Head to your local gym these days, and you’ll see the clientele donning all manner of headphones, many of which are ill-suited to serious training.
Your traditional oversized cans are just fine for curls, but they’ll go flying off your head during muscle-ups and power cleans. Old-school earbuds seem the most functional solutions, and newer earbuds designed for fitness come close to perfection, but all have wires that are too easily caught against the bars and equipment in most fitness centers.
But the quest for the perfect pair of workout headphones just may be over.
Enter the PowerBeats2 Wireless, the latest device from busy headphone company Beats by Dre. It was just last month that Beats refreshed its ever-popular line of Solo headphones, and now, it’s rebuilding its fitness brand.
The $199 Bluetooth PowerBeats2 earbuds are the best-rounded pair of fitness earphones on the market, blending durability, comfort and solid sound into a tiny, easy-to-control package. Perhaps most importantly, a near-flawless design keeps these earphones practically glued into your ear canals through just about any workout. You can fully focus on training, almost never adjusting wires before a bench press set or removing your headphones before a set of pull-ups.
Beats establishes that tight fit by sticking with the basics, building off the original PowerBeats design. Those venerable sport earphones were comfortable, slotting nicely in your ears, held back largely by their wires.
Thanks to the power of Bluetooth, there are few wires this time around. The two looped , rubber-textured earphones are joined by a slim, tangle-free wire. A rechargeable battery is embedded within the left earphone, and a rubbery power button sits atop that same earphone.
A small light blinks red or white, letting you know if the earphones are on (white) or if they’re about to run out of power (red). A micro-USB charging port, covered by a rubber seal, sits on the underside of that left earphone.
It’s a simple package that does the job. With little in the way of extra hardware, the PowerBeats2s stay light, and you’ll barely notice them on your head. The earphones slide around your ears then loop around the back of your neck, perfectly out of the way for most workouts.
I’ve run sprints and worked through drills on the basketball court while wearing the PowerBeats2s and barely noticed their presence. In weight room workouts, their unobtrusive, and they handle well during explosive exercises such as power cleans and snatches, too. During two weeks of use, I felt the need to adjust the wiring behind my neck just once, when I prepped for a behind-the-neck squat.
The magic of Bluetooth yields spectacular results in the gym. No longer are you tethered to a smartphone in your pocket or some annoying elbow strap for your iPod; you can leave your media player in a nearby gym bag and still enjoy your tunes. The Bluetooth connection is consistent and solid; in two weeks, the earphones inexplicably disconnected from their source just twice.
Even better, I paired the PowerBeats2s with Samsung’s Gear2, a smartwatch that can also store MP3s. I barely noticed either device during football field sprints, track workouts, and circuits in the weight room, and this just may be the ideal gadget pairing for anyone who wants to train hardcore. If Beats and Apple ever decide to bundle the much-rumored iWatch with these PowerBeats2s, I can guarantee the combo will have at least one backer.
Overall, the ease of use allows you to focus on the music pumping through your ears, staying in your workout “zone.” The PowerBeats2s do their part here, too, delivering quality sound. These are earbuds, of course, so you compromise fullness and detail slightly, and the bass won’t pound through your head. But you’ll can still appreciate the bass reproduction in 2Pac’s “Changes,” and Eminem’s emotion in “Lose Yourself” gets captured well.
The earphones performed solidly with other media as well, delivering adequate sound during an iPad playback of “Iron Man 3”. No, you won’t be blown away, but the dialogue is solid enough to appreciate the film. The tiny profile of these earphones may allow them to find uses outside the gym for anyone who prefers low-profile sound to an oversized pair of cans.
The earbuds won’t seal ambient noise out, but that’s by design. Outdoor runners need to know what’s going on around them, and Beats gets that. The company also understands the need to protect your rather pricey investment; the PowerBeats2s come with a small hard case.
You’re left with just a handful of shortcomings. The PowerBeats2s are a serious investment at $199, more expensive than most sport earphones, so if you’re not going farther than the stationary bike at your local gym, you may not need to make the investment. And while the PowerBeats2s are sweat- and water-resistant, they’re not waterproof, so no, you can’t take these babies for a swim.
You also have to wonder about the durability of the flap covering the micro-USB slot; it seems flimsy, as if it might rip off if you pulled at it the wrong way. This wouldn’t prevent the headphones from working, of course, although you’d have to be more conscious of keeping water away from that micro-USB slot.
But you’ll almost never be conscious of the PowerBeats2 Wireless earphones on your head, and that’s what makes this set magical. Sure, you could keep toting your Beats Solos to the gym, or you could live off your iPhone’s tiny earbuds, or you could pick up some generic set and be just fine.
But if you don’t want to ever notice your earphones in the gym, these just may be for you.
