Beats by Dre Fit Pro Earbuds Review
These noise-canceling, true wireless earbuds are designed to stay put while you work out
The Beats by Dre Fit Pro earbuds are less expensive than the AirPods Pro, but they don't skimp on performance.
By Allen St. John
The Beats by Dre Fit Pro is a noise-canceling true wireless earbud that ranks high in our lab tests and offers a real alternative to the very popular Apple’s AirPods Pro—and other, similar earbuds. The brand is actually owned by Apple, but Beats by Dre products work equally as well with Android smartphones as they do with iPhones.
Beats headphones have been a marketing success since they were launched, but there was always a quiet backlash, as well. They had a reputation among many audiophiles as style-over-substance products that underwhelmed in terms of sound quality. The Fit Pros make a strong case that this is no longer true.
On the feature front, the Fit Pros are pretty well loaded. They have active noise canceling with transparency mode, Spatial Audio, and hands-free interaction with Apple’s Siri digital assistant. Addressing a pain point for some AirPods users who want to use their earbuds at the gym, the Fit Pros have built-in wingtips to keep the earbuds in place during exercise or other vigorous activity.
The Fit Pros come in black, white, stone purple, and sage gray. And there’s also a Kim Kardashian collaboration that bathes the Fit Pros in three distinct shades—Moon, Dune, and Earth—to complement a variety of skin tones.
With a retail price of around $200, the Beats by Dre Fit Pro have a wide array of features and very good sound quality. However, as our headphone ratings show, you can get even better sound from noise-canceling earbuds made by other companies, including Bose, Sennheiser, and Sony.
Beats by Dr. Dre Beats Fit Pro
Notable Features
H1 chip: This allows you to move your music seamlessly from one Apple device to another, and to share music easily with a friend who’s also wearing Beats headphones or Apple AirPods.
Find My Beats: This feature can show you where your Beats are on a map, and you can have them play a sound, as well. The charging case, unfortunately, doesn’t have this feature.
Active noise canceling: Like other noise-canceling headphones, the Beats models background noise and creates an "opposite" wave that cancels it out, making things much quieter while the headphones are playing, or even when there’s no content playing at all.
Siri digital assistant: The Beats by Dre Fit Pro use Apple’s venerable digital assistant, so you can use voice command for basic functions like volume and track selection.
Android connectivity: Unlike Apple’s AirPods, the Studio Buds allow full functionality with Android smartphones. (AirPods work with Android phones, but you lose a few features.) Just download the Android app, and you can control your Beats without an iPhone in sight.
How Well Do the Beats by Dre Fit Pro Earbuds Work?
The Beats by Dre Fit Pros perform very well in our labs, finishing near the top of our ratings of noise-canceling headphones, though there are models that perform even better.
One of the problems with true wireless in-ear headphones is the simple task of keeping them in your ears. If your buds fall out, there’s no cord to act as a tether, and if they end up where you can’t find or reach them, replacing one or both can be an expensive proposition.
This is one strength of the Beats by Dre Fit Pro. In addition to the soft silicone ear tips (which come in three sizes), the Fit Pro adds a wingtip that fits into the pinna (the exterior of your ear) for an additional layer of security without a potentially clumsy clip that wraps around your ear like the one found on the Beats Powerbeats Pro. In use, I found the Fit Pros to be rock solid in terms of fit, although I’ll admit that, for me, most true wireless models provide a secure fit even when I’m sweating. Testers with smaller ears did have a harder time finding a secure fit, but that tends to be a problem across the board with in-ear models.
The clamshell-shaped case for the Beats by Dre Fit Pro uses versatile USB-C charging (as opposed to Apple’s Lightning connector) but it’s also surprisingly large, which might be annoying if you’re going to stash the Beats in a jeans pocket.
The Fit Pros have actual buttons rather than the touch-sensitive stems on the AirPods. I prefer the positive click of a button, especially when using a function like track forward that requires multiple clicks. That said, the location of the button on the side could be a bit of a concern. Essentially, you push the earbud into your ear a little every time you mute or skip. I found that it settled back to its original position and didn’t end up sitting deeper in my ear canal, but other users might find this to be a problem.
As far as noise canceling, I found the Fit Pros to be a little less dead-quiet than some competitors, but more than adequate for dampening most noises. I found the Fit Pro’s transparency mode useful for those times when you want to listen to your content while still remaining aware of sounds in your environment, like if you’re running on a road with traffic.
Sonically, the Fit Pros are solid as well. Our testers find the Beats by Dre Fit Pro to be a bit bassy, but not obnoxiously so, with "a good sense of liveliness." If you’re an audiophile or a lover of acoustic music, and listen carefully in a quiet room, there are a few better options, notably the splendid-sounding Sony WF1000XM4. But if you’re listening at the gym or on the street, the Beat Pros deliver sound that lets you enjoy your favorite tunes.
Who Are the Beats by Dre Fit Pro For?
The Fit Pros are best for an active user who’ll appreciate the secure fit. And they can be a good match for an Android owner who’s admired the AirPods Pro from afar but wanted the full functionality that the Beats deliver.
The Fit Pros are a very attractive package. They sound good. They’re feature-packed. And they fit well enough to stay put during a workout, and just as importantly, those little wingtips aren’t annoying when you’re not working out.
How Consumer Reports Tests Headphones
There are 234 headphones in our ratings. They are refreshed constantly, ensuring that only currently available models are presented to CR members.
Our testing program begins in our dedicated labs, where a team of testers use rigorous test methods and reference quality recordings to reveal the smallest differences between each model.
Our trained testers carefully listen and document the clarity and detail, frequency response, spatial imaging, dynamics, and freedom of obvious distortions at normal listening levels of the headphones with fellow colleagues, and in the case of noise-canceling headphones, how well they reduce background noise. Our testers even get their hearing checked routinely by an audiologist.
The secret behind our process? Consistency. We use the same process with the same equipment. And the same recordings. Which results in an even playing field for every product we test. And ratings you can trust.
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