Beats Flex become the brand’s most affordable earphones since Dre’s billion pound drop

You won’t see many Premier League footballers wearing them, but with everyone else seemingly going bankrupt the fifty quid Beats Flex hit the right note for a pair of wireless earphones in 2020. Leveraging the design of BeatsX, Flex add magnetic auto-play/pause earbuds, a 12-hour battery life, new acoustic drivers and an upgraded microphone, and USB-C charging (hallelujah). Beats (aided by Apple, obvs) has packed in proprietary layered drivers, laser cut micro-venting and an optimised driver angle for ear pressure relief and accurate sound delivery. Digital processing also fine-tunes the audio for bass, mids, and low distortion frequencies with that (now refined) Beats signature sound. Made from Nitinol (a super-elastic metal alloy mix of nickel and titanium), the Flex will coil up when not in use so you can pop them in a pocket. Class 1 Bluetooth and Apple’s W1 chip take care of connectivity, there’s Audio Sharing with another pair of Beats headphones, and 10-minute Fast Fuel charging for over an hour of playback when your battery is running low. Beats Flex come in four colours—black, yellow, grey and blue. Black and yellow can be pre-ordered now for availability from October 21. Anyone wanting grey or blue will need to wait until early next year.