Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 review: the earbud that does not move

1. Best sealed earbud that stays put, on a run or in a seat

Beats Powerbeats Pro 2

The ear hook is the whole argument: a sealed earbud that does not migrate out on a long run, with noise canceling for the treadmill and transparency for the road.

Our editorial score: 8.4 / 10

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The whole product is one decision: a nickel-titanium hook over the ear, so the bud is held by your ear’s anatomy rather than by friction inside the canal. Sealed earbuds migrate — on a run, during a jaw movement, against a seat headrest — and a bud that has shifted a millimeter has lost its seal, which means it has lost most of its canceling as well.

The specification behind it is current Apple hardware rather than a Beats afterthought: the H2 chip, active canceling and transparency, Adaptive EQ, personalized spatial audio with head tracking, three microphones a bud plus a voice accelerometer, heart-rate sensors, and five ear tip sizes from XS to XL. Beats publishes 8 hours a bud with canceling or transparency on and 36 hours with the case, rising to 10 and 45 without.

The cost of the hook is bulk. The case measures 7.5 x 6.6 x 3.4 cm, which is noticeably larger than a stem-earbud case, and IPX4 is a splash rating rather than a serious weather one.

What works on a plane

• +Ear hooks solve the one problem that ruins running earbuds, which is drift
• +Switchable canceling and transparency, so the same pair works on the treadmill and the road
• +Heart-rate sensing on board removes one more strap from the kit
• +USB-C and Qi charging, so it uses whatever cable you already carry

What does not

• −IPX4 is splash and sweat only — do not take these into a pool
• −The hooks make the case noticeably larger than a stem earbud case
• −Best features assume an Apple device, so an Android buyer loses part of what they paid for

How it scores against the five travel axes

Cabin-noise reduction7.4

Battery on a long-haul7.0

Pack size7.6

Comfort past hour three8.4

Published specifications

Spec	Figure	Source
Battery, ANC or transparency on	Up to 8 hours per bud, 36 hours with the case	Beats
Battery, Adaptive EQ	Up to 10 hours per bud, 45 hours with the case	Beats
Water resistance	IPX4 (sweat and splashes)	Beats
Chip	Apple H2	Beats
Noise control	Active noise canceling and transparency	Beats
Heart rate	Built-in heart-rate sensors	Beats
Charging	USB-C and Qi wireless	Beats

Read the full Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 review →

Buy it if your earbuds have ever worked their way loose and you have stopped trusting them, if you want one pair that covers a run and a flight, or if you want heart rate without adding a chest strap. It is the pick in best headphones for running and in best headphones for cycling for the same structural reason: a hook does not care how much you are moving.

Do not buy it if the carrying case is the thing you are optimizing. A hooked earbud cannot have a small case, and this one is about the footprint of a chunky sunglasses case rather than something that disappears into a jeans pocket. Do not buy it as your primary long-haul canceling solution either — earbuds versus over-ear for flying explains why an over-ear still wins that specific argument. And do not buy it for swimming, because IPX4 is sweat and splashes.

One line in Beats’ own in-the-box list is worth flagging before you order: it covers the earbuds, the five tip sizes, the wireless charging case and the paperwork, and lists the power adapter and USB-C cable as sold separately. At this price that is an irritating omission, even if most buyers already own both.

Beats publishes active noise canceling and transparency, both driven by the same H2 chip Apple uses in its own earbuds, and does not publish a decibel reduction figure — nor does anyone else in this category, reliably. What can be said is where the design helps and where it does not.

It helps that the hook holds the bud in a fixed position. Canceling in an earbud is built on the seal, and the single largest real-world cause of poor canceling is a bud that has shifted. A design that cannot drift keeps whatever canceling it has, consistently, through a workout or a flight. That is a meaningfully different proposition from a stem earbud that measures well and then slides.

It does not help that this is a sport product first. Against the deepest part of the engine drone band, a dedicated travel earbud with foam tips and a larger acoustic chamber is still ahead — best noise-cancelling earbuds for travel ranks on exactly that, and this is not at the top of it. Transparency mode is the underrated half of the feature set for anyone running on a road; transparency mode versus noise canceling covers how well processed awareness actually substitutes for an open design.

Canceling you keep is worth more than canceling you measure. The hook is what keeps it.

Eight rated hours a bud with canceling or transparency running is strong. The premium earbud norm is six, and several flagships publish less. Thirty-six hours with the case covers a week of workouts or a long itinerary without finding a plug, and Fast Fuel at five minutes for an hour and a half covers the pre-run panic case.

For a traveler the number that matters is the per-bud figure, because the case usually ends up in a bag in an overhead bin. Eight hours covers a transatlantic flight with the movie and the sleep attempt; it does not cover a fifteen-hour sector without a trip to the bin. Headphone battery life for long-haul flights works through how to plan around that, and the short answer is to charge the buds in the case during the meal service.

Qi charging on the case is the practical nicety: it drops onto the same pad as a phone, which is one fewer cable in a carry-on — useful given Beats does not include a cable in the box.

Beats publishes a case of 7.5 x 6.6 x 3.4 cm and a combined weight of 77.7 g. That is bigger than any stem-earbud case and it is not close: the hooks have to fold somewhere, and the somewhere is the case. In a jacket pocket it is an obvious lump, and in a small personal item it competes with a phone charger for the same space.

Set against that, 8.7 g a bud is genuinely light on your head, the hooks pack no bulk while you are wearing them, and the whole thing is still a fraction of the volume of an over-ear plus its case. If you are choosing earbuds specifically to save space in a carry-on, this is the wrong earbud; if you are choosing earbuds because you do not want a headband, it is fine.

An over-ear hook spreads the retention load onto the top of the ear, which means the tip inside the canal does not have to be wedged tight to stay put. In practice that makes a loose-but-sealed fit viable, and a loose-but-sealed fit is the comfortable one. Five tip sizes from XS to XL is a wider range than most manufacturers ship, and it matters more than the spec sheet suggests — best earbuds for small ears covers why the stock medium fails so many people.

The limits are the usual sealed-earbud ones. Several hours of a sealed canal is warmer and more occlusive than an over-ear, glasses arms and hooks compete for the same real estate, and anything hooked over the ear is more intrusive when you are lying against a window on your side. For sleeping on a plane this is the wrong shape entirely; best earbuds for sleeping on a plane exists because that is a different product category.

IPX4 covers sweat and splashing water. It is a gym and light-rain rating, not a swimming or a downpour one, and no earbud with a charging case should be submerged.

There is no cable and no jack, so a seat-back screen needs a Bluetooth transmitter plugged into the aircraft socket unless the aircraft has Bluetooth audio built into the seat. Airplane headphone jack adapters covers the hardware, and Bluetooth headphones and in-flight entertainment covers which fleets have made the problem disappear.

Beats publishes optical heart-rate sensors in each bud, feeding workout apps in real time, and the feature can be switched off. For anyone who trains without a watch, that genuinely removes a device from the kit — and unlike a wrist sensor, an ear sensor is not being shaken by a dumbbell.

The H2 chip is the double-edged part. On an iPhone you get one-touch pairing, automatic device switching, Find My, hands-free Siri, personalized spatial audio with head tracking and firmware that updates itself. On Android the Beats app restores most of the core functionality, but several of those conveniences are not available at all. Paying premium money for a feature set you can only half use is the clearest reason an Android owner should look at the best noise-cancelling earbuds for Android instead.

• Apple AirPods Pro 3 — the same chip and the same ecosystem, deeper canceling and a far smaller case, with no hook to hold it in place.
• Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 — the opposite answer for a runner: nothing in the ear, full awareness of traffic, no canceling at all.
• Sony WF-1000XM6 — if the flight matters more than the run, and the fit problem is not yours.

This is a sport earbud that travels well rather than a travel earbud that can run. The hook solves a real problem that spec sheets never capture, the battery figures are near the top of the category, and the heart-rate sensing is a genuine subtraction from the amount of kit you carry. The case is big, the water rating is modest, and an Android buyer is paying for things they cannot use.

If your earbuds keep working loose, this is the fix and nothing else on this site addresses it as directly. If they do not, you can buy smaller, quieter or cheaper.