Beats Solo Buds review: Exactly what you’d expect for $80

The idea of ​​Beats wireless headphones for under $100 is certainly compelling. Until now, the company has been operating in the $150-$200 range, except for the $70 Beats Flex, which offers a great collection of features with good sound quality and a comfortable fit. However, much of the competition has strived to offer buds at considerably cheaper prices, limiting features to the essentials. With the Solo Buds ($80), Beats offers its cheapest true wireless earbuds yet and manages to retain much of its product DNA. But the company had to backtrack to bring the price down, so don’t expect these headphones to wow you with their performance.

Design of Beats Solo Buds

The Solo Buds feature the same overall earbud design that Beats has favored for a while now. A key difference between these and the Studio Buds+, however, is that the Solo Buds are slightly larger to accommodate its larger batteries. The new model still offers on-board controls on a tilted flat screen, complete with the company’s ‘b’ branding. The good news is that this form of earphone has always been comfortable to wear for extended periods of time and that hasn’t changed here. And despite the closed acoustic architecture of the Solo Buds, the added micro-vents relieve that blocked feeling that can afflict earphone wearers after several minutes of use.

Where the Solo Buds deviate from previous Beats models is this. This thing is tiny. In fact, according to the company, it’s 40% smaller than the Studio Buds+ case, which wasn’t huge by any means. In fact, Beats removed the battery from the case. The company says this makes the Solo Buds more environmentally friendly and that’s one less battery to worry about degrading over time.

If you like the clear version of the Studio Buds+, you’re in luck. There is a transparent red option for the Solo Buds. But there is also bad news: only the file is transparent; the buds themselves are opaque

Software and Features

Like other recent Beats products, all software for iPhone owners is built into iOS. On Android, you’ll need the Beats app to customize touch controls or download software updates. On both platforms, you’ll get one-touch pairing, quick pairing, and location tracking help for lost earbuds. iOS users benefit from iCloud pairing with other devices, Apple Watch transfers, as well as audio sharing with AirPods and Beats products. On Android, you’ll be able to automatically pair with any device in your Google account and take advantage of multi-point Bluetooth pairing.

Since the Solo Buds only have the most basic features, there’s not much else to list. However, the company allows you to reconfigure which control is pressed to adjust the volume. By default, this action calls your device’s voice assistant on both earbuds. And that’s really the extent of things. There’s no hands-free Siri, no transparency mode, no active noise cancellation (ANC), no wear detection, and no support for Apple’s adaptive equalizer.

Sound quality on Beats Solo Buds

For an $80 set of headphones, the best sound quality you can expect is slightly above average. Most of the time you get something serviceable, but not necessarily a setting you’d use to listen to the finer details of an album. Beats is on a good path with the sound quality of the Studio Buds line and the Beats Fit Pro, but it has understandably had to cut corners in places to reduce the price of the Solo Buds. It turns out that audio performance is one of those areas.

The Solo Buds still retain some decent detail in the sound profile, but overall the tuning doesn’t deliver the dynamics of the Studio Buds+. The songs are flat and the mix is ​​understated, sometimes lacking punchy highs or punchy bass. Bilmuri’s “Emptyhanded,” for example, features loud, distorted guitars that set the pace of the track. These instruments typically soar and have plenty of texture on more expensive headphones, but here they lack dimensionality and stand out less from the rest of the mix than usual. These aren’t the headphones in the company’s lineup you’ll want to choose if sound quality is of the utmost importance. Instead, the Solo Buds get the job done professionally, without too much flash or excitement.

An advanced sound feature included by Beats is Spatial Audio. It’s automatic and works with Apple Music songs available in Dolby Atmos. Albums similar to Justice’s Hyperdrama and Wyatt Flores Half-life have more robust bass and clarity, sounding less compressed than some other “classic” albums on the Solo Buds. It’s still not flagship-level audio performance, but it’s noticeably improved over non-Atmos content.

Call quality

When it comes to calls, Beats only uses one microphone on each side on the Solo Buds. This definitely impacts voice quality and it will feel more like you’re on a speakerphone than more expensive headphones. The company does a great job blocking out background noise, but in my testing in noisy environments, this fight against distractions further degraded call performance. In a room with a loud fan, my voice sounded choppy compared to a quieter place with minimal environmental roar.

Beats Solo Buds battery life

Beats claims the Solo Buds will last up to 18 hours on a charge, which is double or, in some cases, triple what most competitors offer. The company opted for larger batteries in the earbuds and removed the battery from the case, so there’s no extra time to be gained by connecting the earbuds. When they are dead, you have to put them in the case And Plug the case into an outlet with a USB-C cable.

During my tests, I arrived with an hour less than the figure announced by Beats. This isn’t too disappointing since I still have 17 hours, and that’s probably because I set the volume to 75% and left the Solo Buds unused for over 24 hours. If you find yourself in a tight spot, you can get an hour of playback in five minutes of charging. Plus, you can use your phone to resume music with charging via USB-C connection on iPhone (15+) and Android devices.

Since there is no battery in the case, there is no LED indicator to tell you the charging status of the Solo Buds. You can get this information on your phone by pressing the built-in controls while the earbuds are in the case and nearby. It’s not practical, but you get an exact number instead of just a green or red light.

The competition

Beats has entered an increasingly crowded market for sub-$100 headphones. Not only do big names like Bose or Sony release new flagship models every year, but companies like Anker, JLab, and Jaybird also regularly release more ultra-affordable options. And some of them cost less than $50. According to my colleague Jeff Dunn, the best budget headphones today are the Anker Soundcore Space A40. Currently available for $50, the A40 offers solid ANC, multi-point Bluetooth, and respectable sound quality. Battery life is 10 hours and the earbuds are IPX4 rated for water resistance, but there’s no wear detection and the A40 isn’t ideal for calls.

Conclude

The Solo Buds are a smart play for Beats, and I’m confident the company will sell a lot of them. They’re enough for most people, even without features like active noise cancellation, increased transparency, and wear detection. There’s solid audio performance with songs in Apple Music, but overall sound quality is flat and lacks punch on the Studio Buds+ or Beats Fit Pro. However, long battery life and a comfortable fit mean you can wear them all day, and those two things alone might be enough to make up for the Solo Buds’ sound shortcomings — especially for $80.