Beats Pill review: A very good speaker that’s just a firmware update away

Best prices today: Beats Pill

A little over a decade ago, portable Bluetooth speakers were all the rage, and the original Beats Pill (circa 2012, before Apple acquired Beats) was a big part of their rise to popularity. In the years since, we’ve seen few updates to the lineup, save for the simplified Beats Pill+, which was discontinued a few years ago.

The popular portable speaker is now back, entering a market flooded with cheap competitors. While it’s much better than previous versions, it has a few flaws that we’d like to see fixed in the next revision.

Beats Pill: Design

Beats’ iconic “pill” shape has been widely adopted in portable Bluetooth speakers, and for good reason. It’s easy to carry around, fits anywhere a water bottle might go, and sits easily on a table or similar flat surface. You can get one in classic Beats colors: black, red, or champagne.

There’s no surprise about this new 2024 model: it’s a Beats Pill. When idle, the speakers are tilted 20 degrees upward, which is a great way to project sound more directly at you. These devices tend to be placed on tables, benches, and beach towels, where simple sound projection is a waste.

A silicone outer casing wraps around the sides and back and helps prevent bumps and dings, while adding some weather resistance. The Pill is IP67 rated, so you don’t have to worry about it getting damaged by beach sand, pool splashes, or getting caught in the rain. On the top, you’ll find volume buttons, a central multifunction button, and a power button. They all feature finger-sized dimples in the silicone, but they’re spaced far enough apart and clearly labeled enough that it’s easy to press the right one without paying close attention.

On the back is a single USB-C port that can be used for charging Or as an audio input, with support for lossless audio (although the Pill doesn’t have the sound quality to do it justice). It even charges in reverse with a triple press of the power button, making it a sort of power bank for your phone.

Foundry

Foundry

Foundry

Speaking of battery, Beats rates it at 24 hours. We haven’t done a full test, but after spending an entire afternoon listening to it at medium to high volume, I can confirm that it can easily go all day without a recharge.

Beats Pill: audio quality

With a single “racetrack” (read: oval) woofer capable of moving 90% more air than the Beats Pill+’s woofer and a coupled tweeter, the new Beats Pill sounds… well… OK.

Like all portable speakers with a cylindrical design, it really lacks bass punch. There’s more bass than you’d expect, but still less than you need. The audio processing is supposed to reduce distortion, but at higher volumes there’s a noticeable clipping or limiting sensation. It gets pretty loud and still sounds pretty good about four or five clicks from maximum volume, but look, there are limits to what a small, lightweight portable speaker of this shape can do.

There’s a microph one to activate the speakerphone or voice assistants, and it works when needed, but doesn’t offer much in the way of noise cancellation — those I called could easily hear loud wind or nearby highway noise in a way they couldn’t when I called on a pair of AirPods Pro.

While I appreciate the iconic shape, I question whether a narrow, oblong pill is the best shape for one of these devices. It’s reasonably stable but can roll around if you hit a picnic table too hard, and the shape involves some sound engineering compromises that are hard to work around. A shape closer to a “paint can” between the HomePod and HomePod mini would probably allow for a better woofer design that wouldn’t need as much treatment to prevent distortion. Some pills are round, right?

Beats Pill: Controls

Some of the Pill’s controls are pretty intuitive. The volume buttons do what you’d expect, and you can press the center button once to play/pause, twice to skip forward, or three times to skip backward.

After that, it gets a little less intuitive. Just turning the Pill off is a little confusing — we’re all used to pressing and holding the power button for a few seconds to turn something like this off. On the Pill, this goes into Bluetooth pairing mode. But if you just press the button, you get the battery status. Double-press it? Nope, that triggers Siri (or another voice assistant on Android phones).

Instead, you have to press and hold the power button for more than 0.8 seconds, but less more than 3 seconds to turn it off. You would never have guessed.

If you have two Pills, you can use them in Amplify mode (simultaneous audio streaming, which is great for covering a wider area or adjacent rooms) or in stereo mode where one Pill plays the left channel and another the right channel.

Foundry

Foundry

Foundry

Accessing these modes is also not intuitive. There is no option for it in the iPhones’ settings (the Beats app on Android is a bit more helpful). To access Amplify mode, place two Pill speakers close together, then press and hold the center button on each. For Stereo mode, hold the center button and turn the volume up. There is no indication which is the left or right channel. To end Amplify/Stereo, press the center button and turn the volume down.

It would be really helpful if these modes had some sort of simple interface in iOS settings or at least a clear audio confirmation, but neither is present. A firmware update could improve both the unusual and unintuitive power button function and the opaque two-pill pairing modes. But as long as you stick to the basics (volume and play/pause/skip), the pill controls work fine.

Should you buy a Beat Pill?

I have issues with the Beats Pill’s sound quality, but it’s not like other portable Bluetooth speakers of this size deliver the sound I want. That’s a necessity of the form factor, it seems, and a good reason to perhaps consider a different shape for the Beat Pill 2.

The waterproofing, relatively high volume, and fantastic battery life make this a great affordable speaker for hanging out by the pool, listening to music while grilling, or enhancing the ambiance inside your tent the next time you go camping.

The $150 price tag is also reasonable. You just have to manage your expectations for great sound quality from a small portable speaker like this and hope that a firmware update will make the controls a little more intuitive.