Beats Pill review: This musical multivitamin will cure your audio ailments

The Beats Pill isn’t for big parties but for personal excursions and small groups. A day at the beach. A stay in an AirBnB or VRBO. In the backyard for a small kickback with your buds. I tested the Pill indoors and out, in various locations, and I walked away impressed with the sound output for its size. And could still hear it well while walking away. This is all before connecting to a second Beats Pill in Amplify mode. We’ll get to that in a moment. 

I call the Beats Pill a “musical multivitamin” because it feeds multiple needs for home and portable use scenarios. The feature set shows that the engineers at Beats seriously considered the various ways consumers might use this product and built on what they learned from the success of the Pill Plus.

Beats Pill: Price and availability

Beats Pill is available to order for $149.99 from Apple.com beginning June 25th and starts shipping June 27th, or you can wait to order and pick one up in-store on that date as well. You’ll be able to grab one in Matte Black, Statement Red, and Champagne Gold. That gold is beautiful and would be my preferred color, but I’d be concerned about how much wear it would show over time. Because of Southern California’s climate, we’re outdoors throughout the year, and it will get dirty and dinged up.

For context, there have been improvements over the previous Beats Pill Plus, but this new iteration launches $50 cheaper. The lower launch pricing could result from serious competition from Sony, Skullcandy, Bose, and Anker Soundcore in this segment. We’ll touch on that more later.

Beats Pill: What I like

There’s a lot to like about the new Beats Pill, including the fact that it comes with some features you won’t find in the competition at this price point. The exterior is wrapped in a soft-touch silicone that feels wonderful in hand. The grille is metallic, and we’ll see how well its finish stands up to abuse over time. So far, so good.

This being a portable speaker, for most consumers, stamina is likely the most important quality other than how it sounds. Depending on the volume level at which you set playback, you’ll get up to 24 hours out of the new Pill. Obviously, you’ll get less if you plug into that USB-C port to charge your source device, which is a handy feature. In one hour, the Pill charged a Pixel 7 Pro from 0% to 25%, drawing approximately 26% of the Pill’s own power. You can reverse the charge direction and use your phone to juice up your Pill, but I’d recommend having a battery bank if you think you’ll need more than 24 hours of continuous playback. Maybe for a week-long camping trip?

The Pill itself will take around 2.5 hours to charge from 0 using a 45-watt or higher output charger. It will take longer with a less powerful charger.

Sticking with that USB-C port for a moment, let’s talk about Hi-Res Audio support. There are other players in the market that do support Hi-Res audio codecs like LDAC, while Apple supports only AAC, and this is likely the reason why the Pill is one of few portable speakers at this price that supports USB-C audio while simultaneously charging your source device.

I recommend playing out of the USB-C port using either Neutron Player or USB Audio Player Pro, which is my choice for Hi-Res Audio playback on Android. The OS downsamples any audio higher than 16-bit/44.1kHz, and in my testing, the volume never got loud enough if I didn’t use a third-party app for those Hi-Res files. iOS users won’t need to worry about this as volume tested fine out of an iPhone 15 Pro Max without the need for any third-party apps.

The USB-C port has some cool charging tricks that I haven’t seen in some of the competition. As mentioned, it supports reverse charging, which will happen automatically or manually. Supplying power is automatic for things like phones and earbuds. For larger supported devices, like tablets or laptops, the Pill will recognize what’s plugged in and determine whether to give or take power from the device. Again, you can initiate this functionality manually. Simply triple-tap the power button to reverse the charging direction, going from powering up your phone or laptop to charging the Pill from it.

Don’t want to run down your phone while connected? Triple tap again, and you can deactivate charging. To set it back to default, triple-tap once again.

The controls are easy to manipulate and intuitive. They sit along the top of the Pill, where the Power button controls on/off and charging direction. Tap it once for an LED color representing battery life, double-tap for voice assistant. Then there’s the Center button, which controls playback and phone calling features. To the right of the Center button is the volume up/down buttons.

I tested the sound with music and movies, and it doesn’t disappoint. Beats was kind enough to send along two units for review, one Matte Black and one Statement Red. The company wanted me to test out the Amplify and Stereo Listening modes, but more on that in a moment.

Sound from both the Class 1, Bluetooth 5.3, and USB-C connections is wonderful. Beats went with a single, racetrack-style woofer and single tweeter as opposed to the dual tweeter, dual woofer design of the Pill Plus. I never reviewed the earlier model, so I can’t compare, but the sound out of the 2024 Pill has a large soundstage indoors, with bright highs and solid mids taking center stage with the tuning here.

Speakers this small aren’t going to produce earth-shattering bass, though the bass response is satisfying for the woofer size and power output. Vocal, classical, and acoustic music shines brightest with the Pill, but the tonal quality of hip-hop and EDM is still satisfying.

Outdoors, the sound is impressive for its size. I listened to music over Bluetooth using the YouTube Music app and moved 30 and 50 feet away from the phone and speaker. Audio standing in front of the speaker and off-axis was clear, and vocals were audible and intelligible, even at 50 feet.

Here’s where things got interesting. I put the speakers into Amplify mode, and the combined, synced sound was full and enjoyably loud. The stereo mode is delicious. I watched episode two of “Blue Eye Samurai,” which has a taiko drum scene alongside a fight scene with a riveting stereo sound mix. The bass response from the taiko drums was wonderful, and the sound effects in the mix, which have some sub-bass elements, were all satisfying as well.

I tested Amplify and Stereo listening modes in the park, at full volume, 15 and 30 feet from the speakers. There was a definite difference in the perceived loudness with Amplify turned on, but the stunner was when I placed the pair in Stereo mode directly from the app (no need to do it manually on the devices, which you can do).

The stereo separation was really good when I first turned it on, but the speakers were less than a foot apart. To get better stereo sound, you want more separation between the set, so I placed them roughly seven feet apart, and woah! The channel panning and elements in the stereo image were clearly discernable at 30 feet and a pure delight at 15 feet.

I will qualify my auditory jouissance with this note, though: generally, manufacturers don’t send along two units to test this feature, so the experience I draw from in critiquing this is minimal. That said, I’m well acquainted with quality stereo imaging, and this is that.

Rounding out the sound experience, I did use the Pill as a speakerphone on some calls. Speaking with my momma one morning, she said I sounded “clear and crisp.” She was surprised that my audio quality sounded so good coming from a speakerphone device. And if you want to share your Pill at a party, simply jump into the Beats app and tap on the “Share Speaker” button. Your pal can then move their phone, iOS or Android, next to the Pill, pair it, and temporarily hold that DJ party power, which you can take back by tapping on the “Reconnect” button.

Beats Pill: What could use some work

The Beats Pill has awesome weatherproofing with its IP67 rating. My only concern as a person who spends a decent amount of time at local beaches is the exposed USB-C port. The Pill’s IP rating means it is resistant to dust ingress and water, but with nothing protecting that port, I’d be hesitant to push a USB-C cable into it while on the sand. That said, I likely wouldn’t do that too often anyway because outdoors, with auditory masking being a possible issue, I’d likely not get the full sonic benefit of the increase in dynamic range of a Hi-Res file.

To expand on my earlier note, with the audio volume being low out of the Pixel 7 Pro’s USB-C port, I tested with both the 7 Pro and a Galaxy S22 Ultra to be sure that’s what it was. I always test and retest this in case any manufacturer updates their phones to remove the downsampling limitation placed on Android OS. There are things you can do in Developer Mode, but most users won’t attempt to futz around with that.

Last, I would love to be able to use USB-C with Amplify and Stereo modes, but that isn’t supported. It appears that when you plug into the USB-C port for audio, the Bluetooth radio may be disabled, and for those modes, both speakers join to one device via Bluetooth. 

Beats Pill: Competition

There's a lot of competition around the $150 price point. Sony’s ULT Field 1 speaker also throws great sound. Although with the Pill, you’ll get longer battery life and greater sound clarity, you’ll get LDAC for Bluetooth with the Field 1. Skullcandy is well known for producing products with good sound and budget-friendly pricing but also loses in the battery life competition.

Although I haven’t reviewed the Anker Soundcore Boom 2, on paper, it's a compelling option with the same 24 hours of battery life, a similar racetrack subwoofer, dual tweeters, and EQ in the companion app. I did check out the smaller Motion 300 and enjoyed its sound output and clarity for its size. Bose also has their SoundLink Flex, which I haven't reviewed yet. It has only 12 hours of battery life and an older version of Bluetooth.

Beats Pill: Should you buy it?

You should buy the Beats Pill if...

• You need long battery life
• You want flexibility to use it as a battery bank
• You want something stylish
• You want something small with big sound

You shouldn't buy the Beats Pill if...

• The exposed USB-C port is a concern
• You want Hi-Res Wireless audio support

Beats new Pill is poppin’! You get a stylish, soft-touch shell in vibrant colors (and black), some smart power options, and sound that travels as easily as the Pill itself does. With an IP67 rating, you won’t have to worry about getting the Pill wet on those outdoor excursions. Also, if someone shows up and they also have a Pill, it’s easy to activate Amplify mode and take the sound up a notch. 

If indoors is more your speed, your movies and music will sound great, and if you have a friend over who also has a Pill, you can enjoy some nice Stereo mode action. This is a great option for livening up dorm rooms, Airbnb's, and camping trips.