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Sound8
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Design8
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Portability9
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Battery life9
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Value for money8
The original Beats Pill arrived in 2012 and entered a portable speaker market that was pretty uninspiring at the time.
The usual Beats marketing strategy was deployed. The Beats Pill showed up in countless music videos and seemingly became part of every notable celebrity’s daily carry. In 2015, following the Apple acquisition of Beats, the Pill+ arrived before being quietly discontinued in 2022.
Cut to 2024, and we live in a world where the portable speaker market is both huge and dominated by the likes of JBL and Soundcore. Driven largely by the younger generation, the thirst for small, portable speakers that can be chucked into backpacks, placed anywhere, and never worried about when the heavens open, has created a thriving billion-dollar industry.
It’s no wonder, therefore, that Beats wants a piece of that pie. Again. Which is why we now have the brand-new and authentically named Beats Pill. It’s a complete reimagining of the original portable speaker from Beats and I have a feeling it’s going to sell by the bucketload.
But what is it actually like – and can it beat the competition?
Beats Pill specs and UK pricing
The Beats Pill 2024 has a brand-new speaker design which includes a ‘racetrack’ woofer and a single tweeter, both of which are connected via a two-way crossover.
The drivers have received a significant upgrade over the Pill+, with 1.9x more air volume displacement and 28% stronger motor force. The new Beats Pill is also angled upwards by 20 degrees for improved on-axis listening.
Bluetooth 5.3 is in charge of connectivity duties, and offers multipoint pairing – but only for Android devices. Despite this, there’s support for one-touch pairing and Find My Device on both iOS and Android. It’ll also play back lossless audio via cable at up to 48 kHz / 24-bit.
Battery life promises up to 24 hours of continuous listening and a ten-minute charge will deliver two hours of playback if you’re in a rush.
The introduction of IP67 dust and water resistance will be welcome to anyone who used to worry about their original Pill in less than pleasant weather or during beach trips, and there are a bunch of physical buttons for operation.
The Beats Pill comes in three colours – Matte Black, Champagne Gold, and Statement Red (that’s the colour I chose for my review unit). It costs £149.99 in the UK and you can order it today.
Beats Pill design
The 2024 Beats Pill weighs 681g and is about as long as most modern headphone cases. This makes it satisfyingly easy to chuck around and the lanyard (which is colour-matched) is a nice addition for carrying the speaker around and hanging it from objects if there’s no available surface on which to place it.
It feels well-made, too. Portable speakers should be confidence-inspiring; you don’t want to spend your life worrying about where you’re placing them or about what happens when the rain inevitably makes an appearance at your BBQ (I live in the UK). The Beats Pill manages this very well indeed, and the IP67 water and dust resistance gives it an almost indestructible air.
The silicone outer layer of the new Beats Pill feels nice enough and doesn’t appear to pick up any meaningful fingerprints or smudges (at least, not on the red version I have). I’m a fan of the design, too. It looks great no matter where you place it (or hang it) and it does catch people’s eye (a feat at which Beats has long been a master).
We have physical buttons to play with, which is very good news indeed. They’re clicky and responsive enough, but turning the speaker on and off takes a bit of practice due to the multi-functionality of the power button. It requires a just-less-than-one-second press for power, but it’s all too easy to accidentally instigate Bluetooth pairing. That’s a small gripe, though, and the rest of the buttons are well-appointed – there’s a separate function button for play controls and dedicated volume buttons, too.
Battery life? Well, 24 hours is likely to be more than enough for anyone, and it’s double what the Pill+ offered. You can check the battery status by pressing the power button once and monitoring the colour of the LED, which isn’t to-the-percentage-point-accurate, but the percentage remaining does at least show up on your phone.
It’s also worth noting that you can use the Beats Pill as a battery pack by connecting your phone, for instance, to the USB-C port. It uses logic to distinguish between charging requirements, but you can instigate reverse charging with a triple-click of the power button. With 24 hours of battery life to play with, it’s a feature that will do enough to get you out of trouble.
What does the new Beats Pill sound like?
The strap line for the new Beats Pill is “seriously loud”. And it needs to be, in what is an incredibly saturated market full of very loud portable speakers.
The racetrack-designed woofer is a larger and more capable unit all around compared to its predecessors; there’s more surface area, more volume displacement, and more energy on hand within the magnet. The tweeter design is different, too. There’s just one as opposed to the two that were on the Pill+, which is mainly to make way for that bigger woofer and, I guess, help reduce the overall size of the Pill.
This little speaker system does indeed go pretty loud and sounds nicely balanced, no matter what you throw at it. The only issue I’ve found is that, like so many of these small portable speakers, the Beats Pill exhibits some distortion on kick drum-heavy tracks. This isn’t something you can EQ out, either, because there’s no EQ. Beats want the Pill to be plug-and-play, sound-wise, and urges us to rely on the experience of the headphone tuning team, which was put to task on this speaker.
It does a great job of filling small to mid-sized rooms and is a great companion for BBQs, hotel rooms, and visits to the park and beach. In those scenarios, the audio cuts through nicely, and the sound is rich and full. This is where the Beats Pill is most likely to be used, I think, rather than as the main sound system at big house parties. For that, you’d need a couple – and Beats has, thankfully, thought of such an eventuality.
You can wirelessly connect two Beats Pills in one of two modes. Amplify Mode plays your audio over two Pills in mono for increased volume, and Stereo Mode… does exactly what you’d expect. I didn’t get to test either of these modes out, but it’s nice to know they’re available for anyone who wants to buy a couple of Beats Pills.
Lossless audio can also be played over USB-C, which is nice, but a rather niche feature and, I’d suspect, of little interest to most Beats Pill buyers. Similarly, it can accept phone calls and voice assistants – both of which are still driven by your phone. It works just like a pair of headphones in that respect.
Should you buy the Beats Pill?
At £149.99, the new Beats Pill isn’t the cheapest portable Bluetooth speaker out there, but it was never going to be. What you get in return is a very well-made, nice-looking, and sonically capable little companion.
That’s the point of the Beats Pill – it’s designed to be the kind of speaker you want to carry everywhere with you because it’s so satisfying to do so. I’m heading off on holiday myself this week, and it’s definitely coming with us for entertainment duties.
I have a feeling it’ll be joining me on lots of trips and BBQ sessions this summer, to be honest. It’s great to have the Pill back as another option in this crowded market. JBL – over to you!
