point. I do like the form factor and lightweight for the bow. Sound like flex slightly better, but the Pill does have double the battery life and that aforementioned USB C audio wired mode. For one reason, I’m inclined to give a nod to the bows is simply because of its price point. It does go on sale quite frequently and is now down to around 100 and $9 at this moment and you should see it on sale for the rest of the year. So until the Beats goes on sale, I would probably go with the bows. I’ll finish by saying that while both these speakers aren’t super expensive, they may still be a little out of your price range. If that is the case, you can get decent flex knockoffs like the Tripit Storm box flow and Sound Corp by Anchor Motion 300 for around $70 or even less. They aren’t quite as good, but they are good values. As always, let me know what you think in the comment section. If you want to hear from anyone who’s tried both speakers and if you found this video, informative at all, hit the like button and subscribe to this channel if you haven’t already, I’m David Carin for CNET. Thanks for watching.