Beats Solo Buds review

The Solo Buds come in a compact, pill-shaped case, though not quite as perfectly shaped as the Beats Pill Bluetooth speakers. The buds are available in Matte Black, Arctic Purple, Transparent Red, and Storm Grey colours and we received the purple version. This is certainly one of the most compact earphone cases we have seen, and the secret could be the lack of a battery inside. Yes, you heard it right. Some little pills are supposed to recharge and replenish, but sadly, this one doesn’t hold any charge. There’s a USB-C charging port, but no LED indicator, or a pairing button. The finish is flawless with a matte exterior.

The buds have a stalk-less design with a dual-tone finish. You get three additional pairs of ear tips in the box, which ensure a tight fit. The buds are comfortable to wear and feel well-balanced, providing a higher level of confidence during your daily jogs. The tight fit ensures effective passive noise cancellation, keeping out indoor noise like fan and AC buzz. However, it’s not quite effective in a crowded Mumbai local train or vehicular traffic on the street. The outer flat surface has rubber padding with the lowercase ‘b’ etched on it. The Solo buds don’t offer any declared water ingress protection, and this is yet another feature lacking in this device compared to competitors.

The buds offer one-touch pairing with both iOS and Android. While pairing with iOS is as simple as opening the case and accepting the prompt, Android requires the Beats app installed to initiate pairing. Once paired, your iPhone will show a Beats Solo Buds tab in settings, which allows you to set a name for the buds and tweak some basic settings like button behaviour and microphone configuration. Other features are controlled via the native Audio and Visual menu. The buds support Google Fast Pair and multi-point connections across Android devices. Similarly, once paired with an iOS device, it connects seamlessly with devices connected to the same account via iCloud.

Each earpiece hides a physical button at the top of the ‘b’ logo, which allows you to perform common tasks; single press for play/pause and accept/mute calls, press twice to skip to the next track or end calls, thrice to skip to the previous track and hold to summon the phone’s voice assistant. Though I would personally prefer a physical button for the tactile response, the stalkless design of the Solo Buds can make it a somewhat unpleasant experience. I would miss the tiny button most of the time and end up pushing the buds further into the ear canal, causing extreme discomfort.

The earbuds come with a custom-designed acoustic architecture with dual-layer 8.2mm dynamic drivers to minimise micro distortions and deliver high-fidelity audio. The parallel, axial-aligned drivers directly face the acoustic nozzle and there are laser-cut vents to relieve pressure and deliver better bass performance. Well, how does it sound? These buds deliver excellent bass without distortions, along with powerful highs, making it a great-sounding pair of headphones at this price. The device supports Spatial Audio and works with AAC and SBC codecs. Android users may miss LDAC support.

The microphones include an advanced noise-learning algorithm that has been trained in various scenarios to eliminate noise. We found the call quality to be excellent, though it would occasionally pick up noise while attending calls in noisy outdoor environments.

Though the case doesn’t accommodate a battery, Beats promises up to 18 hours of playback time with the buds alone. This is quite impressive if true. Though we didn’t get the chance to test this out fully, we would estimate around 6 to 8 hours of playback at a decent volume level. The buds feature USB-C universal charging, which lets you charge the buds from any USB-C port including your phone and tablet. This somewhat compensates for the lack of battery in the case. Further, a 5-minute quick charge can give up to one hour of playback.

The Beats Solo Buds deliver impressive audio with reverberating bass and powerful highs. The buds fit snugly, and the compact case makes it quite appealing. The buds themselves have excellent battery life and USB-C universal charging is a welcome addition. Fast pairing and cross-compatibility with iOS and Android make a strong case to buy these buds. However, at this price, we would expect more features like ANC, IP-rated splash resistance, and a custom equaliser. Even if we can compromise on some of these, the case should have been designed to hold a few additional charges at the very basic. Because we are accustomed to calling it a charging case, and that's what we expect it to do—replenish the buds while they're not in use.