Beats X headphones bring magnetic Bluetooth sounds to Android and iOS
Wire-free wizardry from everyone’s favourite doctor
Dr. who?
Dr Dre. Obvs. These are Beats ‘buds like the ones you’ve seen in the adverts, with all those dancing celebrities who love technology. Except these ones are new. And cool.
Oh, I’m cool, too. What’s cool about these?
Well, they’re wireless for starters. The two earbuds are connected by a Flex-Form cable, which has two weighted bits to keep it close to your neck while you party. And, when you need a break from the Bluetooth beats on your Beats, simply pluck them from your ears and magnets built into the ‘buds will stick them together.
So if I need to take a call, because I’m an important person, I could just stick them to the fridge?
Probably – but you don’t need to take them out to answer the phone, oh no. See, there’s a nifty mic built-in – and, what’s more, that same microphone will play nice with Siri. Oh, and there are music controls on the remote, too.
Hang on – so it’s clever. But what about the music?
Well, not all audiophiles will swear by the listening quality of Beats gear and, until we’ve stuck them in our own ears we can’t say for sure how nice they’ll be – but Beats has promised “sophisticated audio advancements”, which sounds promising.
What if I want to listen all the way to Adelaide, though?
Then you’ll need a backup battery pack – though the Beats X ‘phones will get you a good chunk of the way there.
A battery life of 8 hours is impressive for a small set of wireless in-ears, while the recharge time is equally as game-changing: boost the Beats X for 5 minutes – via the bundled Lightning cable – and you’ll get 2 hours more playback. Stick it out for 45 minutes of charging and you’ll get the full 8 hours.
And you say they’ll work with my Android smartphone?
Sort of. There’s Class 1 Bluetooth on-board, so they should play nice with any Bluetooth-enabled gear that you can send audio from.
Beats being owned by Apple, though, you’ll get a lot more from your £130 if you pair the new Beats X – or BeatsX, or however the pesky name is stylised – with an iDevice when they launch in February. There’s an Apple W1 chip built-in, for example, which means easy wireless pairing and switching between iCloud kit.
Chris Rowlands
Freelance contributor 
