Beats Pill Wireless Bluetooth Speaker Review: The right dose of style and substance

Pros:

- Excellent sound output for the size

- Stylish, sturdy and portable

- IP67 dust and water resistance

- Multi-functional USB-C port

- Solid battery backup

- Find My (Device) support on iOS and Android both

- Supports voice assistants and hands-free calling

Cons:

- Sound is not customisable

- No multi-point support

- Lacks superior audio codecs

Price: Rs 16,900

Rating: 4/5

Beats, now owned by Apple, has a bunch of interesting audio products in their portfolio. A handful of them are now officially sold in India. While most of them are wearable audio devices like headphones and earphones, the Beats Pill is a portable wireless Bluetooth speaker that promises to punch way above its weight and size and keep your pulse racing for a lot longer. We will explore some of its interesting features in this review and let you know whether you should take the blue pill or the red pill with this one.

What we like about the Beats Pill  

Stylish yet sturdy product that’s easy to carry around

Literally speaking, there is no blue Pill yet. It does come in red, black and champagne gold colour options. It is aptly titled Pill as that is exactly what it looks like, albeit a big one - almost 22 cm in length and 680 grams in weight. Too big to swallow but just the right size for a portable Bluetooth speaker. The speaker looks quite elegant in a two-tone finish with the entire front covered by a metal grille and the Beats logo at the centre. The buttons are placed at the top with a slight indentation to locate them; some backlight would have been nice.

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The build quality and finish are top notch and an IP67-rated ingress protection adds to the sturdiness. So you can take it for a poolside party as it can survive a few splashes. Avoid dropping it in the pool, though it can handle a quick dip too. The size and weight along with the matching detachable lanyard makes it easy to carry around. The concave rubberised base makes the speaker perfectly stable when placed on a flat surface. The drivers are angled upwards by 20 degrees to project the sound towards your ears.  

Fairly detailed sound output with ample bass for the size

For a speaker this size, it has quite a grunt. The amount of bass it can produce is pleasantly surprising, and it’s fairly tight too. And I am not talking about a bit of warmth in the output but a proper thump. The mids are produced quite well too, especially the vocals. The instrument separation is average at best; not surprised, given that this is a mono speaker. The highs, though not the sharpest I have come across, have a good amount of sparkle without sounding sibilant.

All in all, the Beats Pill produces a fairly balanced and extremely pleasant sound output across various genres of music. Probably not the best for instrument heavy tracks, but fine for most of the other stuff. It is good enough for some soft night-time listening as well as a small party in a mid-sized room. It gets sufficiently loud around 60 per cent volume level for normal listening and doesn’t crack even if you push it to 90, which is great.

A highly versatile USB-C port

While the Beats Pill is largely meant to be a wireless Bluetooth speaker, there’s a pleasant surprise hidden behind the USB port. One would safely assume that the USB-C port located at the back of the speaker is meant for charging it, and it is. But beyond that it serves two more purposes. Firstly, it can be used like a powerbank to charge other devices like TWS earbuds or even a phone. Secondly, it serves as an input to play lossless audio via USB-C from devices that support it. That was unexpected but a great feature to have indeed.

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Solid battery backup with support for fast charging

The company promises 24 hours of battery backup if you stick to 50 per cent loudness. At around 60 per cent volume for the better part of our test process, we got upwards of 20 hours out of it, which is mighty impressive. It also supports fast charging, wherein a 10-minute charge gives you about 2 hours of playback, which is handy. The overall charging time varies between 2.5 to 4 hours depending on the charger used. One with 45W or higher rating gets the job done in about 2.5 hours.

Some more handy features to have

The Beats Pill has a built-in microphone and can be used for hands-free calling; it works well. The microphone can be used to summon Siri or Google Assistant depending on whether you use it with an Apple or Android device. The speaker works equally well with both. You can also set up Find My or Find My Device on the respective devices to locate the speaker in case it goes missing.  

What needs to go from bitter to better for the Beats Pill

Scant companion app lacks sound tweaks

While you get a Beats companion app for iOS and Android both, it does precious little. Yes, it can be used to update the firmware or customise the multi-functional button a bit, but beyond that, there’s not much of interest there. One major thing lacking is an equaliser to customise the sound output. It can’t be an oversight. Yes, the speaker is tuned quite well but it wouldn’t have hurt if users were allowed to finetune it further. Even a simple 3-band EQ would have been handy.

Does not support aptX or LDAC codec; it’s an Apple product after all  

No surprises here. It’s an Apple product after all and this Bluetooth 5.3 compliant speaker only supports AAC codec. No support for superior codecs like Qualcomm’s aptX HD/ Adaptive or Sony’s LDAC. Generally, we do not bother about this for portable Bluetooth speakers but the Pill has some more to offer if given more legroom, as was evident when we played audio through its USB-C port. It may have sounded a little better with a superior codec offering a bit more wireless bandwidth. You never know!

Cannot be paired with more than one device at a time

This was a disappointment. The Beats Pill doesn’t support multi-point audio and cannot be paired with two devices simultaneously. It is only fair to expect that from a device in this price segment. However, you can pair it with another Pill for a more fuller stereo sound. We did not have a second Pill at hand to try this feature. Hence, I will reserve my judgement on this.

Beats Pill: Price and verdict

The Beats Pill is priced at Rs 16,900 with a one year warranty. Yes, the pricing is premium; it’s an Apple product after all. But it has the performance to justify that price tag. It does have a few shortcomings, but its sound quality and robust battery backup, in addition to the polished design and the versatile USB port, make it easy to recommend if you are willing to spend over 15K for a portable Bluetooth speaker.  

As for alternatives, it is hard to suggest one as we haven’t tested anything better in the 12K to 20K range, and the Beats Pill trumps everything priced under Rs 12,000 in India.